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Family Law

Boston University School of Law

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Feminism

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Brief Amici Curiae Of Professors Of History, Political Science, And Law In Support Of Respondent, Kristin Collins, Catherine E. Stetson, Jessica K. Jacobs Oct 2016

Brief Amici Curiae Of Professors Of History, Political Science, And Law In Support Of Respondent, Kristin Collins, Catherine E. Stetson, Jessica K. Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

Sex-based laws premised on archaic presumptions about the proper roles of men and women run afoul of established constitutional principles, especially when they interfere with the parent-child relationship. Amici write to explain the history of the federal government’s use of sex-based classifications in the regulation of citizenship. In its regulation of intergenerational and interspousal citizenship transmission, the federal government has perpetuated outdated gender-based norms concerning proper parental roles, even when those norms have been rejected in other legal and social contexts. In addition, the laws governing derivative citizenship have significantly encumbered the ability of American fathers to transmit citizenship to …


The Other Marriage Equality Problem, Linda C. Mcclain May 2013

The Other Marriage Equality Problem, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This article introduces the term “the other marriage equality problem” to invite attention to a marriage equality issue distinct from gay men's and lesbians’ access to the institution of civil marriage. That problem is captured in warnings about the growing class-based marriage divide and the “diverging destinies” of children that flow from these emerging patterns of family life, sometimes referred to as “the reproduction of inequalities.” Growing family inequality warrants attention for many reasons, including the crucial role that families, along with other institutions of civil society, play in sustaining the American experiment in “ordered liberty.” Strikingly, such warnings coexist …


What's So Hard About Sex Equality?: Nature, Culture, And Social Engineering, Linda C. Mcclain Sep 2010

What's So Hard About Sex Equality?: Nature, Culture, And Social Engineering, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Why is sex equality so hard to achieve? Social cooperation between women and men in various domains of life is assumed to be a fundamental and necessary building block of society, but proves hard to secure on terms of equality. One answer is that feminist quests for equality in private and public life are a form of misguided social engineering that ignores natural sex difference. This chapter examines arguments that nature and culture constrain feminist law reform. Appeals to nature argue that brain science and evolutionary psychology find salient differences between women and men, limiting what social engineering can achieve …


Women's Place: Urban Planning, Housing Design, And Work-Family Balance, Katharine B. Silbaugh Jan 2007

Women's Place: Urban Planning, Housing Design, And Work-Family Balance, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

In the past decade a substantial literature has emerged analyzing the role of work-family conflict in hampering women's economic, social, and civil equality. Many of the issues we routinely discuss as work family balance problems have distinct spatial dimensions. 'Place' is by no means the main factor in work-family balance difficulties, but amongst work-family policy-makers it is perhaps the least appreciated. This article examines the role of urban planning and housing design in frustrating the effective balance of work and family responsibilities. Nothing in the literature on work-family balance reform addresses this aspect of the problem. That literature focuses instead …


When Fathers' Rights Are Mothers' Duties: The Failure Of Equal Protection In Miller V. Albright, Kristin Collins Jan 2000

When Fathers' Rights Are Mothers' Duties: The Failure Of Equal Protection In Miller V. Albright, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

The history of coverture and the transmission of American citizenship brings an elementary point into focus: The allocation of parental rights is always correlated with the allocation of parental responsibility. This basic legal truism, and its numerous implications for citizenship law, suggests that the principal gender injustice caused by § 1409 is not its truncation of fathers' rights, but its creation and perpetuation of a legal regime in which mothers assume full responsibility for foreign-born nonmarital children. Once we recognize this gendered operation of § 1409, broader failures of equal protection analysis come into relief. First, while the jurisprudential understanding …