Welcome to the Children's Advocacy research guide. This guide is intended to help you start your research of children's advocacy/ children's rights issues by outlining some of the authoritative federal and state law, as well as providing other helpful resources.
Westlaw has a Family Law page, as well as a few treatises on children's law:
Children & The Law: Rights & Obligations
Handling Child Custody, Abuse, & Adoption Cases
Lexis has a Family Law page, as well as a treatise called Representing the Child Client.
The basic children's law research methodology is similar to other areas of legal research, with a couple of added steps depending on your topic:
1. Establish the facts.
2. Identify the issues.
3. Locate authority.
4. Evaluate authority - make sure to evaluate for credibility, objectivity, accuracy, scope, and currency.
SOMETIMES:
5. Locate scientific and/ or technical developments (if researching something related to child development/ psychology or something similar that would place importance on research studies).
6. Evaluate scientific and/ or technical developments.
Repeat steps 1-6 as necessary to complete research and analysis of issues.
7. Develop conclusions and recommendations.
8. Communicate research results and recommendations.
This guide was written by USD Law student Lilly Walker in January 2022.
