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Full-Text Articles in Law
Quacking Like A Duck? Functional Parenthood Doctrine And Same-Sex Parents, Katharine K. Baker
Quacking Like A Duck? Functional Parenthood Doctrine And Same-Sex Parents, Katharine K. Baker
Katharine K. Baker
Part I of this article introduces the tension between constitutionally protected parental autonomy rights and functional parent doctrine by examining the constitutional rights of parents. This examination demonstrates how the marital status of a parent has a substantial impact on the strength of that parent's constitutional rights. In cases in which there are two unmarried (never married or divorced) parents, neither parent has particularly robust constitutionally protected autonomy rights because both parents have competing constitutional rights that must be balanced against each other. Each parent has the right to invoke a court's jurisdiction in vindication of his or her own …
The Dna Default And Its Discontents: Establishing Modern Parenthood, Katharine K. Baker
The Dna Default And Its Discontents: Establishing Modern Parenthood, Katharine K. Baker
Katharine K. Baker
Most contemporary family law scholarship assumes that propriety of a DNA default for establishing parenthood - a presumption that, in the absence of marriage, whoever had the sex with the mother that resulted in the child should be the father of the child. This article problematizes that DNA default. It demonstrates how the DNA default necessarily magnifies the legal and social importance of sex, discounts the legal significance of women's reproductive labor, and marginalizes all children living outside the binary, heteronormative norm that a genetic regime necessarily edifies. When scrutinized, the DNA default looks just as moralistic and exclusionary as …
Legitimate Families And Equal Protection, Katharine K. Baker
Legitimate Families And Equal Protection, Katharine K. Baker
Katharine K. Baker
Abstract: This Article questions whether and why it should be unconstitutional to treat legitimate and illegitimate children differently. It argues that legitimacy doctrine is rooted in a biological essentialism completely at odds with contemporary efforts to expand legal recognition of nontraditional parenting practices including same-sex parenting, single parenthood by choice, surrogacy, and sperm donation. The routine invocation of legitimacy doctrine by advocates purporting to help nontraditional families is thus at best ironic and at worst dangerous. Analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court’s legitimacy cases reveals that liberal Justices, in trying to dismantle marriage—a legal construct—as the arbiter of legitimate parenthood, …
Homogenous Rules For Heterogeneous Families: The Standardization Of Family Law When There Is No Standard Family, Katharine K. Baker
Homogenous Rules For Heterogeneous Families: The Standardization Of Family Law When There Is No Standard Family, Katharine K. Baker
Katharine K. Baker
The article explores the ironies involved in the contemporary enforcement of family obligations. As forms of intimate partnership and parenthood become ever more varied, the law of family obligation - child support, property division and alimony - has become increasingly routine and formulaic. As scholars increasingly call for more attention to the varied ways in which different individuals and communities structure their care networks and their intimate lives, the law of family obligation has become less, not more attentive to context. This piece explains how the law’s rejection of context is an understandable reaction to the growing diversity of family …
Marriage And Parenthood As Status And Rights: The Growing, Problematic And Possibly Constitutional Trend To Disaggregate Family Status From Family Rights, Katharine K. Baker
Marriage And Parenthood As Status And Rights: The Growing, Problematic And Possibly Constitutional Trend To Disaggregate Family Status From Family Rights, Katharine K. Baker
Katharine K. Baker
In upholding Proposition 8 one year after finding that same sex couples had a constitutional right to marry, the California Supreme Court followed a growing trend in family law to sever family rights from family status. The Court found that same sex couples were constitutionally entitled to the legal incidents of marriage, but not marriage itself. In the last 30 years, courts and legislatures have increasingly recognized a variety of different family forms by granting people in them the legal incidents of family relationship (Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships for couples, Visitation and De Facto Parenthood for caretakers) without granting …
The Stories Of Marriage, Katharine K. Baker
The Stories Of Marriage, Katharine K. Baker
Katharine K. Baker
The gay and lesbian community's response to California's Proposition 8 was strong and quick. Within days of the 2008 election, opponents of the measure had targeted its proponents, in particular the Mormon Church, as subjects for scorn. Singling out the Mormon Church on this issue was particularly ironic because to the extent that members of the Mormon Church were responsible for the success of Proposition 8, they simply did to the gay community what courts of the United States consistently did to their forebears: defined away their right to marry. In striking down individuals' rights to enter into polygamous marriages, …
Gender, Genes, And Choice: A Comparative Look At Feminism, Evolution, And Economics, Katharine K. Baker
Gender, Genes, And Choice: A Comparative Look At Feminism, Evolution, And Economics, Katharine K. Baker
Katharine K. Baker
This Article compares the methodological similarities between evolutionary biology and conventional law and economics. It shows how these methodologies diverge, in critical and parallel ways, from what has come to be known as feminist method. In doing so, the Article suggests that feminists in the legal academy should be suspicious of the parsimonious models upon which both conventional evolutionary biologists and conventional law and economics scholars rely. Biological and economic models employ analogous concepts of maximization (including theories of autonomy, choice, and measurement) and stable equilibria (usually produced by stable preferences) to make predictions and proscriptions for law. The simplicity …
Alternative Caretaking And Family Autonomy: Some Thoughts In Response To Dorothy Roberts, Katharine K. Baker
Alternative Caretaking And Family Autonomy: Some Thoughts In Response To Dorothy Roberts, Katharine K. Baker
Katharine K. Baker
Dorothy Roberts's analysis of the ways in which current kinship foster care arrangements highlight the need for more state support of caregiving and perversely sever familial bonds in the African American community raises important issues for those concerned about caregiving and the legal treatment of families.' In this short response, I will address two of those issues. First, I argue that it is important to understand how state support for caregiving can reify primary caretaker norms and undermine alternative care arrangements that have proven so valuable in communities of color. Second, I suggest that attempts to strengthen family ties must …