Our headline, Why Judges Should NOT be Determining "What is Best for the Child", may sound like a statement that disregards child safety. It may lead one to believe that children are doomed to become victims in many cases if a judge does not step in and rule on what is "best for the child."
However, Law Professor Vivek Sankaran has made the case that this is NOT the primary role of judges, and that instead judges should be interpreting the law and applying it by objective standards.
The decisions about what are "best for the child" are really parental decisions, and the primary function of a court of law in determining child safety is whether or not the parents are fit to be parents.
I myself would take that one step further, and state that parents should be judged like any other alleged criminal, in criminal courts, with the full due process of law that is part of our constitutional rights, just as these rights are applied to other alleged criminals, such as murderers, terrorists, etc.
If a criminal court cannot convict a parent of criminal conduct, such as abusing their own children, then family or juvenile court judges have no right replacing the parents' responsibilities to raise their own children with their own opinions about how that child should be raised.
Statistics clearly show that the State makes a poor substitute for parents, and even when it is done in the "best interest of the child," the child is almost always the one who suffers the most from the trauma of being separated from their families.
