Social Information in Court Decisions of Compulsory Child Adoption in Israel

Ambiguity over the concepts of “parental capability” and “the child’s best interests” in the Israeli adoption law, and a lack
of sufficient professional knowledge can lead to bias in the professional decision-making process regarding child adoption.
This study investigates the idea that judges do not use only legal considerations and relevant information relating to the
child-parent relationship but also social information about the biological parent whose parental capability is under legal
consideration. The study makes use of the priming paradigm as a conceptual framework for understanding the possible effect
of social information on legal judgments in child adoption cases. The textual narrative analysis of 130 court decisions in
favor of compulsory adoption reveals the use in courts of three kinds of social information about biological parents: familial
information, sexual information, and social-functional information. The study discusses the role of such information in establishing
the judicial narrative of parental incapability. In order to “de-bias” the judicial decision-making process regarding child
placement, a number of strategies for consideration as social policy are proposed.