Formal legal standards like parental fitness are practically unmeasurable without discretionary judgment.

Evidence

Yet we know that coercion is most effective when it is so complete that the victim does not resist. … Or consider the issues confronting middleclass judges who must decide whether or not to agree to the petition of a welfare department to remove the children of a low-income parent to foster homes. When a home’ for children becomes “unfit” under law is hardly a matter for objective determination. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 812

Categorization

• QUESTION: If the standard is indefinable objectively, what determines where the line sits — class bias or an irreducible vagueness in law?