Digital Commons Network^™

Assembly Bill To Speed Divorce After Abuse Will Save Many Lives, Bring Needed Reform, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Property Rules Meet Feminist Needs: Respecting Autonomy By Valuing Connection, Katharine K. Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Assesing The Family And Medical Leave Act In Terms Of Gender Equality, Work/Family Balance, And The Needs Of Children, Angie K. Young

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

While recognizing that parental leave is only one aspect of the FMLA, this Article concentrates on the provision allowing leave to parents in order to care for their children. Before analyzing the FMLA in detail, it is helpful to explore what aims a parental-leave policy should have. The purpose of this Article is to propose and defend three goals that parental-leave legislation should strive to meet: equality of career opportunities for men and women, the right to participate in both work and family, and meeting the needs of children. After articulating what parental-leave legislation should aim for in theory, this …

"O Wind, Remind Him That I Have No Child": Infertility And Feminist Jurisprudence, Linda J. Lacey

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Feminists have constructed a "grand theory" of infertility and new reproductive techniques that has little to do with reality. Much of the discussion of reproductive technology is written in highly abstract, philosophical terms, rather than in the more experiential, narrative style which characterizes much of feminist jurisprudence. The infertile woman is generally voiceless and invisible in the telling of this story; when she does appear she is dismissed or criticized. This Article is an attempt to begin dialogue which incorporates her perspective into the discussion.

Property Rules Meet Feminist Needs: Respecting Autonomy By Valuing Connection, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

In this Article, Professor Baker analyzes how and why the law protects both horizontal (marital) and vertical (parent/child) relationships. In doing so, she suggests that, although the reasons to protect relationships are comparable in both the horizontal and vertical contexts, the law is much more willing to interfere with vertical relationships, at least when the parents are not married to each other. From the standpoint of women's needs, this inconsistent treatment of relationships is precisely backwards. Women benefit little from the law's deference to horizontal relationships, but they could benefit substantially if the law was more deferential to a single …

American Family Law: History -- Whostory, Ana M. Novoa

Faculty Articles

Family law should be rooted in preserving and protecting intimate relationships; instead, it is rooted in preserving those domestic systems that created or expanded the economic empire of the "Founding Fathers," the white males of the colonial northeast. This northeastern colonial perspective continues to underpin most of the basic assumptions in family law. Concurrently, with the increased privatization of the cooperative virtues, Americans have developed an excessive preoccupation with self and a cult of consumerism.

Consumerism has driven American society toward increased individualism and narcissism. A by-product of the increased individual-consumer culture is the mistaken belief that our personal values …