Digital Commons Network^™

Mandatory Divorce Education: What Do The Parents Say?, Nancy Ver Steegh, Solveig Erickson

Faculty Scholarship

Between 1994 and 1998, the number of states offering parent education classes for divorcing couples quadrupled. The State of Minnesota participated in this trend with the passage of Minnesota Statutes Section 518.157 requiring that each judicial district implement a parent education program. Parent education at the time of divorce seems to constitute sound public policy. However, no final conclusions can be drawn without asking the question, "What do the parents think about mandatory divorce education?" Part II of this article will examine the societal and legal context of divorce education for parents and the response of the court system. Part …

Divorce, Children's Welfare, And The Culture Wars, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Are children harmed when their parents divorce? If so, should parents' freedom to end marriage be restricted? These questions have generated uncertainty and controversy in the decades since legal restraints on divorce have been lifted. During the 1970s and 80s, the traditional conviction that parents should stay together "for the sake of the children" was supplanted by a view that children are usually better off if their unhappy parents divorce. By this account, divorcing parents should simply try to accomplish the change in status with as little disruption to their children's lives as possible. This stance has been challenged sharply …

Care As A Public Value: Linking Responsibility, Resources, And Republicanism, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

I begin this Article with the preceding two statements concerning care for children because they focus on the relationship between resources and responsibility and capture two conflicting approaches to that relationship. The first statement resists a definition of "responsibility" that leaves out the work of social reproduction, that is, of caring for children and preparing them to take their place as responsible, self-governing members of society. Highlighting the lack of resources that poor parents face when tackling the work of social reproduction, the statement also suggests common ground among parents across class lines as to the importance of caring for …

Unbending Gender: Why Family And Work Conflict And What To Do About It, Martha M. Ertman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Paradox Of Family Privacy, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law Making For The Baby Making: An Interpretive Approach To The Determination Of Legal Parentage, Marsha Garrison

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Silent Victims: Children And Domestic Violence, Nancy Ver Steegh

Faculty Scholarship

Few of us would fail to intercede if we happened upon a child being physically attacked. Most of us would shield even an unknown child from witnessing a traumatic event. If we knew that a child might come to harm, such as a toddler playing in traffic, most of us would escort that child to safety. On a personal level, we are committed to the well being of our children. As a society, however, we close our ears to the cries of the children growing up in violent homes. It is now time to give them voice. New research reveals …

Promoting The Best Interests Of Children Whose Parents Are Divorcing: The Next Steps For Arkansas, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

Comparing Race And Sex Discrimination In Custody Cases, Katharine T. Bartlett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Social Norms And The Legal Regulation Of Marriage, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Americans have interesting and somewhat puzzling attitudes about the state's role in defining and enforcing family obligations. Most people view lasting marriage as an important part of their life plans and take the commitment of marriage very seriously. Yet any legal initiative designed to reinforce that commitment generates controversy and is viewed with suspicion in many quarters. For example, covenant marriage statutes, which offer couples entering marriage the option of undertaking a modest marital commitment, are seen by many observers as coercive and regressive measures rather than ameliorating reforms.

The law tends to reflect – and perhaps contributes to – …

The Role Of Strategic Management Planning In Improving The Representation Of Clients: A Child Advocacy Example, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

This article will discuss my experience managing a legal organization representing children – the Juvenile Rights Division (JRD) that Schinitsky began thirty-eight years ago – by exploring the interactive role that organizational management plays in enhancing the quality of child client representation. Part I briefly examines two issues: the historic and systemic context of court-based practice within JRD and the way in which changes in child welfare law and policies since 1979 have affected the ability of lawyers to represent child clients through this court-based practice. Part II presents a model for restructuring organizational conventions and patterns in order to …

Adoption, Identity, And The Constitution: The Case For Opening Closed Records, Naomi R. Cahn, Jana B. Singer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Still Hostile After All These Years? Gender, Work & Family Revisited, Jana B. Singer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Interdependencies, Families, And Children, Karen Czapanskiy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

From Property To Personhood: What The Legal System Should Do For Children In Family Violence Cases, Leigh S. Goodmark

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reviving The Public/Private Distinction In Feminist Theorizing Symposium On Unfinished Feminist Business, Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

The public/private distinction has been a target of thoroughgoing feminist critique for quite some time now. Indeed, attacking the public/private line has been one of the primary concerns (if not the primary concern) of feminist legal theorizing for over two decades. If Carole Pateman is correct, one would think that this particular problem might be assigned to the category of "finished business" by this time. In this Essay, I do argue that the critique is, in certain ways, finished business in that it is no longer particularly useful in its most common forms. More importantly, however, I suggest several ways …

Foreword, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

In November 1998, the interdisciplinary Center for Children, families and the Law at the University of Virginia sponsored a conference on Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice Reform. The conference brought together an extraordinary group of experts from the academic disciplines of law, criminology and psychology. Before an audience made up of researchers, students, policymakers, and practitioners in the field of juvenile justice, these experts analyzed legal policy toward juvenile crime from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives. The articles in this important symposium issue of the Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law are based on the papers …

The Nuttiness Of Divorce, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

The erratic, emotional "nuttiness" of divorce is predictable. Rest assured, however, you are not crazy. You are merely responding to the temporary emotional upheaval in your life. To help you better understand what you are experiencing, we have put together a brief explanation of the psychological stages or phases that accompany the legal process of divorce.

Child Support Policy: Guidelines And Goals, Marsha Garrison

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Then Technological Family: What's New And What's Not, Marsha Garrison

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Family Ties: Solving The Constitutional Dilemma Of The Faultless Father, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Becoming A Citizen: Reconstruction Era Regulation Of African American Marriages, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

While many Black people regarded slavery as a form of social death, some nineteenth-century white policy-makers extolled the virtues of slavery as a tool to uplift the characters of Africans in America: "[Slavery in America] has been the lever by which five million human beings have been elevated from the degraded and benighted condition of savage life ... to a knowledge of their responsibilities to God and their relations to society," observed a Kentucky Congressman in 1860. These sentiments were echoed by abolitionist northern officers not three years later when the institution of marriage was lauded for its civilizing effect …

First, Do No Harm: The Use Of Covert Video Surveillance To Detect Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy–An Unethical Means Of "Preventing" Child Abuse,, Michael T. Flannery

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Autonomy Or Community? An Evaluation Of Two Models Of Parental Obligation, Marsha Garrison

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Toward A Contractarian Account Of Family Governance", Marsha Garrison

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Commercializing Marriage: A Proposal For Valuing Women's Work Through Premarital Security Agreements, Martha M. Ertman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing Marriage: An Intersexional Approach, Martha M. Ertman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Marriage As Relational Contract, Elizabeth S. Scott, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The evolution of marriage from a relationship based on status to one that is regulated by contractual norms achieved a milestone of sorts recently with the enactment of the Louisiana Covenant Marriage Act. Under this statute, couples entering marriage can choose to have the termination of their relationship regulated under conventional no-fault divorce rules, or they can voluntarily undertake a greater commitment to their marriage. For couples who select covenant marriage, either party can terminate the relationship on fault grounds, but unilateral termination of the marriage is available only after a substantial waiting period. The principal impact of the statute …

Lawyers As Nonlawyers In Child-Custody And Visitation Cases: Questions From The Legal Ethics Perspective Response, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

The Child Advocacy Clinic at Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington ("Indiana Clinic") takes as a premise that, in custody and visitation disputes, children may be best served by lawyers as guardians ad litem, rather than by lawyers qua lawyers, on one hand, or by nonlawyer guardians ad litem, on the other. In contrast, participants in a national conference at Fordham Law School' concluded two years ago that "[a] lawyer appointed or retained to serve a child in a legal proceeding should serve as the child's lawyer." That is, the lawyer should regard the child as a client, not a ward. …