Neglected Stories: The Constitution and Family Values

by Peggy Cooper Davis

Book Overview

In a powerful challenge to the belief that the Constitution has nothing to do with the individual freedoms that comprise family rights, Peggy Cooper Davis argues here that the constitutional amendments after the Civil War reflect a profound appreciation of the political, social, and personal worth of family autonomy. She draws upon what she calls the motivating stories of the Fourteenth Amendment to show that the Reconstruction legislators who sponsored...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809072416
• ISBN13: 9780809072415
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Hill & Wang
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

ANOTHER NEGLECTED STORY

The author accurately described the process where the issues of constitutional significance of parental rights and the liberty right to custody of children parallel the struggles of the abolitionists and the civil rights movement. Of note, the very first case to reach the merits of "custody and the constitution" is awaiting decision as of this date (February 25, 2003) in the federal court in Dayton, Ohio, captioned Galluzzo v. Champaign County Court of Common Pleas, filed April 27, 2001. The denial of due process and equal protection are identical to the issues raised by the author and detailed throughout her book. This book is "must" reading for domestic relations attorneys who have no clue about the construction of federal law pursuant to state law and for legislators and legal theorists who lack knowledge of why the state's claim to the "best interests of a child" is uncontitutional where a parent is a suitable parent and not found by "clear & convincing" evidence to be unfit.