Stokes was a senior judge. He had gone into semi-retirement two years earlier after serving fifteen years. He had been appointed to the bench by Jimmy Carter in 1977 after a twenty-year career as a flamboyant litigator for a variety of liberal causes\u2014including a number of cases where he had been a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So, Peter thinks about it, and isn\u2019t sure what getting Stokes portents. Farris tells us that Stokes is \u201cno-nonsense on procedural matters\u201d and that Peter has appeared before him a number of times. Peter is clearly worried about the ACLU ties. He heads back to his office to find Joe hard at work on cases that, you know, actually pay money.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got Stokes on the Landis file,\u201d Peter said as eh stuck his head in the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s great,\u201d Joe replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat? He\u2019s such \u00a0lefty. Why is that great?\u201d Peter asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrecisely for that reason,\u201d Joe replied. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a very strong constitutional rights complaint against the government. Better a former ACLU lawyer appointed by a Democrat president than one of the Republican appointees who spent hitter careers defending corporations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI never thought of it that way,\u201d Peter said.<\/p>\n
\u201cStokes will not let you will automatically. I have no idea ho the feels about child abuse cases. He may go off on some left-wing bleeding heart binge because the case involves the so-called need to protect children. But if this were any other kind of case where the government busted into somebody\u2019s home without a warrant, Stokes would hang the government\u2019s hide on the wall.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cso-called need to protect children\u201d?<\/p>\n
\u201cso-called <\/em>need to protect children\u201d?!<\/p>\n\u201cSO-CALLED <\/strong><\/em>need to protect children\u201d?!?!<\/p>\n$)(&%@(#*$_@#))@#%&(#&$&$_@*#$<\/p>\n
Okay, now that that\u2019s out of my system, let\u2019s deal with the content here, shall we? Because actually what\u2019s going on here is very interesting.<\/p>\n
In his work as a lawyer and an activist, Farris goes to great lengths to speak of parents\u2019 \u201cfourth amendment rights\u201d and the fact that the Constitution protects against search and seizure without a warrant. And he\u2019s right.\u00a0The problem is that children are not property. Does a social worker legally have to have either the owner\u2019s\u00a0permission, a warrant, or exigent circumstances to enter a home? Yes. But again, children are not property. Is there\u00a0a difference between a parent refusing a social worker access to their child and a parent refusing a social worker access to their house? I would argue that there is.\u00a0Besides, isn\u2019t it the child\u2019s house too? I\u2019m not sure where are the lines should be drawn, but there are interesting discussions to be had here\u2014discussions Farris isn\u2019t even thinking about.<\/p>\n
There are other interesting discussions to be had that Farris isn\u2019t thinking about as well. For example, Farris seems much more concerned about the fact that Donna pushed her way into Gwen\u2019s\u00a0home than he is about the forced strip search of four-year-old Casey.\u00a0While I\u2019m not a lawyer, I would guess that a case like this could have the potential to force judges to think about children\u2019s rights with regard to searches. When a child needs to be searched for bruises, or questioned about potential abuse, does that child have the right to experience\u00a0these things in a way that makes them feel as comfortable and at ease as possible? What obligations does the social worker have to the child in how they go about carrying\u00a0out their investigations? Now that<\/em> could make for an interesting case!<\/p>\nFarris is taking what could be a very interesting case asking very interesting questions and turning it into something one-dimensional and flat, something that voids Casey\u2019s rights and interests entirely and makes her into little more than Gwen\u2019s\u00a0property. Joe\u2019s remark about \u201cthe so-called need to protect children\u201d and his use of the term\u00a0\u201cleft-wing bleeding heart\u201d to refer to children\u2019s rights activism rather puts the nail in that coffin. It\u2019s a disgusting waste of what could be an interesting push to further children\u2019s rights, not limit them.<\/p>\n
With this out of the way, next week we get to see Blackburn, Donna, and Rita\u2019s reactions when they receive news of the suit.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week is full of procedural detail, and I initially thought it was mostly filler. But as I looked more closely, I realized that it is actually extremely important to what is going on here—perhaps even the heart of the message Farris is trying to offer his readers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":28148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[469],"class_list":["post-28146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anonymous-tip"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n