2025/07/16 by Sturtevant, Daniel Joseph
#Arts and Humanities #Constitutional Law #Developmental Psychology #Ethics and Political Philosophy #FOS: Law #FOS: Philosophy #FOS: Psychology #Family Law #Jurisprudence #Law #Law and Philosophy #Natural Law #Philosophy #Psychology #Public Affairs #Public Policy and Public Administration #Social Policy #Social and Behavioral Sciences #Theory and Philosophy #constitutional rights #ethics and religion #liberal democracy #safetyism #systems thoery
paper · doi:10.17605/osf.io/utpa7
This project exposes the emergence of a parallel legal-therapeutic regime operating within American family law — a system in which core constitutional protections are routinely bypassed by an ecosystem of court-appointed therapists, custody evaluators, parent coordinators, and guardians ad litem. Framed as "care" or "safety," these actors wield undefined authority under vague standards like “best interest” and “emotional harm” without evidentiary rigor or due process. The paper presents a systems-level diagnosis of this architecture, identifying it as a shadow judiciary: a constitutionally unbounded network of credentialed discretion, therapeutic ideology, and institutional moral immunity. It details how this apparatus subverts fundamental rights — including those affirmed in Troxel v. Granville and Santosky v. Kramer — and how the absence of controlling precedent has enabled the rise of discretionary domination cloaked in benevolence. More than a critique, this paper proposes a constitutional replacement: a coherent, falsifiable definition of the “best interest of the child,” a developmental rights framework, and a restoration of Enlightenment values in the adjudication of family law. It offers judges, scholars, and reformers a vocabulary of clarity — and parents a roadmap back to liberty.