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Among the increasing number of federal statutes impacting family law two continue to impact child permanency and parental rights. First, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 mandates that state courts find that the state child welfare agency made reasonable efforts to reunite a dependent child with his or her parents prior to termination of parental rights. The child is dependent because a state court held that there was sufficient clear and convincing evidence to remove the child from the parents' home. Often that evidence results from parental poverty, mental or physical disability, or the parents are undereducated and unworldly. Once the child is removed states are required to provide reasonable efforts to all parents to promote reunification and to provide permanency of placement for children. Second, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act is impacted by the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 and the continuing economic malaise adversely affecting state budgets. These two federal legislative efforts, although purportedly in the best interest of children, shorten the time parents have to cooperate with reasonable state efforts; failure to meet the statute's deadline requires the state to begin procedures resulting in termination of parental rights. What constitutes reasonable reunification efforts differs according to the individual circumstances. But there has been a uniform challenge occasioned by the formidable obstacles resulting from the national recession commencing in 2008. Decreasing state revenues reduces state expenditures for reasonable reunification efforts, to include treatment programs and classes that could assist parents in overcoming addictive behavior or in developing better parenting skills. Will the recessionary reduction in reasonable state reunification efforts compound the specified time frame that parents have to cooperate with these state efforts prior to termination of their parental rights? A few state courts have already concluded that decreasing state budgets may constitutionally reduce reasonable reunification efforts. Yet, without ongoing reunification efforts parents may not be able to rectify the causes that occasioned the removal of the child or children from their home. And if the causes are not remedied within a specified period of time termination of parental rights will ensue. Inequality results from the varying budget reductions among the states due to the economic recession; inequality also results because the poor, undereducated, unworldly and disabled are singularly targeted for termination of parental rights.

In order to explore the overlap between individual judgment and legal judgment, I turn to the parent–child analogy (the state is to the subject as the parent is to the child), historically much used to support the validity and basic rightness of the state's judgment. In this commentary, I examine how the very dynamic and contested nature of the modern parent–child relationship makes the state–subject relationship, its contemporary and correlative, particularly problematic. Specifically, I argue, it destabilizes the idea of judgment and the supposed distinction between state judgment and human subject judgment; and in so doing, it undermines the notion of "the law" as a distinct and independent entity.

This article examines the prevalence of child marriage in South-Sulawesi Indonesia including people's perceptions and its factors contributing to child marriage and the use religion to justify their actions. They perceive child marriage as the marriage conducted prior to the age of 16 for woman and of 19 for man as stipulated in the Marriage Law No.1 of 1974, as well as the marriage before 'akil balig'. Various determinants for child marriage are cultural norms or values of 'siri' (shame) for family honour; family prestige and kinship; uneducated parents; economic burden for family and inconsistency in legislation. No religious teachings or Islamic Law clearly support the prevalence of child marriage because the purpose of marriage in Islam is to perform a happy and harmonious relationship among the couple. The use of the Prophet Muhammad's marriage to Aisha in the age of six as the fundamental basis for child marriage is unjustified.[Tulisan ini membahas kasus-kasus pernikahan anak di Sulawesi Selatan, termasuk persepsi masyarakat dan faktor-faktor pendukungnya diantaranya penggunaan dalil agama (Islam) untuk membenarkan tindakan tersebut. Masyarakat memahami pernikahan anak sebagaimana tercantum dalam UU Pernikahan No. 1 Tahun 1974 bahwa pernikahan anak terjadi pada usia dibawah 19 tahun bagi laki-laki dan 16 tahun bagi perempuan dan atau mereka yang belum akil balig'. Beberapa factor dominan dalam pernikahan anak antara lain; norma adat lokal ('siri), kehormatan keluarga dan kerabat, orangtua yang kurang terpelajar, beban ekonomi keluarga dan ketidakkonsisten penegakan peraturan. Pada dasarnya tidak ada ajaran Islam atau fiqih yang secara tegas mendukung pernikahan anak karena tujuan dari pernikahan dalam Islam adalah kebahagiaan dan keharmonisan hubungan antar suami istri. Menggunakan rujukan pernikahan Nabi Muhammad dengan Aisyah saat usia enam tahun merupakan perkara yang tidak bisa dibenarkan.]

The empirical reality regarding the issue of care and protection for children is still a global concern. It is necessary to find rules regarding the protection and care of children. Comparing several rules in legislation, human rights and Islamic law in strengthening the position of children as human beings who must receive care and protection. This research is a literature review with a normative juridical approach. Examining various literatures by focusing on aspects of laws and regulations related to care, child protection, human rights and Islamic law. The techniques of analysis used were descriptive and comparative. The findings of this study indicate that child care and protection falls into the category of fulfilling human rights. Child protection is in line with the universal principles of human rights and has a legal umbrella and the power to obtain care and protection. However, the existing regulations have not been maximally implemented. In Islamic law, children have a very high guarantee of protection, this is included in the category of caring for children as the goal of sharia (maqashid syari'ah). The implication of this finding is that the protection of children's rights cannot be negotiated, because the state and religion have provided protection, so what must be enforced is the supervision of the fulfillment of children's rights.

part PART I GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW -- chapter 1 Islam and the Modem Law of Nations -- chapter 2 Siyar-ization and Its Discontents: International Law and Islam's Constitutional Crisis -- chapter 3 The Role of Islamic Law in the Contemporary World Order -- chapter 4 Islam and International Law: Toward a Positive Mutual Engagement to Realize Shared Ideals -- chapter 5 Islam and International Law -- part PART II INTERNATIONAL USE OF FORCE -- chapter 6 Views of Jihad Throughout History -- chapter 7 The Islamic Perception of the Use of Force in the Contemporary World -- chapter 8 Is There an Islamic Ethic of Humanitarian Intervention? -- part PART III INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW -- chapter 9 As-Salamu 'Alaykum? Humanitarian Law in Islamic Jurisprudence -- chapter 10 Islam and International Humanitarian Law: From a Clash to a Conversation between Civilizations -- part PART IV INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM -- chapter 11 Is Osama bin Laden's "Fatwa Urging Jihad Against Americans" dated 23 February 1998 Justified by Islamic Law? -- chapter 12 Violence, September 11 and the Interpretations of Islam -- part PART V INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION OF DIPLOMATS -- chapter 13 Protection of Diplomats under Islamic Law -- part PART VI INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL AND WATER LAW -- chapter 14 Islam and Environmental Ethics: Tradition Responds to Contemporary Challenges -- chapter 15 Can there be Confluence? A Comparative Consideration of Western and Islamic Fresh Water Law -- part PART VII UNIVERSALITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS -- chapter 16 Islamic Law/Shari'a, Human Rights, Universal Morality and International Relations -- chapter 17 Muslim Voices in the Human Rights Debate -- chapter 18 A New Perspective on the Universality Debate: Reverse Moderate Relativism in the Islamic Context -- chapter 19 Islam and Human Rights: Beyond the Universality Debate -- part PART VIII WOMEN'S RIGHTS -- chapter 20 Women's Rights in the Muslim World: Reform or Reconstruction? -- chapter 21 Women's Human Rights in Islam: Towards a Theoretical Framework -- chapter 22 Women's Human Rights in the Koran: An Interpretive Approach -- part PART IX RIGHTS OF THE CHILD -- chapter 23 The Impact of Islamic Law on the Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: The Plight of non-Marital Children under Shari'a -- chapter 24 Religious Legal Traditions, Muslim States and the Convention on the Rights of the Child: An Essay on the Relevant UN Documentation -- part PART X RIGHTS OF RELIGIOUS MINORITIES -- chapter 25 Accommodating Religious Identities in an Islamic State: International Law, Freedom of Religion and the Rights of Religious Minorities -- chapter 26 Non-Muslims in the Islamic State: Majority Rule and Minority Rights -- part PART XI STATE PRACTICE -- chapter 27 The Search for Human Rights Within an Islamic Framework in Iran -- chapter 28 A Macroscopic Analysis of the Practice of Muslim State Parties to International Human Rights Treaties: Conflict or Congruence?.

Issues related to Islamic law, women's rights, and state law have long been and remain deeply contested. This is most evident in debates around family law reform in majority Muslim countries. As one recent example, in Mali, a secular state according to its Constitution, the National Assembly adopted in August 2009 a new family code proposed by the government. The new code included provisions to set the minimum age for marriage at 18; change inheritance rules for women including the ability for them to remain in their dwelling upon the death of their husband; change rules for adoption and the recognition of children born out of wedlock; define marriage as a secular and public act that should be ratified by the state; and protect the integrity of the human body (which relates among others to the issue of female genital cutting or FGC). In some countries arguments inspired by Islamic law have been used in order to suggest that prohibiting FGC and child marriage could be "un-Islamic," and faith leaders have substantial influence on whether the practices persist or not. Mali is a case in point.