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

Law Commons

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

Series

2014

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutional law

Family Law

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

Common And Uncommon Families In The American Constitutional Order, Linda C. Mcclain Feb 2014

Common And Uncommon Families In The American Constitutional Order, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This essay reviews Professor Mark E. Brandon’s aptly named book, States of Union: Family and Change in the American Constitutional Order, which challenges the familiar story that the U.S. constitutional and political order have rested upon a particular, unchanging form of family – monogamous, heterosexual, permanent, and reproductive – and on the family values generated by that family form. That story also maintains that such family form and the legal norms that sustained it remained relatively undisturbed for centuries until the dramatic transformation spurred in part, beginning the 1960s, by the U.S. Supreme Court’s constitutionalizing of family and marriage through, …


Adoption Law In The United States: A Pathfinder, Glen-Peter Ahlers Sr. Jan 2014

Adoption Law In The United States: A Pathfinder, Glen-Peter Ahlers Sr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Is There A Federal Definitions Power?, Ernest A. Young Jan 2014

Is There A Federal Definitions Power?, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

Although the Supreme Court decided United States v. Windsor on equal protection grounds, that case also raised important and recurring questions about federal power. In particular, defenders of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) argued that Congress may always define the terms used in federal statutes, even if its definition concerns a matter reserved to the States. As the DOMA illustrates, federal definitions concerning reserved matters that depart from state law may impose significant burdens on state governments and private citizens alike. This Article argues that there is no general, freestanding federal definitions power and that sometimes—as with marriage—federal law …