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Full-Text Articles in Law
Marriage, Cohabitation, And Collective Responsibility For Dependency, Elizabeth S. Scott
Marriage, Cohabitation, And Collective Responsibility For Dependency, Elizabeth S. Scott
Faculty Scholarship
Marriage has fallen on hard times. Although most Americans say that a lasting marriage is an important part of their life plans, the institution no longer enjoys its former exclusive status as the core family form. This is so largely because social norms that regulate family life and women's social roles have changed. A century (or even a couple of generations) ago, marriage was a stable economic and social union that, for the most part, lasted for the joint lives of the spouses. It was the only option for a socially sanctioned intimate relationship and was the setting in which …
Monogamy's Law: Compulsory Monogamy And Polyamorous Existence, Elizabeth F. Emens
Monogamy's Law: Compulsory Monogamy And Polyamorous Existence, Elizabeth F. Emens
Faculty Scholarship
Right now, marriage and monogamy feature prominently on the public stage. Efforts to lift prohibitions on same-sex marriage in this country and abroad have inspired people on all sides of the political spectrum to speak about the virtues of monogamy's core institution and to express views on who should be included within it. The focus of this article is different. Like an "unmannerly wedding guest," this article invites the reader to pause amidst the whirlwind of marriage talk and to think critically about monogamy and its alternatives.
"You Are Entering A Gay And Lesbian Free Zone": On The Radical Dissents Of Justice Scalia And Other (Post-) Queers – [Raising Questions About Lawrence, Sex Wars, And The Criminal Law], Bernard Harcourt
Faculty Scholarship
The most renowned substantive criminal law decision of the October 2002 Term, Lawrence v. Texas, will go down in history as a critical turning point in criminal law debates over the proper scope of the penal sanction. For the first time in the history of American criminal law, the United States Supreme Court has declared that a supermajoritarian moral belief does not necessarily provide a rational basis for criminalizing conventionally deviant conduct. The Court's ruling is the coup de grâce to legal moralism administered after a prolonged, brutish, tedious, and debilitating struggle against liberal legalism in its various criminal …
Divorcing Marriage From Procreation – Goodridge V. Department Of Public Health Case, Jamal Greene
Divorcing Marriage From Procreation – Goodridge V. Department Of Public Health Case, Jamal Greene
Faculty Scholarship
Public debate about same-sex marriage has spectacularly intensified in the wake of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. But amid the twisted faces, shouts, and murmurs surrounding that decision, a bit of old-fashioned common-lawmaking has been lost. Some have criticized the Goodridge court for its apparently result-oriented approach to the question of whether, consistent with the Massachusetts Constitution, the commonwealth may deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Others have defended the decision, both on the court's own rational basis terms and on other grounds, including sex discrimination and substantive due process. This …
The Domesticated Liberty Of Lawrence V. Texas, Katherine M. Franke
The Domesticated Liberty Of Lawrence V. Texas, Katherine M. Franke
Faculty Scholarship
In this Commentary, Professor Franke offers an account of the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas. She concludes that in overruling the earlier Bowers v. Hardwick decision, Justice Kennedy does not rely upon a robust form of freedom made available by the Court's earlier reproductive rights cases, but instead announces a kind of privatized liberty right that affords gay and lesbian couples the right to intimacy in the bedroom. In this sense, the rights-holders in Lawrence are people in relationships and the liberty right those couples enjoy does not extend beyond the domain of the private. Franke expresses …