Law Commons^™

Reimagining Postmortem Conception, Kristine Knaplund

Georgia State University Law Review

Hundreds, likely thousands, of babies have been born years after a parent has died. Thousands more people have cryopreserved their sperm, ova, and embryos, or have requested that a loved one’s gametes be retrieved after death to produce still more such children. Twenty-three states have enacted statutes detailing how these postmortem conception children can inherit from their predeceased parents.

And yet, few of these children will be able to inherit. The statutes create a bewildering array of standards, with over a dozen definitions of consent, variations in signature and witnessing requirements, and hurdles imposed in one state but not another. …

The Rise Of Zero Tolerance And The Demise Of Family, Mariela Olivares

Georgia State University Law Review

This article explores the intersection of immigration law and family law and argues that the current regime dedicated to decimating immigrant families in the United States does not comport with the history and spirit of immigration law and policy. Policies shifting away from family unity and towards an inhumane treatment of immigrant families is anchored in the political rhetoric that normalizes the oppression of immigrants. By characterizing immigrants as nonhuman—even “animals,” as described by President Donald Trump—the current slate of anti-immigrant policies that specifically target families is normalized. Part I discusses contemporary immigration law that terrorizes the family unit and …

Cohabitation Worldwide Today, Margaret Ryznar, Anna Stępień-Sporek

Georgia State University Law Review

Despite the increase in cohabitation around the world, legal responses to it remain limited, particularly in the last several years. Yet, there are universal issues at the end of a cohabitation, particularly related to property division. This article will survey the recent legal developments on the property consequences of cohabitation in both the United States and Poland, drawing on comparative lessons to suggest future developments in this area of law.

Hb 159 - Domestic Relations, Kitan A. Grey, A. Celia Howard

Georgia State University Law Review

This bill provides a major overhaul for Georgia adoption laws, which were last updated in 1990. The most notable changes include shortening the period for revocation of surrender of parental rights; granting temporary power of attorney for the care of a child; allowing adoptive parents to pay a birth mother’s expenses; lowering the age for adoptive relatives; and simplifying the process to adopt foreign-born children.

Hb 834 - Property, Brian H. Cathey, Cassandra Tuchscher

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act allows a victim of domestic violence to terminate his or her residential rental agreement without an early termination penalty if the victim receives a court order related to that family violence.

Big Brother Is Watching: When Should Georgia Get Involved In Issues Of Family Privacy To Protect Children’S Liberties?, Michelle Wilco

Georgia State University Law Review

Alecia Faith Pennington (Faith) did not officially exist until she was nineteen. Faith’s conservative, religious parents, Lisa and James, raised their nine children on the family farm just outside Kerrville, Texas, and kept their family as self-sufficient and separate from the rest of the world as possible.

The family was very insular; the parents home schooled all of the children, and the family rarely left their home, with the rare exception of going to church. Lisa and James also prohibited their children from using the Internet until they were eighteen, at which point they were only allowed limited access to …

The School To Deportation Pipeline, Laila L. Hlass

Georgia State University Law Review

The United States immigration regime has a long and sordid history of explicit racism, including limiting citizenship to free whites, excluding Chinese immigrants, deporting massive numbers of Mexican immigrants and U.S. citizens of Mexican ancestry, and implementing a national quotas system preferencing Western Europeans. More subtle bias has seeped into the system through the convergence of the criminal and immigration law regimes.

Immigration enforcement has seen a rise in mass immigrant detention and deportation, bolstered by provocative language casting immigrants as undeserving undesirables: criminals, gang members, and terrorists. Immigrant children, particularly black and Latino boys, are increasingly finding themselves in …

Whose Sperm Is It Anyways In The Wild, Wild West Of The Fertility Industry?, Tatiana E. Posada

Georgia State University Law Review

Imagine a couple that is unable to conceive a child naturally. Luckily, they had the money and resources available to them to conceive a child through assisted reproductive technology (ART), so they decided to start their family through the use of intrauterine insemination. They selected a sperm bank and began the arduous process of selecting a sperm donor who fit the desired traits and characteristics for their child. The sperm bank matched them with an anonymous donor, Donor 9623, and assured the couple that the donor was “a healthy male with an IQ of 160, a bachelor’s of science in …

Hb 359 - Power Of Attorney, Roma A. Amin, Catherine V. Schutz

Georgia State University Law Review

The bill would have repealed and replaced Georgia’s Power of Attorney for the Care of a Minor Child Act. The category of people who could be given power of attorney for the care of a minor child would have expanded from only grandparents and great-grandparents to a broad category of the child’s relatives, and anyone associated with a non-profit organization focused on child or family services or a licensed child-placing agency.

Sb 201 - Sick Leave, Mary Elizabeth D. Steinhaus, Chadwick L. Williams

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act amends Georgia’s general provisions relating to labor and industrial relations by adding a new provision that requires qualifying employers to allow their employees to use sick leave to care for immediate family members.

Workin’ 9:00–5:00 For Nine Months: Assessing Pregnancy Discrimination Laws In Georgia, Kaitlyn Pettet

Georgia State University Law Review

As demonstrated in this Note, there is still a considerable way to go before women are no longer forced to choose between pregnancy and keeping their career. Allegations of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace are also on the rise.

In 1997, 4,000 plaintiffs filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). By 2011, that number rose to 5,800. The EEOC won significant damages in pregnancy discrimination cases, demonstrating a greater tendency towards discrimination in the workplace. Additionally, this rise in claims and awards caught the attention of the nation’s media, placing new emphasis on the treatment of pregnant women …

Criminal Law As Family Law, Andrea L. Dennis

Georgia State University Law Review

The criminal justice system has morphed dramatically over the last several decades, achieving more pervasive control over the lives of individuals than ever before. The expansion began with the proliferation of criminal statutes, generating the now well-known concept of over-criminalization. The expansion also encompassed increasing the range of possible sanctions for criminal misbehavior and creating overlapping enforcement regimes. Two more instances of criminal justice expansion include mass surveillance and policies and practices that swept youth out of the juvenile justice system and into the criminal justice system. A product of the expansion has been mass incarceration; more individuals than at …

Hovering Too Close: The Ramifications Of Helicopter Parenting In Higher Education, Kathleen Vinson

Georgia State University Law Review

“They are needy, overanxious and sometimes plain pesky—and schools at every level are trying to find ways to deal with them. No, not students. Parents—specifically parents of today’s ‘millennial generation’ who, many educators are discovering, can’t let their kids go.”

Some parents, called “helicopter parents” for constantly hovering over their children, are now making higher institutions their landing pads. They hover from the prospective admissions stage to graduation and the job market beyond—contacting presidents of universities, deans, and professors, disputing their child’s grade; requesting an extension for their child; complaining their child does not receive as much praise as the …

Lochner, Lawrence, And Liberty, Joseph F. Morrissey

Georgia State University Law Review

Many of the states of the United States have statutes, constitutional provisions, and court decisions that deny individuals the right to have a family, specifically a spouse and children, based on sexual orientation.

Advocates have made a wide variety of arguments attacking such restrictions. Scholars and litigants frequently argue that such acts violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection or invade a constitutional right to privacy. However, such arguments are often defeated by counter arguments presented with religious, moral, and even emotional fervor.

This article presents and defends a new analytical framework based on liberty of contract to advance gay rights. …