Clare Ryan Posts

This Article analyzes case law on custody and family separation from a jurisdiction that uses a strong children’s rights approach, the European Court of Human Rights. These cases provide a valuable comparator by which to test whether children’s rights framing changes the way that courts reason about children.

This Article focuses on the question of how the law should distinguish between the state’s exercise of its custodial powers for permissible grounds, such as to protect the child, and its exercise of custodial powers for impermissible grounds, such as to induce the parent to give up another right.