Law Commons^™

Networks Of Empathy, Thomas E. Kadri

Scholarly Works

Digital abuse is on the rise. People increasingly use technology to perpetrate and exacerbate abusive conduct like stalking and harassment, manipulating digital tools to control and harm their victims. By some accounts, 95% of domestic-abuse cases involve technology, while a sizeable chunk of the U.S. population now admits to having suffered or perpetrated serious abuse online. To make matters worse, people often trivialize digital abuse or underestimate its prevalence. Even among those who do appreciate its severity, there remains ample disagreement about how to address it.

Although law can be a powerful tool to regulate digital abuse, legal responses are …

Criminal Law As Family Law, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

The criminal justice system has expanded dramatically over the last several decades, extending its reach into family life. This expansion has disproportionately and negatively impacted Black communities and social networks, including Black families. Despite these pervasive shifts, legal scholars have virtually ignored the intersection of criminal, family, and racial justice. This Article explores the gap in literature in two respects. First, the Article weaves together criminal law, family law, and racial justice by cataloging ways in which the modern criminal justice state regulates family life, particularly for Black families. Second, the Article examines the depth of criminal justice interference in …

Taxing Compensatory Stock Rights Transferred In Divorce, Gregg Polsky, Kathleen Delaney Thomas

Scholarly Works

Stock-based compensation has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. As a result, many high net worth divorces now result in the transfer of compensatory stock rights from the employee spouse to the nonemployee spouse as part of the marital settlement. Despite this growing trend, the tax consequences of these transfers have not yet been explored fully. This Article endeavors to fill this void and explain both the planning opportunities and potential pitfalls in transferring compensatory stock rights in divorce. These transfers can shift ordinary income from a high-bracket spouse to a lower-bracket spouse, creating a tax surplus that enlarges the …

Tax Consequences Of Distributing Equity Compensation Rights In Divorce, Gregg Polsky, Jeffrey D. Fisher, Zachry R. Potter

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This article discusses the federal tax issues arising from the equitable distribution of compensatory stock options and restricted stock in divorce. While the tax consequences of distributing vested options and shares are clear, the treatment of unvested rights is muddled. This article explains the state of the law and provides practical advice to divorce lawyers who confront these issues.

How Congress Could Defend Doma In Court (And Why The Blag Cannot), Matthew I. Hall

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In one of the most closely watched litigation matters in recent years, the Supreme Court will soon consider Edith Windsor's challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The Court surprised many observers by granting certiorari, not only on the merits of Windsor's equal protection and due process claims, but also on the question whether the defendants — the United States and the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the House of Representatives (the BLAG) — have Article III standing to defend DOMA. The United States has agreed with plaintiffs that DOMA is unconstitutional, prompting the BLAG to intervene for the …

Standing Of Intervenor-Defendants In Public Law Litigation, Matthew I. Hall

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Unless the plaintiff has a personal stake in the outcome, Article III of the United States Constitution requires federal courts to dismiss a plaintiff’s claim for lack of standing. That much is clearly established by decades of precedent. Less understood, however, is the degree to which Article III also requires defendants to possess a personal stake. The significance of defendant standing often goes unnoticed in case law and scholarship, because the standing of the defendant in most lawsuits is readily apparent:any defendant against whom the plaintiff seeks a remedy has a personal interest in defending against the plaintiff’s claim.

But …

Accounting For Time: A Relative-Interest Approach To The Division Of Equity In Hybrid-Property Homes Upon Divorce, Lisa Milot

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Even in these troubling economic times, homes are the most valuable asset many Americans own. In many instances, these homes were purchased prior to marriage, with later mortgage payments made after the homebuyer married. On divorce, courts must divide the value of such a “hybrid-property” home into “separate” and “marital” shares prior to distributing it between the divorcing spouses.

Many courts have developed formulas for this purpose, with a goal of providing a “proportionate and fair return” on both the separate and marital investments in the home. Each of the formulas, though, ignores the timing of the investments, both in …

Resolving Interstate Conflicts Over Same-Sex Non-Marriage, Hillel Y. Levin

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States have adopted several different regimes of recognition for same-sex couples. A few states allow same-sex couples to marry; several others offer marriage-like partnerships (usually called civil unions), which provide all or nearly all of the substantive rights and responsibilities associated with marriage; still others offer marriage-lite partnerships (sometimes called reciprocal benefits arrangements), which provide a small subset of the rights and responsibilities associated with marriage; and, of course, others offer no recognition at all.

What happens when these regimes of recognition collide? For example, what happens when a couple marries in Massachusetts and then moves to a marriage-like state, …

Conflicts And Shifting Landscape Around Same-Sex Relationships, Hillel Y. Levin

Scholarly Works

Conflicts and choice of law questions arising from marriage recognition are more multidimensional today than ever before. Traditionally, these conflicts arose because one jurisdiction allowed marriage between two individuals while another prohibited such a marriage. This was the model in the consanguineous, polygamous, and interracial marriage contexts. It has also been the primary model for analyzing conflicts that arise in the context of same-sex relationships.

In a forthcoming article, Resolving Interstate Conflicts Arising from Interstate Non-Marriage, I challenge this model, and suggest that the emergence of marriage-like 2 and marriage-lite3 alternatives (i.e., civil unions, domestic partnerships, reciprocal benefits arrangements, etc.) …

Conflicts And The Shifting Landscape Around Same-Sex Relationships, Hillel Y. Levin

Scholarly Works

Conflicts and choice of law questions arising from marriage recognition are more multidimensional today than ever before. Traditionally, these conflicts arose because one jurisdiction allowed marriage between two individuals while another prohibited such a marriage. This was the model in the consanguineous, polygamous, and interracial marriage contexts. It has also been the primary model for analyzing conflicts that arise in the context of same-sex relationships. In a forthcoming article, Resolving Interstate Conflicts Arising from Interstate Non-Marriage, I challenge this model, and suggest that the emergence of marriage-like and marriage-lite alternatives(i.e., civil unions, domestic partnerships, reciprocal benefits arrangements, etc.) for same-sex …

Protecting Children From The Dark Side Of The Internet, Anne Dupre, John Dayton, Christine Kiracofe

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This article examines the history of judicial and legislative responses to the issue of consumption of pornography and other harmful materials over the Internet by children. The article begins by giving a brief overview of free speech law in the US. Next, summaries of relevant U.S. legislation and corresponding litigation on Internet free speech are given. Highlighted are: 1) the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and the U.S. Supreme Court’s response in Reno v. ACLU; 2) The Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) and Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition; 3) the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and United States v. American …

Harry Potter & The Law: Family Life And Moral Character, James C. Smith

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Harry Potter's mistreatment by his Muggle family does not amount to a legal wrong. Notice that Dumbledore did not threaten the Dursleys with legal proceedings, either in Muggle or Wizard tribunals. The ethic of equitable treatment is societal and lacks a legal basis in Anglo-American family law. Family law has many facets; it is an amalgam of legal rules and principles. My focus is the lens of property law -- in particular, family property norms -- although it is also plain that the Dursleys have not violated non-property based family law norms.

Adult Guardianship In Georgia: Are The Rights Of Proposed Wards Being Protected? Can We Tell?, Eleanor Crosby Lanier

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National scrutiny of guardianship policies and practice by scholars and legal, health, and social service practitioners followed. This resulted in a succession of forums, studies, and recommendations aimed at improving the guardianship system. One such forum was the Wingspread conference, convened by the American Bar Association (ABA) in 1988. Experts from a variety of fields met to produce a groundbreaking set of recommendations for reforming guardianship. Wingspan, a second national guardianship conference addressing reform issues in 2001, produced in a second series of recommendations. The recommendations from these two conferences proposed greater protection for the proposed ward's liberty interests and …

Restitching The American Quilt: Untangling Marriage From The Nuclear Family, Lisa Milot

Scholarly Works

Part I of this Note will trace the various threads of American marriage law, particularly the perception that marriage is unraveling today due to an unprecedented divorce crisis. Part II will disentangle the conflicting patterns of contract law and status regimes that variously govern marriage, focusing on the uneven enforcement of antenuptial contracts and the implications of such. Part III will argue that the true focus of regulation is the status of the nuclear family, not of marriage per se. Finally, Part IV will propose a bifurcation of the legal regimes governing marriage and the family, recognizing the ability of …

Uniform Status Of Children Of Assisted Conception Act: A View From The Drafting Committee, Robert C. Robinson, Paul M. Kurtz

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The "Status of Children of Assisted Conception" Act was designed primarily to effect the security and well-being of children born and living in our midst as a result of assisted conception. The Conference's Executive Committee and the general Conference, considering the plight of these children, some with five biological parents, some with no readily identifiable biological parents, and some with other deprivations, determined that the greatest priority and first call on the energy and talent of the Drafting Committee was to provide an act which addressed these and other deficiencies.

There was great urgency on the part of the Drafting …

Comparative Responses To Surrogate Motherhood, Thomas A. Eaton

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This Article analyzes the Warnock Report [UK] and the Surrogacy Arrangements Act [UK] in light of existing practices and laws in the United States and Great Britain. Section II provides a description of surrogacy practices and the uncertain legal environment in which they operate. Section III compares the Surrogacy Arrangements Act with Canadian, American, and Australian legislative proposals. Section IV then examines in more detail the commonly voiced ethical objections to surrogacy agreements an concludes that these objections do not warrant criminalization of surrogacy agreements. Finally, Section V offers suggestions on the enforcement of surrogacy agreements.