Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network
Formative Projects, Formative Influences: Of Martha Albertson Fineman And Feminist, Liberal, And Vulnerable Subjects, Linda C. Mcclain
Formative Projects, Formative Influences: Of Martha Albertson Fineman And Feminist, Liberal, And Vulnerable Subjects, Linda C. Mcclain
Faculty Scholarship
This essay, contributed to a symposium on the work of Professor Martha Albertson Fineman, argues that Fineman is a truly generative and transformative scholar, spurring people to think in new ways about key terms like “dependency,” “autonomy,” and “vulnerability” and about basic institutions such as the family and the state. It also recounts Fineman’s role in creating spaces for the generation of scholarship by others. The essay traces critical shifts in Fineman’s scholarly concerns, such as from a theory of dependency to vulnerability theory and from a gender lens to a skepticism about a focus on identities and discrimination. In …
Marital Contracting In A Post-Windsor World, Martha M. Ertman
Marital Contracting In A Post-Windsor World, Martha M. Ertman
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
United States V. Windsor And The Role Of State Law In Defining Rights Claims, Ernest A. Young
United States V. Windsor And The Role Of State Law In Defining Rights Claims, Ernest A. Young
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Windsor is best understood from a Legal Process perspective. Windsor struck down Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), which defined marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman for purposes of federal law. Much early commentary, including Professor Neomi Rao’s essay in these pages, has found Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court to be “muddled” and unclear as to its actual rationale. But the trouble with Windsor is not that the opinion is muddled or vague; the rationale is actually quite evident on the face of …
Marriage Fraud, Kerry Abrams
Marriage Fraud, Kerry Abrams
Faculty Scholarship
This Article examines the astonishing array of doctrines used to determine what constitutes marriage fraud. It begins by locating the traditional nineteenth-century annulment-by-fraud doctrine within the realm of contract fraud, observing that in the family law context fraudulent marriages were voidable solely at the option of the injured party. The Article then explains how, in the twentieth century, a massive expansion of public benefits tied to marriage prompted new marriage fraud doctrines to develop in various areas of the law, shifting the concept of the injured party from the defrauded spouse to the public at large. It proposes a framework …
Becoming A Citizen: Marriage, Immigration, And Assimilation, Kerry Abrams
Becoming A Citizen: Marriage, Immigration, And Assimilation, Kerry Abrams
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Gender And Nation-Building: Family Law As Legal Architecture Symposium - Nation Building: A Legal Architecture: Articles And Essays, Tracy E. Higgins, Rachel P. Fink
Gender And Nation-Building: Family Law As Legal Architecture Symposium - Nation Building: A Legal Architecture: Articles And Essays, Tracy E. Higgins, Rachel P. Fink
Faculty Scholarship
Although the discipline of family law in the western legal tradition transcends the public/private law boundary in many ways, it is the argument of this Essay that family law, in the private law sense of defining the rights and obligations of members of a family, forms an important part of the legal architecture of nation-building in at least three ways. First, access to the resources of the nation-state devolves through biologically and culturally gendered national boundaries, both reflecting and reinforcing the differential status of men and women in the sphere of the family. Second, the social institution of the family …