Cardozo Law Review
Abstract
The legal construct of termination of parental rights—the act of permanently severing the legal relationship between parent and child—is deeply embedded in contemporary American child welfare law. Indeed, since the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), it can fairly be said that our entire foster care system is structured around the threat of terminating parental rights. From the day a child is taken into state-supervised care, the clock begins ticking toward the possible permanent destruction of the parent-child relationship. In response to the financial incentives in ASFA that reward states for terminating parents’ rights, states have ended over 2 million parent-child relationships. The United States now permanently severs the parental relationships of over seventy thousand children a year. As a result, over one in every hundred children in the United States are legally cut off from their parents. Black children are more than twice as likely as white children to have their legal ties to their parents severed, and the rate is even higher for Native American children.
Keywords
Appellate Courts, Courts, Constitutional Law, Domestic Relations, Parental Rights Termination, Parents and Children, Adoption
Disciplines
Constitutional Law | Courts | Law | Law and Society
Recommended Citation
Chris Gottlieb,
The Birth of the Civil Death Penalty and the Expansion of Forced Adoptions: Reassessing the Concept of Termination of Parental Rights in Light of Its History, Purposes, and Current Efficacy,
45
Cardozo L. Rev.
1319
(2024).
Available at:
https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/clr/vol45/iss5/2
