Paula Casaleiro

Regulação judicial das responsabilidades parentais: uma análise a partir da Teoria do Poder de Foucault

This article develops a foucaultian analysis of the legal regulation of parental responsibilities, in Portugal. More specifically, through a critical dialogue with Foucault’s theory of power, it is argued that as Family Law recode the knowledge of disciplines such as psychology or social work in the legal regulation of parental responsibilities and adopts characteristics of a disciplinary power, it is also “colonized” by these disciplines through the forensic expertise. In the judicial regulation of parental responsibilities, in particular, judges make an individualized surveillance or observation and “normalizing judgments” of families and children behavior, increasingly supported by the “power-knowledge” of the forensic expertise, using small penalties and rewards, to create not docile bodies, but “docile families”.