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Above and Beyond the Best Interests of the Child: An inquiry into the Relationship Between Social Science and Social Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Daniel Katkin ,
Bruce Bullington  and
Murray Levine
Daniel Katkin
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
Bruce Bullington
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
Murray Levine
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo
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Extract

The publication of an inter-disciplinary effort on child welfare law, co-authored by three such luminary figures as Joseph Goldstein (Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law, Science and Social Policy at Yale University Law School), Anna Freud (perhaps the foremost living authority on the emotional lives of children), and Albert Solnit (Director of the Yale University Child Study Center), is an intellectual event. The talents of these authors are such that their book, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973), ought to have significance beyond its reconceptualization of the law of child custody; it ought also to be a landmark in the history of cooperation between social scientists and lawyers. Despite impressive achievements, however, the book's greatest utility may be as an example of the wrong way to employ social science to solve problems of social policy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , Summer 1974 , pp. 669 - 687
Copyright
Copyright © The Law and Society Association, 1974.

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Footnotes

AUTHORS' NOTE: We wish to thank Michael Lieberman of the New York City Jewish Board of Guardians, and Gilbert Geis of the University of California at Irvine for their helpful comments and criticisms of earlier drafts of this essay, and to express our gratitude to a snowstorm which blocked roads, closed airports, and made time available for this inter-disciplinary and inter-state collaboration.

References

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Durham v. United States, 214 F. 2d 862 (D. C. Cir. 1954).Google Scholar
Finlay v. Finlay, 240 N. Y. 429 (1925).Google Scholar
Rothman v. Jewish Child Care Association (166 N. Y. Law Journal, Nov. 5, 1971, at 17, col. 1).Google Scholar

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