Law Commons^™

The Solicitor General’S Office, Tradition, And Conviction, Charles Fried

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Moral Complexity Of Cause Lawyers Within The State, David Luban

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

“Two Parts Of The Landscape Of Family In America”: Maintaining Both Spousal And Domestic Partner Employee Benefits For Both Same-Sex And Different-Sex Couples, Nancy D. Polikoff

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Involuntary Imports: Williams, Lutwak, The Defense Of Marriage Act, Federalism, And “Thick” And “Thin” Conceptions Of Marriage, Lynn D. Wardle

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Collegiality And Individual Dignity, Tobias Barrington Wolff

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Doma And Presidential Discretion: Interpreting And Enforcing Federal Law, Joseph Landau

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Obama Administration’S Decision To Defend Constitutional Equality Rather Than The Defense Of Marriage Act, Dawn Johnsen

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cause Lawyers Inside The State, Douglas Nejaime

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Interpretive Schizophrenia: How Congressional Standing Can Solve The Enforce-But-Not-Defend Problem, Abner S. Greene

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Foreward, Joseph Landau

Fordham Law Review

On March 30, 2012, the Fordham Law Review held a daylong conference on the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a statute enacted in 1996 with large majorities in both the House and Senate and signed into law by President Clinton. The Symposium could not have come at a better time: there have been extraordinary changes in the political dynamics surrounding relationship rights since DOMA’s enactment in 1996, when same–sex couples could not marry in any U.S. or foreign jurisdiction. Currently, same–sex couples can legally marry in six U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Nine additional states have broad …

Missing Links In The President’S Evolution On Same-Sex Marriage, Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enron, Doma, And Spousal Privileges: Rethinking The Marriage Plot, Bennett Capers

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cloaking A Challenge To Missouri's Marriage Amendment With A Challenge For Survivor Benefits, Benjamin S. Harner

Missouri Law Review

This Law Summary focuses on Glossip’s ongoing challenge to receive survivor benefits. The case not only implicates the Missouri Constitution’s equal protection and due process clauses, but it is also controversial because it involves the same-sex marriage issues that have stirred national debate for quite some time. This Law Summary will discuss each of these issues. Specifically, Part II provides the legal background for Missouri’s equal protection and substantive due process clauses and provides case law pertaining to situations similar to Glossip’s that have arisen in other states. Part III provides a more in-depth background of Glossip’s lawsuit, focusing on …

Family Law's Challenge To Religious Liberty, Raymond C. O'Brien

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

Over time, the definition of family has shifted from being premised upon kinship to legal status. In modern times, family structure is based more upon function than form, seeking to derive its status as a family from the subjective intent of its members to act as a family. Many early settlers in the colonial territories came to America to escape religious persecution and practice their own religion.

For that reason, biblical language and religious doctrine formed the basis for common law, statutes, and practice. Today, there remains the notion among many Americans that the law represents a divine plan and …

Spousal Refusal: Preserving Family Savings By "Just Saying No" To Long-Term Care Impoverishment, Scott M. Solkoff

Marquette Elder's Advisor

This is a case study of an elderly couple who executed a pre-nuptial agreement to keep their assets separated. When the husband required long-term care, the state required the assets of both to be considered in determining Medicaid eligibility. This article explores the effect and applicability of the Just Say No rule and the difficulty of preserving the assets of the non-institutionalized spouse.

Elder Law And Estate Planning For Gay And Lesbian Individuals And Couples, Ralph Randazzo

Marquette Elder's Advisor

This comprehensive article discusses the unique problems in estate planning encountered by gays and lesbians. Among the items explored are joint representation, advance directives, guardianship, long-term care planning and insurance, Medicare and Medicaid planning, nursing home care, exempt transfers, wills, revocable trusts, gift taxation, and the unique problems encountered which counselors must consider when representing gay and lesbian clients.

Homosexuals, Equal Protection, And The Guarantee Of Fundamental Rights In The New Decade: An Optimist’S Quasi-Suspect View Of Recent Events And Their Impact On Heightened Scrutiny For Sexual Orientation-Based Discrimination, John Nicodemo

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Probate Definition Of Family: A Proposal For Guided Discretion In Intestacy, Susan N. Gary

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Intestacy statutes may not match the wishes of many people who die intestate. Changes to the Uniform Probate Code (UPC) include or exclude potential takers, as the drafters attempt to bring the UPC provisions closer to the intent of more intestate decedents. As the UPC tries to fine-tune the intestacy statutes, however, family circumstances continue to get more and more complicated. Families headed by unmarried couples, blended families with children from multiple marriages, and families in which adults raise children who are not legally theirs, have become commonplace. For some decedents, non-family friends and caregivers may be more important than …

Toward Equality: Nonmarital Children And The Uniform Probate Code, Paula A. Monopoli

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article traces the evolution of the Uniform Probate Code's (UPC) broad equality framework for inheritance by nonmarital children in the context of the wider movement for legal equality for such children in society. It concludes that the UPC is to be lauded for its efforts to provide equal treatment to all nonmarital children. The UPC's commitment to such equality serves an expressive function for state legislatures and courts to follow its lead. The UPC has fulfilled its promise that all children regardless of marital status shall be equal for purposes of inheritance from or through parents, with one exception: …

The Constitutional Right To (Keep Your) Same-Sex Marriage, Steve Sanders

Michigan Law Review

Same-sex marriage is now legal in six states, and tens of thousands of same-sex couples have already gotten married. Yet the vast majority of other states have adopted statutes or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. These mini-defense of marriage acts not only forbid the creation of same-sex marriages; they also purport to void or deny recognition to the perfectly valid same-sex marriages of couples who migrate from states where such marriages are legal. These nonrecognition laws effectively transform the marital parties into legal strangers, causing significant harms: property rights are potentially altered, spouses disinherited, children put at risk, and financial, …

National Report: Spain, Carlos Martínez De Aguirre Aldaz, Pedro De Pablo Contreras

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

The Collaborative Law Process For Prenuptial Agreements, Donna Beck Weaver

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This article posits that the prevailing adversarial model for negotiating prenuptial agreements deters many from considering them, and limits the benefits that might otherwise be achieved for couples by prenuptial planning. This article posits that the collaborative law process offers an effective method for developing prenuptial agreements, one that is far better suited to the needs of persons who are about to marry than the traditional model. This article concludes that the standard of care for prenuptial agreements should mandate the use of the collaborative process for most cases.

Marriage In California: Is The Federal Lawsuit Against Proposition 8 About Applying The Fourteenth Amendment Or Preserving Federalism? , Charles M. Cannizzaro

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Over My Dead Body: A New Approach To Testamentary Restraints On Marraiage, Ruth Sarah Lee

Marquette Elder's Advisor

It is not uncommon to find deeds or wills that shape the behavior of the living by conditioning a grant, devise, or bequest, on a potential beneficiary’s conduct. Sometimes these conditions involve a limitation on marriage—prohibiting, penalizing, or requiring marriage to one of a particular religious faith or ethnicity. Courts have held that complete restraints on marriage are unreasonable, contrary to public policy, and void. However, partial restraints of marriage are valid as long as they are “reasonable.” A restraint is “unreasonable” if a marriage permitted by the restraint is not likely to occur as a factual determination.

This article …

Civil Marriage: Threat To Democracy, Jessica Knouse

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article argues that civil marriage and democracy are inherently incompatible, whether assessed from a transcultural perspective that reduces them to their most universal aspects or a culturally situated perspective that accounts for their uniquely American elaborations. Across virtually all cultures, civil marriage privileges sexual partners by offering them exclusive access to highly desirable government benefits, while democracy presupposes liberty and equality. When governments privilege sexual partners, they effectively deprive their citizens of liberty by encouraging them to enter sexual partnerships rather than selfdetermining based on their own preferences; they effectively deprive their citizens of equality by establishing insidious status …

The Devil Comes To Kansas: A Story Of Free Love, Sexual Privacy, And The Law, Charles J. Reid Jr.

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

On Sunday, September 19, 1886, Moses Harman, the editor of the radical newspaper Lucifer the Light-Bearer, presided over an inherently contradictory event-a free-love marriage ceremony between his associate editor, the thirty-seven-year-old Edwin Walker, and Moses' own daughter, the sixteen-year-old Lillian. The case that the two Harmans and Walker wished to present aimed to transform marriage from a public to a private relationship and from a permanent and exclusive one to a temporary one that permitted potentially many partners. State v. Walker and its parties have received some scholarly notice, but the truly radical quality of the arguments Moses, Edwin, and …

Citizenship And Marriage In A Globalizing World: Multicultural Families And Monocultural Nationality Laws In Korea And Japan, Erin Aeran Chung, Daisy Kim

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Article analyzes how individual and local attempts to address low fertility rates in Korea and Japan have prompted unprecedented reforms in monocultural nationality laws. Korea and Japan confront rapidly declining working-age population projections; yet, they have prohibited the immigration of unskilled workers, until recently in Korea's case, on the claim that their admission would threaten social cohesion. Over the past two decades, both countries have made only incremental reforms to their immigration policies that fall short of alleviating labor shortages and the fiscal burdens of maintaining a large elderly population. Instead, prompted by the growth of so-called multicultural families …

Integrating Equal Marriage, Robin A. Lenhardt

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Between Tradition And Progress: A Comparative Perspective On Polygamy In The United States And India, Cyra Akila Choudhury

University of Colorado Law Review

Both the United States and India have had longstanding experiences with polygamy and its regulation. In the United States, the dominant Protestant majority has sought to abolish Mormon practices of polygamy through criminalization. Moreover, a public policy exception has been used to deny recognition of plural marriages conducted legally elsewhere. India's approach to polygamy regulation and criminalization has been both similar to and different from that of the United States. With a sizable Muslim minority and a legal framework that recognizes religious law as family law, India recognizes polygamy in the Muslim minority community. However, it has criminalized it in …