Justice & Law Quote by Robert Benton

Benton’s line cuts straight through the polite fiction that custody decisions are neutral, and it does it with a filmmaker’s instinct for courtroom drama: frame the claim as a question, then let the silence indict everyone who can’t answer. “What law is it” is both literal and accusatory. He’s not asking for a statute number; he’s exposing how “common sense” often functions like an unwritten statute, enforced socially even when the legal code pretends to be objective.

The key phrase is “simply by virtue of her sex.” Benton isn’t arguing that mothers aren’t often central caregivers; he’s challenging the reflex that turns biology into destiny and caregiving into a default female credential. The subtext is messy on purpose: the speaker can sound defensive, even self-interested, which is exactly why it lands. It captures the feeling of walking into a system where the outcome seems preloaded, then being told it’s just “what’s best for the child.”

Context matters. Benton came up during an era when American family law was shifting away from the overt “tender years” doctrine (the presumption that young children belong with the mother) toward a “best interests” standard that still carried the doctrine’s perfume. His question spotlights that gap between reform on paper and bias in practice. For a director known for human-scale moral pressure cookers, the intent isn’t to win an argument; it’s to make the audience notice how quickly fairness gets replaced by ritualized assumptions, especially when gender offers an easy shortcut.