Family Court Review: A love letter, and little a bit of history

“I don't think I could do my work without the Family Court Review.” For the last 35 years, like a kid at Christmas, I have anxiously awaited the quarterly arrival of my Family Court Review (FCR) in the mail. I vividly recall the excitement (even if only part of an “et al”) of seeing my first co-authored journal publications in print (Newmark et al., 1995; Thoennes et al., 1995) in what was then called Family and Conciliation Courts Review. Over the years, I have participated in the development of many special issues; contracted with Wiley to publish the journal in print and online; coordinated with FCR editors in the dissemination of AFCC guidelines, initiatives, and reports; identified editorial staff; enjoyed the thrill of an FCR citation by the US Supreme Court (Singer, 2009); made countless visits to Hofstra Law School in New York, where talented law students have done the journal's heavy lifting for a quarter-century; and marveled at the depth and breadth of knowledge, dedication, competence, and creativity of our extraordinary editors. Most of all, it has been the substance of the journal that makes it special, and that excites me every time I crack open a new issue. As I wind down my tenure with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC), I have concluded that while it is deeply valued for what is between the covers, FCR simply does not get its due. Because for more than 60 years it has been much more than a traditional journal. It has represented AFCC in the finest possible manner. FCR and those responsible for its publication have reflected, paralleled, and influenced not only AFCC, but the broader national and international family law, mental health, and dispute resolution communities. Given the recent move to digital-only dissemination (and I confess to playing no small part), I recognize the irony of beginning this essay by highlighting the excitement of receiving FCR in the mail, or using phrases such as “between the covers.” But that, too, is simply an indication that FCR is, as usual, a step ahead. Finally, it should be recognized that a decade ago, Saini and Barnes (2013) conducted a systematic scoping review of FCR to examine whether it has supported its core values and to explore the number and quality of empirically based studies to determine if FCR has been able to advance the legal and social science in family law (Spoiler alert: it has!). This rigorous empirical approach is what we have come to expect from our journal, and it provides valuable insights. This essay does not pretend to be a similarly rigorous article. It is intentionally impressionistic, based on 35 years of observation and appreciation for its contribution to the work of AFCC. It is not empirical; it is from the heart. The Review1 did not begin as an academic or research publication. The first issue of what was originally called California Conciliation Courts Quarterly was published in 1963. (It is suspected that the word “Review” was later substituted for “Quarterly” to relieve the pressure and expectation of publishing four times a year.) It was ten pages in length and included a list of the staff members and addresses for the Conciliation Courts in Los Angeles, Imperial, San Mateo, San Bernardino, Sacramento, and San Diego Counties, along with a description of each community. Indeed, it was a community building exercise, connecting judges and staff members of the California's Conciliation Courts with one another and growing the community of professionals that would eventually become AFCC. Subsequent issues in 1963 published substantive articles on, e.g., “Characteristics of Short-Contact Marriage Counseling” (Elkin, 1963), as well as write-ups of conferences, and published research. According to former editor Hugh McIsaac, the Review was largely used by founding editor, Meyer Elkin, as an outlet to publish conference presentations for those who could not attend the conferences (Salem, 2013). Not surprisingly, AFCC conferences, and therefore the Review, were consistently ahead of the curve. It foreshadowed what would become AFCC's significant research focus with a 1965 article on statistical reporting of conciliation court cases (White, 1965), accompanied, of course, by a response (Bailey, 1965). By 1970, the journal was exploring court-based group orientation programs (Bradford, 1970) that would become pervasive as parent education programs many years later, and an interdisciplinary concept debuted in an article titled, Modern Family Rescue Team: Judge, Lawyer, and Behavioral Scientist (Watson, 1970). The Review of the 1970s shined a light on what would become critical issues in the field and the authors were truly family law game changers. In September 1974, Judith Wallerstein, MSW, reported on the Children of Divorce Project in Marin County, California, a study of 60 families and 131 children. Wallerstein wrote, “Much of our intervention has been to provide help for these parents who are floundering… and also to help them capture some stability and sense of purpose regarding their children and their future relationship with their children, and within this context to develop appropriate plans” (Wallerstein, 1974). In December 1974, law professor Jay Folberg (who was also AFCC executive director and in 1983 AFCC President) looked at separation and divorce from another angle, as no-fault divorce took hold and divorce rates increased. A mediation pioneer, Folberg presaged court-connected child custody mediation with the following observation: “…much counseling is done in the court to help families graciously end marriage with dignity rather than in debilitating anger. Disputes concerning divorce may, in effect, be mediated by a counselor [emphasis added] without reconciling the marriage” (Folberg, 1974, p.18). In that same 1974 issue, Isolina Ricci, a parent educator and single parent, wrote “Dispelling the Stereotype of the Broken Home” (Ricci, 1974, 2013). She wrote about the evolution of her model from, “The Myth of the Broken Home” to “From One Home to Two Homes” (Ricci, 1974, 2013), and would subsequently write her now classic book Mom's House Dad's House (2013). These early articles and conference presentations represent an important function of both AFCC and the journal. They appear to have served as springboards for early career scholars, teachers, and clinicians (neither Dr. Wallerstein nor Dr. Ricci had yet earned their doctorate). Wallerstein would of course go on to become a well-known, and in some circles controversial divorce researcher, following those same Marin County children for decades. Folberg was a law professor and Dean, and continues to be a renowned author and international mediator. Ricci would head the California Statewide Office of Family Court Services for 15 years, with Mom's House Dad's House (and a companion book for children) still widely circulated and turned into an audiobook in 2021. The Review would go on to also publish some of the earliest work on court-based mandatory child custody mediation (see e.g., McIsaac, 1981; Pearson & Thoennes, 1985), domestic violence typologies (Johnston & Campbell, 1993), and gender and mediation (Kelly & Duryee, 1992), among other subjects. Looking back more than fifty years later, the Review and AFCC can be proud to have created an outlet for this foundational thinking that endures to this day. Fortunately, almost all the thought leaders above remained members of AFCC (several serving in leadership roles), continued to present at conferences, write for the Review, and stay accessible to AFCC members for decades. In the late 1980s, Meyer Elkin turned the editorial reins over to co-editors Hugh McIsaac, former AFCC President, and Stanley Cohen, former executive director and one of AFCC's founding members. Soon, the self-published journal had a contract with Sage Publications and, with that, finally became the quarterly journal its founders envisioned in 1963. Around that time, the Review began publishing special issues focused on specific themes, which over the years would provide in-depth examinations of important topics (Saini & Barnes, 2013). By the turn of the century, Andrew Schepard was appointed editor-in-chief, the journal moved to Hofstra Law School in New York, and it became fully staffed by student editors. Shortly thereafter, AFCC and the Review would begin coordinating special issues with AFCC conference themes and policy initiatives. A landmark special issue came about serendipitously, as guest editors Janet Johnston and Joan Kelly agreed to coordinate presentation of a series of articles at the AFCC 2000 Annual Conference in New Orleans by an ad hoc group of northern California mental health professionals who were discussing a reformulation of parental alienation. They subsequently published their articles in the Review. The conference attendance broke records, and the July 2001 issue on the alienated child remains widely cited. The July 2001 Review was to be the first of three controversial special issues on parental alienation and related child resist and refusal dynamics, with Nicholas Bala and Barbara Fidler editing in 2010 and 2020 (the latter referred to “parent-child contact problems”). Each journal shared a variety of perspectives on this controversial topic and spurred deep interest and lively conversation among AFCC members, both in print and in person at the AFCC 2010 Annual Conference in Denver, and through a series of webinars (which were produced when the 2020 conference was canceled that year due to COVID-19). More than 1000 people attended the Denver conference, and the webinars and recordings have been viewed more than 10,000 times. The Review has been integral to highlighting and serving as an outlet for AFCC policy initiatives, publishing practice guidelines and commentaries for parenting plan evaluators, parenting coordinators, mediators, court-involved therapy, intimate partner violence, brief focused assessment, and use of social science in family law. Moreover, in some instances, the journal has modeled the collaborative behaviors for which AFCC has become known. Following two collaborative convenings (Wingspread Conference on Domestic Violence and Family Law and Closing the Gap: Research, Practice, Policy, and Shared Parenting), participants with long-standing ideological disagreements were asked to co-author articles. As a participant in this exercise (Salem & Dunford-Jackson, 2008), I can attest that the assignment required us to listen deeply and to fully understand and integrate uncomfortable perspectives into our thinking and writing. Several significant articles not only modeled collaboration, but resulted in some (but by no means universal) acceptance of different thinking among disputing factions and, more importantly, provided some clarity for professionals caught in the middle. “Custody Disputes Involving Allegations of Domestic Violence: Toward a Differentiated Approach to Parenting Plans” by Jaffe et al. (2008), helped create a path for greater conceptual clarity and acceptance of differentiation of domestic violence events and their meaning, the mere suggestion of which created significant backlash fifteen years prior (Johnston & Campbell, 1993). Following Closing the Gap, Marsha Pruett, Jennifer McIntosh, and Joan Kelly wrote two companion articles that addressed both the clinical and political controversies over attachment and young children (McIntosh et al., 2014; Pruett et al., 2014). While these articles did not categorically settle the disputes among advocates or ideologues, they provide important insights and guidance from multiple perspectives for those working in the field. In 2005 the Review moved to Blackwell Publishing, which would soon merge with Wiley and serve as a platform for the journal's growth. The journal was posted online, dating back to the first issue in 1963, and readership exploded. At the same time, an associate editor was added to work alongside editor-in-chief Andrew Schepard, bringing social science expertise to the journal. We initially anticipated this would be a junior level academic looking for an opportunity to cut their teeth as an editor. Instead, Janet Johnston, an esteemed senior social scientist, answered the call. This set a standard for the role, which would be subsequently filled by Robert Emery and, following the appointment of Barbara Babb as editor-in-chief, Marsha Kline Pruett. The role of all the Review editors in developing the journal over the years simply cannot be overstated. The addition of law student notes, and inclusion of the journal in legal databases also helped widen the audience. Today, the Review is available in nearly 6500 institutions worldwide. In 2022 Review articles were downloaded nearly 200,000 times. Since 2020, the Washington & Lee Law Journal Rankings have ranked the Review as the number one Family and Juvenile Law Journal in the world. As the journal of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, Family Court Review is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor. And, like AFCC, the experience is both a blessing and a curse. The Review cannot be easily categorized as a law, mental health, or social science journal. Authors choose to submit articles in APA or Bluebook citation style. Securing an impact factor and maintaining status in legal databases has been a challenge, in part due to the breadth of journal content compared to those associated with more focused traditional academic disciplines. Younger scholars are therefore not typically encouraged to publish in FCR because they do not get the same “credit” toward tenure and promotion. On the other hand, the Review has grown immeasurably and exercises considerable influence in the field. It has become the “go to” journal for AFCC's interdisciplinary community of judges, lawyers, mediators and is cited in numerous courts by practitioners inside and outside of AFCC. Like AFCC, the Review represents a community within which people with different perspectives can exchange ideas and highlight differences and commonalities. These exchanges are critical to AFCC members and other practitioners, who must go beyond the theoretical to address these challenges in practice every day. As observed by Saini and Barnes (2013) “FCR adapted over time to the needs of its readership, and it has demonstrated a flexibility that was likely integral to its longstanding success.” The Review, as noted at the outset of this essay, is a community effort. This success would not be possible without our partners, and I would like to extend special thanks to our partners at Maurice A. Deane Hofstra School of Law Center for Children, Families and the Law, including every student editorial staff member since the journal moved operations to Hofstra, the late J. Herbie DiFonzo, the late Ruth Stern, Matthew Kiernan, Amy Brown, and Rob Cannon. Additional thanks to Wiley Publishers, in particular long-term editor Michael Streeter and now Eric Piper. Additional thanks to the Review's editorial boards, special issue guest editors, reviewers and authors, without whom the journal could not exist. Finally, and most importantly, a heartfelt thank you to the editors of the Review, beginning with the late Meyer Elkin and the late Stanley Cohen, both founding members of AFCC, Hugh McIsaac, Andrew Schepard, Janet Johnston, Robert Emery, Barbara Babb, and Marsha Kline Pruett. I have worked especially closely with Andy, Jan, Bob, Barbara, and Marsha and cannot imagine a more talented and dedicated group of professionals. AFCC and Family Court Review are incredibly fortunate. It has been a privilege to learn from and work alongside them all these years, and I look forward to reading my online journal issues long after my retirement. Peter Salem is the soon-to-be former executive director of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, having served in the role since 2002, previously serving as associate director from 1994 to 1998, and research project director from 1991 to 1994. He has worked in and around family courts for 35 years in several capacities including mediator, administrator, trainer, researcher, author, and association executive. He is profoundly grateful for the opportunity to have published numerous articles in the Family Court Review. Peter is co-editor of the books Divorce and Family Mediation: Models, Techniques and Application (Guildford, 2004), and Family Dispute Resolution: Process and Practice (Oxford, 2024).