BOSTON COLLEGE AND HARVARD PROFESSORS ADVOCATE FOR UNPARENTED CHILDREN
BC NEWS, NEWSJUNE 12, 2016BY ROHIT BACHANI
In late May, Democratic co-sponsors David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Brian Higgins of New York, Jim McDermott of Washington, and Republican Representative Tom Marino of Pennsylvania introduced a piece of legislation that would enable the United States government to remedy institutionalized discrimination by reforming domestic adoption practices. Professor Elizabeth Bartholet, Faculty Director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School and Professor Paulo Barrozo, Director of the Clough Center for Constitutional Democracy at Boston College Law School, have sought to encourage adoption reform in such a capacity over the past few years and have been following recent congressional initiatives to address the dilemma. The bill introduced in late May can be said to build on the provisions that Professors Bartholet and Barrozo have advocated for in earlier bills, including the Children in Families First Act (CHIFF).
The new bill seeks to make the State Department discontinue discriminatory practices against institutionalized children whose fundamental rights have been violated through faulty adoption practices, the passage of which "would put the United States in an important position of international human rights leadership," Professor Barrozo commented in an article co-authored with Professor Bartholet.
The bill can also be said to represent the culmination, per se, of pleas to Congress made by Harvard and Boston College faculty members in recent years to implement reformative measures with respect to the faulty and imprudent adoption system. For instance, in 2014, 34 faculty members from Harvard Law School and 24 from Boston College Law School signed and sent a letter to Congress encouraging it to pass the Children in Families First Act–a piece of legislation that laid some of the groundwork for the introduction of the May 2016 bill.