Constitutional Rights and the Expert Opinions Addressing Parental Access and Decision-Making

Over the years, we have noted with concern how few custody evaluators have understood these profound constitutional issues, which involve offering expert opinions to a court to reduce or diminish a parent's right to parent his or her child. In this article, we provide a brief overview of the constitutional issues that address parental rights, and discuss ideas that others have put forward about children's rights. B. Bix: Best Interests of the Child. Legal Studies Research Paper Series: Research Paper No. 08-08. University of Minnesota Law School (2008). Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1092544; J. Spinak: When Did Lawyers for Children Stop Reading Goldstein, Freud, and Solnit? Lessons from the Twentieth Century on the Best Interests and The Role of the Child Advocate. 41 Fam Law Quarterly 393 (2007); E. Willensen & M. Willemsen: The Best Interest of the Child: A Child's Right to Have Stable Relationships Must Be Central to Custody Decisions. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics (2008). Available at www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v11n1/custody.html. Our hope is that evaluators and the attorneys and judges who appoint them will reflect on the awesome responsibility that is entailed in offering opinions to the court about curtailing or terminating a parent's right to parent his or her child.