Litigation In the interest of children: Does anybody win?

Is test-case litigation a sensible way to promote the welfare of children? This question, posed by the Foundation for Child Development, was the starting point for the contributors to the book In the Interest of Children: Advocacy, Law Reform, and Public Policy (1985).1 Edited by Robert H. Mnookin of Stanford Law School, In the Interest of Children is the product of a distinguished legal study group who intensively examined five Supreme Court cases involving diverse arenas of child and family policy: Bellotti v. Baird (1979) (adolescent abortion), Goss v. Lopez (1975) (school disciplinary procedures), Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman (1981, 1984) (rights of institutionalized mentally retarded persons), Roe v. Norton (1975; Maher v. Doe, 1977) (child support enforcement), and Smith v. OFFER (1977) (foster care). According to Mnookin (personal communication, July 31, 1985), the cases were chosen because they were important hard cases, typified by indeterminancy (cf. Mnookin, 1975) and unclear policy choices. Indeed, a common theme through the case reports is disagreement among self-defined child advocates about the proper means of meeting children's best interests and even what those interests are (cf. Melton, 1983a; Mnookin, 1978; Rogers & Wrightsman, 1978).