Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

PDF

Boston University School of Law

Series

2000

Feminism

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Some Questions For Civil Society-Revivalists, Linda C. Mcclain, James E. Fleming Jul 2000

Some Questions For Civil Society-Revivalists, Linda C. Mcclain, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

The Article raises some questions for proponents of reviving civil society as a cure for many of our nation's political, civic, and moral ills (whom McClain and Fleming designate as "civil society-revivalists"). How does civil society serve as "seedbeds of virtue" and foster self-government? Have liberal conceptions of the person corroded civil society and undermined self-government? Does the revivalists' focus on the family focus on the right problems? Have gains in equality and liberty caused the decline of civil society? Should we revive civil society or "a civil society"? Would a revitalized civil society support democratic self-government or supplant it? …


When Fathers' Rights Are Mothers' Duties: The Failure Of Equal Protection In Miller V. Albright, Kristin Collins Jan 2000

When Fathers' Rights Are Mothers' Duties: The Failure Of Equal Protection In Miller V. Albright, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

The history of coverture and the transmission of American citizenship brings an elementary point into focus: The allocation of parental rights is always correlated with the allocation of parental responsibility. This basic legal truism, and its numerous implications for citizenship law, suggests that the principal gender injustice caused by § 1409 is not its truncation of fathers' rights, but its creation and perpetuation of a legal regime in which mothers assume full responsibility for foreign-born nonmarital children. Once we recognize this gendered operation of § 1409, broader failures of equal protection analysis come into relief. First, while the jurisprudential understanding …