'Give Me My Allowance or I'll Run!' Everyday Resistance By Foster Children and Justice Outsourced

Abstract

This essay will appear in a new book co-edited by Professor Michael L. Perlin and Dr. Kelly Frailing, JUSTICE OUTSOURCED: THE THERAPEUTIC JURISPRUDENCE IMPLICATIONS OF JUDICIAL DECISION-MAKING BY NON-JUDICIAL OFFICERS (Temple University Press) (2021). The chapter fits the overall theme of this book, which looks at the role of non-judicial officers as a hidden space in the U.S. judicial system through a Therapeutic Jurisprudence lens. It examines relationships between children and their state caregivers through their recorded experiences and testimonial voices, incorporating insights from poverty law and lawyering, child welfare law and policy, administrative law, clinical legal education, and TJ. The chapter builds on Austin Sarat’s socio-legal study of the complex relationships between welfare recipients and public assistance systems, and their ambivalent relationships with legal services providers, The Law is All Over”: Power, Resistance and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor, It integrates metaphors from this field study of the welfare poor into the analysis of formal and informal, abstract and material rules that envelope foster children, illustrated by examples from the University of Miami Children & Youth Law Clinic case docket. Although foster children can challenge decisions by the child welfare bureaucracy in court or fair hearings, many decisions fall beyond the purview of judicial or administrative due process. Less formal client advocacy enables children to resist state control as individuals and as a group and to overcome daily challenges such as getting personal allowances from caregivers. This paper is not to be cited until this book is published.