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42 Fam. Ct. Rev. 5 (2004)

handle is hein.journals/fmlcr42 and id is 1 raw text is: 




EDITORIAL NOTES


   This issue begins a new year and a new volume of FCR. The issues it addresses are central
to the continuing development of the family court as an interdisciplinary enterprise. The
authors are a blend of old friends and new voices. Their articles present empirical research
and legal analysis as well as practical programs for making family courts more responsive to
the needs of parents and children in reorganization and in crisis.


               UNIFIED   FAMILY COURTS AND COOPERATION
                  WITH   THE  AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION

   FCR  and AFCC  have a long history of collaboration with the American Bar Association
(ABA), most recently in the development of the Model Standards of Practice for Family and
Divorce Mediation and the Wingspread Conference Report on the Children ofHigh Conflict
Divorce. The collaboration continues in this issue with an article reporting the results of a
survey of unified family courts conducted by the ABA's Coordinating Council on Unified
Family Courts in cooperation with Hofstra University's interdisciplinary Center for Chil-
dren, Families and the Courts (of which l am the director). All of this continuing cooperation
with the ABA should indicate to FCR readers and AFCC members that their work and inter-
disciplinary outlook has strong support in the legal profession.
   James Bozzomo  and Gregory Scolieri, two recent graduates of Hofstra Law School, are
the principle researchers for the ABA survey. They and their colleagues, with the untiring
support of Moreen Murphy of the ABA's Center for Children and the Law, completed inter-
views for the survey with family court judges and administrators in numerous states and
summarized  their results in record time. They accomplished this while completing their law
school education and exams, winning graduation awards and studying for the bar examina-
tion. Jim and Greg report their findings in this issue and make their former professor proud.
   Herbert Belgrade, chair of the Coordinating Council on Unified Family Courts, suc-
cinctly summarizes the ABA's long-standing support for unified family courts as the most
humane  and holistic model for the legal system to respond to the needs of families in crisis.
FCR  and AFCC  are grateful to him and the Council for their support of unified family courts;
we look forward to increasing cooperation in the future.
   A separate article by Jim and myself commenting on the survey results will soon appear in
a symposium  issue on unified family courts of the ABA's Family Law Section's Family Law
Quarterly. The Quarterly is edited by one of my dearest colleagues, Professor Linda Elrod of
Washburn  Law School. The symposium  issue on unified family courts is being guest edited
by another dear colleague, Barbara Babb of the University of Baltimore School of Law, who
is well known to FCR  readers and AFCC  members  for her dedication to unified family
courts.
   Although I reserve most of my comments and speculations about the survey results to the
forthcoming Family Law  Quarterly article, a brief word is also in order here. The survey
reveals that no state that has created a unified family court would ever seriously consider
going back to a more fragmented model of judicial organization. All recognize that media-

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 42 No. 1, January 2004 5-9
O 2004 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts


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