DeShaney v. Winnebago County: Child Abuse, State Action, and Children's Rights in a Family Tragedy

FAIN: FT-53145-05

Lynne E. Curry
Eastern Illinois University (Charleston, IL 61920-3099)

Completion of a book manuscript under contract with the University of Kansas Press for the series, Landmark Law Cases and American Society (edited by Peter Charles Hoffer and N.E. H. Hull). It is the first in-depth historical examination of DESHANEY V. WINNEBAGO COUNTY (1989), in which the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that a child does not have a constitutional right to state protection from a custodial parent’s violence inflicted in the privacy of the family home. My study examines the case’s significance as a reflection of the complex relationships among private families, social institutions, and the law in late twentieth-century American society.

Associated Products

The DeShaney Case: Child Abuse, Family Privacy, and the Dilemma of State Intervention (Book)
Title: The DeShaney Case: Child Abuse, Family Privacy, and the Dilemma of State Intervention
Author: Lynne Curry
Abstract: This monograph is the first historical analysis of the landmark 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case, DeShaney v, Winnebago County. It addresses both the criminal and civil cases that resulted from a case of child abuse in Winnebago County, Wisconsin. The civil case challenged that state's child protection services, arguing that a four-year-old child's rights to life and liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment had been violated by a social worker's failure to remove the child from his dangerous home despite multiple reports of physical abuse. Ultimately, Joshua DeShaney lost his case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that children do not have a constitutional right to protection from their parents' violence.
Year: 2007
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0700614974
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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