JANUARY 2008

This issue begins with a passionate, thoughtful essay by Alastair Nicholson, the former chief judge of the Family Court of Australia, and AFCC president, on corporal punishment by parents. In calling for the abolition of the practice because of the harm it poses to children, Alastair surveys law, empirical research, parental practice, and popular opinion on this subject from many countries, including the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia. His analysis challenges popular notions of parents and politicians that it is all right for parents to hit their children a little bit, as the practice of corporal punishment invites serious physical abuse and long-term emotional harm. Readers are invited to comment and respond. This issue continues with a special issue on international perspectives on including the voices of children in family law proceedings. It is edited by Jennifer McIntosh who has also joined FCR's editorial board. FCR readers owe her a debt of gratitude. Jennifer (better known as Jenn) is a clinical child psychologist, family therapist, and research consultant. She is the director of Family Transitions, a clinical, research, and training center dedicated to the needs of children and parents experiencing family separation or trauma and to the support of professionals working with them. Jenn is an Associate Professor at La Trobe University and Senior Lecturer at Melbourne University. She has directed several research studies and training programs for the Australian Government Attorney General's Department of Family and Community Services. She has a particular interest in making psychoanalytic and developmental theories user friendly, enabling parents, caretakers, and professionals to consider the experience of children more sensitively and to act on this within systems and structures where a child focus has traditionally been difficult to achieve. I leave it to Jenn to introduce the authors and article she has included in this special issue, but I do want to offer a few comments. The special issue reflects the intellectual and geographic richness FCR and the AFCC strive for. The authors include law professors, judges, mediators, and psychologists. Some are from Australia, some from the United States. One of the articles is jointly authored by an American and a Croatian researcher. They collectively provide a robust mixture of legal analysis and empirical research and a broad picture of how different states respond to common problems raised by the family law dispute resolution systems of the 21st century. The empirical research and legal analysis that Jenn and her colleagues report in the special issue strongly suggest that policy makers encourage thoughtful inclusion of children's voices in the design of their systems for resolving parenting disputes after divorce and separation. I am especially impressed by their carefully constructed empirical study which compares models for involving children's interests in mediation of parenting disputes. Jenn and her colleagues report promising results from a mediation model which uses a child specialist to convey children's views to parents. That model improves outcomes for parents and children, as compared to a model of mediation where parents are informed about children's needs more abstractly. Jenn and her colleagues conclude: “[b]eyond meeting of the child rights, their inclusion in this form of divorce mediation was associated with a significant level of repair to the parental relationship and to improved emotional availability of parents to children and produced developmentally sensitive agreements, with which parents and children remained more content over 1-year period postmediation.” In my Editorial Notes for July 2002, I described the Family Court of Australia as a “remarkable institution” committed to “professionalism, innovation, global communication and humane values.” AFCC and FCR have long had strong relationships with the Family Court of Australia, a tradition that the articles in this issue continue. I am thus especially pleased to welcome Diana Bryant, the current Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia, and Kristen Murray, Senior Legal Associate and Research Adviser to Judge Bryant, to the community of FCR authors in Jenn's special issue. Jenn, Diana, and Kristen's article describes promising empirical findings from two programs of the Family Court of Australia—the Less Adversarial Trial and the Child Responsive Program—which aim to minimize the negative effects of intense adversary litigation on parents and children. Judges use inquisitorial techniques and engage in strong judicial management. They report that this approach helps “positively influence short-term adjustment of complex families in high-conflict disputes.” William (Bill) Austin provides the family law community with the first of an important two-part article comprehensively addressing the question of how a forensic evaluator, and ultimately family courts, should approach evaluating the effects of a proposed relocation after divorce on a child. In this part, Bill provides an up-to-date and sophisticated analysis of the relevant research and its application to the forensic evaluation process. In the second part, to be published in FCR in April 2008, Bill describes and applies the research in support of a risk assessment model for forensic evaluation. Family courts everywhere are creating “problem-solving courts” based on therapeutic justice models to create a more effective system to deliver legal, medical, and social services to substance abusers and their children. Valerie Bryan and Jennifer Havens provide early evaluation data from a study of women receiving treatment in a family drug treatment court. While there are significant limitations on the scope of their data, it provides a basis for optimism about the effectiveness of this innovative model for addressing drug abuse problems in a family context. Based on their data, Valerie and Jennifer conclude that “[t]angible improvements in income and employment status were observed, as well as significant improvements in perceived difficulties in social and behavioural functioning. Enrolled participants . . . show[ed] strong receptivity to the program's intervention and implementation plans through high levels of satisfaction.” They lay out a case for further research based on their preliminary positive findings. The Hofstra Law student notes in this issue are thoughtful and innovative. Jaclyn Jenkins focuses on a subject related to the theme of the special issue: why and how family courts should involve foster youth in hearings that determine their futures. Steven Costigliacci addresses the overbreadth of sex-offender laws designed to protect children but which operate to catch far more innocent behaviour in their net. Monica Sharma writes about the problem of assisted reproductive technology and sex selection leading to gendercide in cultures that have a gender preference for male children. The January issue traditionally includes a change in masthead listing our new and enthusiastic FCR Hofstra law student staff and the promotion of last year's junior staff to senior positions. Laura Daly, the Managing Editor for Volume 46, manages the staff. In a recommendation letter I recently described Laura as “intelligent, professional, and deeply dedicated to public service, especially the welfare of families and children.” She is a Child and Family Advocacy Fellow of the Center for Families, Children and the Law, was Co-President of the Public Justice Foundation for the 2006–2007 school year, a research assistant for the Drafting Committee of the Uniform Collaborative Law Act, and participated in the Courtroom Advocates Project for domestic violence victims. During the 2006–2007 school year, Laura interned in the Nassau County Family Court and the Matrimonial Part of Nassau County Supreme Court. After her second year of law school, Laura spent her summer working at Lawyers for Children in New York City where she advocated for the rights of children living in foster care. Laura's note, “To Regulate or Not to Regulate: The Need for Compliance with International Norms by Guatemala and Cooperation by the United States to Maintain Intercountry Adoptions,” was published in FCR's October 2007 issue. After reading it, one of my colleagues more expert in international family law than I described Laura as “an accomplished scholar.” FCR readers and I are fortunate to have Laura and her law student colleagues to help produce this journal. They are indispensable to its continued vibrancy and, I hope, to the future of family law. This issue begins my ninth volume as editor of FCR. It continues to be a great pleasure to work with the FCR and AFCC community. We have a wonderful editorial board and home organization. It also continues to be a great pleasure to further AFCC's mission by facilitating the publication of articles which contribute to increasing our understanding of how to make the family law dispute resolution process more responsive to the interests of families and children.

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