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Family Law

Katharine K. Baker

Women

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Law

Legitimate Families And Equal Protection, Katharine K. Baker Dec 2014

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, …

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Homogenous Rules For Heterogeneous Families: The Standardization Of Family Law When There Is No Standard Family, Katharine K. Baker Dec 2011

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 …

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Gender And Emotion In Criminal Law, Katharine K. Baker Feb 2005

Gender And Emotion In Criminal Law, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

No abstract provided.

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Gender, Genes, And Choice: A Comparative Look At Feminism, Evolution, And Economics, Katharine K. Baker Jan 2002

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 …

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Biology For Feminists, Katharine K. Baker Feb 2000

Biology For Feminists, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

No abstract provided.

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Property Rules Meet Feminist Needs: Respecting Autonomy By Valuing Connection, Katharine K. Baker Jan 1998

Property Rules Meet Feminist Needs: Respecting Autonomy By Valuing Connection, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

In this Article, Professor Baker analyzes how and why the law protects both horizontal (marital) and vertical (parent/child) relationships. In doing so, she suggests that, although the reasons to protect relationships are comparable in both the horizontal and vertical contexts, the law is much more willing to interfere with vertical relationships, at least when the parents are not married to each other. From the standpoint of women's needs, this inconsistent treatment of relationships is precisely backwards. Women benefit little from the law's deference to horizontal relationships, but they could benefit substantially if the law was more deferential to a single …

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Taking Care Of Our Daughters, A Book Review Of Martha Fineman, The Neutered Mother, The Sexual Family And Other Twentieth Century Tragedies, Katharine K. Baker Jan 1997

Taking Care Of Our Daughters, A Book Review Of Martha Fineman, The Neutered Mother, The Sexual Family And Other Twentieth Century Tragedies, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

No abstract provided.

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Comment, Contracting For Security: Paying Married Women What They've Earned, Katharine K. Baker Jan 1988

Comment, Contracting For Security: Paying Married Women What They've Earned, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

No abstract provided.

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