Pitiful Plaintiffs
eBook - PDF

Pitiful Plaintiffs

Child Welfare Litigation and the Federal Courts

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Pitiful Plaintiffs

Child Welfare Litigation and the Federal Courts

About this book

Focusing on a class action lawsuit against the Illinois child welfare system (B. H. v. Johnson), Pitiful Plaintiffs examines the role of the federal courts in the child welfare policymaking process and the extent to which litigation can achieve the goal of reforming child welfare systems. Beginning in the 1970s, children's advocates asked the federal courts to intervene in the child welfare policymaking process. Their weapons were, for the most part, class action suits that sought widespread reform of child welfare systems. This book is about the tens of thousands of abused and neglected children in the United States who enlisted the help of the federal courts to compel state and local governments to fulfill their obligations to them. Based on a variety of sources, the core of the research consists of in-depth, open-ended interviews with individuals involved in the Illinois child welfare system, particularly those engaged in the litigation process, including attorneys, public officials, members of children's advocacy groups, and federal court judges. The interviews were supplemented with information from legal documents, government reports and publications, national and local news reports, and scholarly writings. Despite the proliferation of child welfare lawsuits and the increasingly important role of the federal judiciary in child welfare policymaking, structural reform litigation against child welfare systems has received scant scholarly attention from a political science or public policy perspective. Mezey's comprehensive study will be of interest to political scientists and public policy analysts, as well as anyone involved in social justice and child welfare.

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Yes, you can access Pitiful Plaintiffs by Susan Gluck Mezey in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Law & Family Law. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Preface
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. Child Welfare Policymaking: Exploring the Judicial Role
  5. Child Welfare in the United States: Combating Abuse and Neglect
  6. Stimulus: Ripening Conditions for a Lawsuit
  7. Accountability: Assessing the Limits of Duty
  8. Adjudication: Devising a Blueprint for Systemic Reform
  9. Implementation: Undertaking Systemic Change
  10. Response: Reacting to the Litigation
  11. Child Welfare Reform: Evaluating Systemic Litigation
  12. Appendix
  13. Notes
  14. References
  15. Index of Names and Subjects
  16. Index of Cases