Law Commons^™

Explaining The Progression Of The Rights Of Same-Sex Couples In South America, Daniel De La Cruz

San Diego International Law Journal

A trend of rights advocacy has recently developed in the international community. Organizations dedicated to the principle of advancing the rights of historically under-represented and oppressed social groups have proliferated around the globe. The growth of the gay rights movement in recent years has resulted in the expansion of civil liberties afforded to same-sex couples. The movement has gained significant success in symbolic expression. Even without much knowledge of the movement, one typically associates a rainbow flag, the Greek letter lambda, and the word “pride” with the effort. Unfortunately, the movement has not achieved comparable substantive success. Same-sex couples continue …

Outing The Majority: Gay Rights, Public Debate, And Polarization After Doe V. Reed, Marc Allen

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In 2010, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Doe v. Reed that Washington citizens who signed a petition to eliminate legal rights for LGBT couples did not have a right to keep their names secret. A year later, in ProtectMarriage.com v. Bowen, a district court in California partially relied on Reed to reject a similar request from groups who lobbied for California Proposition 8-a constitutional amendment that overturned the California Supreme Court's landmark 2008 gay marriage decision. These holdings are important to election law, feminist, and first amendment scholars for a number of reasons. First, they flip the traditional …

Sexual Orientation Of Fatherhood, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

In this Article, I examine how same-sex fathers affect the perception of heterosexual caretaking fathers - and by extension, could affect the perception of heterosexual non-caretaking mothers. I conclude that gay stay-at-home fathers offer a provocative opportunity to broaden societal views of men and caregiving more generally, and argue that greater recognition of parents who counteract gender stereotypes - even where the recognition might arguably lessen women's rights in family law - ultimately helps women as well as children and nontraditional parents. Part I discusses fathers, particularly stay-at-home fathers, the practical problems fathers face combining work and caregiving responsibilities, and …

The Moonscape Of Tax Equality: Windsor And Behyond, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

This essay takes a critical look at the tax fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor, which declared section three of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. The essay is important because, while other federal laws will apply to some same-sex couples some of the time, the federal tax laws are a concern for all same-sex couples all of the time. The essay is timely because it addresses the recently issued IRS guidance regarding the tax treatment of same-sex couples.

In this essay, I first describe the path that led to the decision …

Windsor Products: Equal Protection From Animus, Dale Carpenter

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The Supreme Court's opinion in United States v. Windsor has puzzled commentators, who have tended to overlook or dismiss its ultimate conclusion that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional because it arose from animus. What we have in Justice Kennedy’s opinion is Windsor Products — an outpouring of decades of constitutional development whose fountainhead is Carolene Products and whose tributaries are the gay-rights and federalism streams. This paper presents the constitutional anti-animus principle, including what constitutes animus, why it offends the Constitution, and how the Supreme Court determines it is present. The paper also discusses why the Court was …

Registering Relationships, Erez L. Aloni

Erez Aloni

Despite the dramatic changes in family structure in the past decades--including the unprecedented and skyrocketing number of families who live in nonmarital arrangements--marriage and marriage-mimic institutions remain the only legal options for the recognition of relationships. This regulatory regime leaves millions of Americans without the means to establish and protect relationship rights. This Article suggests that the legal issues arising from nonmarital relationships would be best addressed if more options for legal recognition of such relationships were offered. Accordingly, this Article presents the primary principles of a registration-based marriage alternative that is founded on contract: “registered contractual relationships” (RCRs). This …