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The Constitutionalization Of Fatherhood, Dara Purvis Jul 2019

The Constitutionalization Of Fatherhood, Dara Purvis

Dara Purvis

Beginning in the 1970s, the Supreme Court heard a series of challenges to family law statutes brought by unwed biological fathers, questioning the constitutionality of laws that treated unwed fathers differently than unwed mothers. The Court’s opinions created a starkly different constitutional status for unwed fathers than for unwed mothers, demanding additional actions and relationships before an unwed father was considered a constitutional father. Although state parentage statutes have progressed beyond their 1970s incarnations, the doctrine created in those family law cases continues to have impact far beyond family law. Transmission of citizenship in the context of immigration law and …


Constrained Choice: Mothers, The State, And Domestic Violence, Rona Kaufman Kitchen Dec 2014

Constrained Choice: Mothers, The State, And Domestic Violence, Rona Kaufman Kitchen

Rona Kaufman Kitchen

Mothers who are the victims of domestic violence face unique challenges in their quest for safety. The legal response to domestic violence requires that mothers respond to abuse in specific state-sanctioned manners. However, when mothers respond accordingly, such as by reporting abuse and leaving the abusive relationship, their safety and the safety of their children is not guaranteed. Moreover, by responding in state-sanctioned manners, mothers risk a host of negative consequences including increased threat to their immediate and long-term safety, the loss of their children, undesired financial, health, and social consequences, and criminal prosecution. On the other hand, when mothers …


Holistic Pregnancy: Rejecting The Theory Of The Adversarial Mother, Rona Kaufman Kitchen Dec 2014

Holistic Pregnancy: Rejecting The Theory Of The Adversarial Mother, Rona Kaufman Kitchen

Rona Kaufman Kitchen

In its zealous effort to protect the lives and health of unborn children, the law frequently views the expecting mother with suspicion. In its most extreme form, the law regards the potential mother as a potential murderess. This perspective does not reflect the nature of pregnancy, it undermines the autonomy of loving mothers, and it is detrimental to children. Regardless of whether there is any conflict between mother and fetus, the State presumes the mother to be a threat to her fetus and subjugates her rights as a result. The State interferes with the mother’s autonomy, bodily integrity, parental rights, …


New York Law Of Domestic Violence, Deseriee Kennedy Dec 2012

New York Law Of Domestic Violence, Deseriee Kennedy

Deseriee A. Kennedy

NEW YORK LAW OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, 3rd ed., is a comprehensive 2-volume, 7-chapter, hardbound treatise published by West (Thomson-Reuters). The treatise is the seminal authority on domestic violence in New York State covering New York State laws and relevant U.S. Supreme Court cases. The authors of the book are Professor Breger (Albany Law School, Albany, NY), Professor Kennedy (Touro School of Law, Central Islip, NY), Jill M. Zuccardy, Esq. (New York City), and now retired Judge Lee Hand Elkins (formerly Brooklyn Family Court). The treatise and its authors have been cited as authority repeatedly by trial and appellate courts, as …


Irrational Women: Informed Consent And Abortion Regret, Maya Manian Dec 2010

Irrational Women: Informed Consent And Abortion Regret, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

This chapter explores the law’s failure in the twenty-first century to treat pregnant women as capable of making their own decisions concerning whether to have an abortion. The Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld a federal ban on a type of second-trimester abortion that many physicians believe is safest for their patients, brought the question of women’s capacity for abortion decision-making to the forefront of public legal consciousness. In Carhart, the Court abandoned its previous deference and respect for a woman’s right to be her own decision-maker with regard to abortion and instead determined that a …


The Irrational Woman: Informed Consent And Abortion Decision-Making, Maya Manian Dec 2008

The Irrational Woman: Informed Consent And Abortion Decision-Making, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

In Gonzales v. Carhart, the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on a type of second-trimester abortion that many physicians believe is safer for their patients. Carhart presented a watershed moment in abortion law, because it marks the Supreme Court’s first use of the anti-abortion movement’s “woman-protective” rationale to uphold a ban on abortion and the first time since Roe v. Wade that the Court denied women a health exception to an abortion restriction. The woman-protective rationale asserts that banning abortion promotes women’s mental health. According to Carhart, the State should make the final decisions about pregnant women’s healthcare, because …