Law Commons^™

Family Law By The Numbers: The Story That Casebooks Tell, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents the findings of a content analysis of 86 family law casebooks published in the United States from 1960 to 2019. Its purpose is to critically assess the discipline of family law with the aim of informing our understandings of family law’s history and exposing its ideological foundations and consequences. Although legal thinkers have written several intellectual histories of family law, this is the first quantitative look at the field.

The study finds that coverage of marriage and divorce in family law casebooks has decreased by almost half relative to other topics since the 1960s. In contrast, pages …

What Is Nonmarriage?, Katharine Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

As rates of cohabitation rise, and marriage becomes a status reserved almost exclusively for socio-economic elites, the scholarly calls for family law to recognize more nonmarital families grow stronger by the day. This Article unpacks contemporary proposals to recognize more nonmarital families and juxtaposes those proposals with family law’s contemporary marital regime. Family law’s status-based system provides a mostly simple and efficient means of distributing resources at the end of a marriage by imposing a formulaic, but distinctly communitarian, non-market-based approach to obligation, entitlement, and value. In full, the Article defends family law’s status-based system for what it does well, …

A “Woman’S Best Right”—To A Husband Or The Ballot?: Political And Household Governance In Anthony Trollope’S Palliser Novels, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

The year 2020 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 2018, the United Kingdom marked the one hundredth anniversary of some women securing the right to vote in parliamentary elections and the ninetieth anniversary of women securing the right to vote on the same terms as men. People observing the Nineteenth Amendment’s centenary may have difficulty understanding why it required such a lengthy campaign. One influential rationale in both the United Kingdom and the United States was domestic gender ideology about men’s and women’s separate spheres and destinies. This ideology …

Family Law Disputes Between International Couples In U.S. Courts, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

Increasing mobility, migration, and growing numbers of international couples give rise to a host of family law issues. For instance, when marital partners are citizens of different countries, or live outside the country of which they are citizens, or move between countries, courts must first determine if they have jurisdiction to hear divorce or child custody actions. Given that countries around the world are governed by different legal regimes, such as the common law system, civil codes, religious law, and customary law, choice of law questions also complicate family litigation. This short article addresses the jurisdictional and other conflicts issues …

Law School News: The Honorable Margaret H. Marshall: Doctor Of Laws, Honoris Causa 05-10-2020, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Caregivers And Tax Reform: Before And After Snapshots, Shannon Weeks Mccormack

Articles

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) changed the way families are taxed, starting in tax year 2018. By rearranging a myriad of deck chairs, politicians painted rosy pictures of families reaping the benefits of tax reform. In reality, however, generalizations cannot be made and the extent to which any one family gains or loses depends on particular facts. Even more obscured is the way in which the TCJA changed –– and failed to change –– the taxation of different types of caregivers. This Essay seeks to provide needed clarity in this area. It begins by offering snapshots of how …

The Right To Unmarry: A Proposal, Brian L. Frye, Maybell Romero

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

When I say I'm in love, you better believe I'm in love, L-U-V.

[April 2, 2020] BLF: This is a marriage proposal in the form of a law review article. In this Article, I observe that Maybell Romero and I are in love. I want to marry her, and I believe she wants to marry me. At least I'll find out pretty soon. But we cannot marry each other right now, because we are both currently married to other people.

Maybell and I want to end our existing marriages, and our respective spouses have even agreed to divorce. But the …