Ramsey County Law Library Blog

While there are some who deny it exists, most courts accept the notion that parental alienation is a problem and that it occurs when a child carries views of the other parent that aren’t justified by reality.  In Litigating Parental Alienation, author Ashish Joshi explains the research and context for parental alienation (PA) and provides tips, including a five-factor model, for litigating the issue.

In her foreword to the book, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Mary McCormack notes that parental alienation may be unintentional.  Whether intentional or unintentional, PA causes harm to a child that can be serious and long-lasting.  The chief justice also states that alienating behaviors “harm children and parents alike.  And they make family law judges’ work exceptionally difficult to get right.  When practitioners know more about the substance of parental alienation, they put themselves in the best position to advocate for their clients and put the courts in the best position to reach the right results.” (p. xiii)

PA manifests when a child allies himself or herself strongly with the preferred parent and rejects a relationship with the other parent without legitimate justification. In Chapter 4, the author explains the “five-factor model” that infers that parental alienation has occurred.  The five factors are: the child resists a relationship with the parent; the child had a prior positive relationship with the rejected parent; there is a lack of abuse by the rejected parent; there are alienating behaviors by the preferred parent; the child exhibits alienation behaviors. (pp 83-104)  Using caselaw examples, Joshi fleshes out how the factors are investigated and used in litigation.

Expert testimony can support the existence of parental alienation, and the Joshi analyzes both Frye and Daubert tests for admissibility of evidence.  The author also explains the role of the guardian ad litem and lists best practices for GALs who represent children in PA cases. While courts discern whether or not PA has occurred, they also aim to correct distortions and try to reunify the alienated child with the rejected parent. (p. 50)

Throughout the book, Joshi examines court cases from around the country, including some from Minnesota.  He also introduces the Duluth power and control wheel in his discussion of PA and domestic violence.  He notes that actual child abuse can differ from PA; however, PA is a form of family violence.

The book is available from the Ramsey County Law Library.  The library also has the 2018 title Parental Alienation and Abuse Allegationspublished by the National Business Institute.

Ashish S Joshi, Litigating Parental Alienation: Evaluating and Presenting an Effective Case in Court. Chicago, Illinois : ABA, American Bar Association, Family Law Section, 2021.

As we acknowledge Black History Month, we celebrate a 19^th Century White man who was an impressive voice for racial equality.  Described as the “Great Dissenter,” Justice John Marshall Harlan offered the lone, dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson (16 S.Ct. 1138, 1896), the Supreme Court case that approved separate but equal as a legal precedent and strengthened Jim Crow’s grip on American society. 

Author Peter S. Canellos provides an enlightening and well-researched book about Justice John Marshall Harlan.  Entitled The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America’s Judicial Hero, this inspiring biography explains how and why Harlan became an advocate for color-blind justice. The focal point of the book is Harlan’s dissent in Plessy.  The author details how Harlan stood passionately for equality even though his esteemed colleagues on the Supreme Court favored the entrenched, biased views of Jim Crow America.

Canellos describes Harlan’s early years, his political ventures, and his life as a justice.  Harlan came from a family steeped in education and law.  His father, James Harlan, was a lawyer who had the best law library in the state of Kentucky.  He proudly named his son after Chief Justice John Marshall.  However, more impactful than the name he was given was the relationship Harlan had with his adopted brother Robert Harlan, a bi-racial man who some thought to be the actual son of James Harlan. While Robert was a successful businessman, John Harlan witnessed a society that forced Robert and his family to flee to Britain to escape the racial injustices leading up to the Civil War. 

Canellos describes Kentucky’s role in the Civil War, detailing the “armed neutrality” of the state against both Confederate and Union troops.  Harlan supported Lincoln and fought with Sherman to defend Kentucky against Confederate attack.  Harlan left the military to become Kentucky’s attorney general.

Appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Rutherford B. Hayes, Justice Harlan grappled with cases that failed to enhance the equality that was promised by the post-war amendments.  Justice Harlan surmised that the evolving legal system was “construed as to defeat the ends the people desired to accomplish, which they attempted to accomplish, and which they supposed they had accomplished by changes in fundamental law.” (p. 28)

Harlan’s uncompromising stand against inequality is depicted by his famous dissent in Plessy.  Canellos describes the case and the surrounding events in a chapter entitled “The Humblest and Most Powerful.”  The case involved the Louisiana “Separate Car Act,” and the defendant, Homer Plessy, carefully plotted the actions that led to his arrest for sitting in the whites-only part of the train.  When the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, all but one of the justices reasoned that those laws requiring racial separation were within Louisiana’s police power. In a heroic departure from his fellow justices, Harlan stood for Black rights and eloquently wrote in his dissent that:

“The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a state to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.”

Justice Harlan served on the Supreme Court until his death in 1911. Well after his death, Justice Harlan’s legacy was influential in Brown v. Board of Education  which excised “separate but equal” from the legal landscape.  Thurgood Marshall, who argued the 1954 case, regarded Harlan’s dissent as the “bible” that he relied upon for attacking segregation. (p. 494) Harlan’s inspired defense of our color-blind constitution failed to inspire those in power at the end of the 19^th century.  However, the notion of a color-blind constitution is a simple but powerful message for all Americans, and his actions voicing that message are a compelling example today.

The book is available in the Ramsey County Law Library.

Peter S. Canellos, The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America’s Judicial Hero. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021.

We would like to end 2021 on an uplifting note.  The Hill We Climb is a poem composed and read by Amanda Gorman at the inauguration of President Biden on January 20, 2021.  As she stood before the audience, she was a shining sun in a bright golden-yellow coat – a sun amongst the more soberly dressed crowd (except for Bernie Sanders’ mittens).  And then she read her poem aloud.

Reading her poem in print is no less electrifying than hearing the spoken words.  The words look like prose until you hear the words in your head as you read to yourself, and you find the hidden couplets in thought and rhyme. 

It may be trite to say that a poem is poetic, but how else can one describe this verse, which catches both the eyes and ears of the listener?

The poem encourages us to keep going, keep trying, because the mistakes of the past do not define us.  Instead, we can choose to begin a new chapter for our nation.  She told the New York Times, that she wants her words to, “envision a way in which the county can still come together and can still heal.”  Her final message is that if we want a better nation, then we must earn it.  

Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb, an Inaugural Poem for the Country.  New York, NY: Viking, 2021