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Moral Discourse And The Transformation Of American Family Law, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

Family law has undergone momentous change in recent decades. In this Article, Professor Schneider proposes that the transformation in family law can be understood as a diminution in the law's discourse in moral terms about the relations between family members and as a transfer of moral decisions from the law to the people the law once regulated. Professor Schneider identifies countertrends and limits to the changes he describes, and then investigates the reasons for the changes. He hypothesizes that four forces helped change family law and moral discourse within family law: the legal tradition of noninterference in family affairs; the …