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More recently, leading legal groups have begun to repudiate the syndrome as it is used by the courts. In 2006, the American Bar Association's Children's Legal Rights Journal undertook a comprehensive analysis of the scientific, legal and policy issues involved in the evidentiary admissibility of Parental Alienation Syndrome, and found no support for its use. As the author of one of the articles concluded,
"PAS's twenty-year run in American courts is an embarrassing chapter in the history of evidentiary law. It reflects the wholesale failure of legal professionals entrusted with evidentiary gatekeeping intended to guard legal processes from the taint of pseudo-science…. As a matter of science, law, and policy PAS should remain inadmissible in American courts."
— Hoult, Evidentiary Admissibility of Parental Alienation Syndrome (2006) at 22.
The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges bench book also notes that there is no scientific or legal basis for admission of parental alienation. Further, it cautions:
"The discredited 'diagnosis' of 'PAS' (or allegation of 'parental alienation'), quite apart from its scientific invalidity, inappropriately asks the court to assume that the children's behaviors and attitudes toward the parent who claims to be 'alienated' have no grounding in reality. It also diverts attention away from the behaviors of the abusive parent, who may have directly influenced the children's responses by acting in violent, disrespectful, intimidating, humiliating and/or discrediting ways toward the children themselves, or the children's other parent."
