Law Commons^™

My Two Dads: Disaggregating Biological And Social Paternity, Melanie B. Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

Examines the question of what the basis for establishing fatherhood should be. Explores how legal parentage is determined, examines the two-parent paradigm, and compares biological and social paternity in order to recognize two legal fathers.

The Constitutional Rights Of Non-Custodial Parents, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Rights Of Non-Custodial Parents, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Place For Marriage (E)Quality In Marriage Promotion?, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

The place of marriage in a just and fair constitutional democracy reverberates as one of the most challenging questions posed in debates over family law and policy. Should government properly support and promote marriage, defined as the union of one man and one woman, as the proxy for the form of family best able to undergird our polity by allowing realization of the goods associated with family life and carrying out the important functions society assigns to families? Or is marriage's privileged place undeserved because it is an imperfect and inadequate proxy for these purposes. This article argues that, although …

The Use Of Hair Analysis To Test Children For Exposure To Methamphetamine, Michael T. Flannery, Jerry Jones, Karen Farst, Karen Bord Worley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Evolution - Or End - Of Marriage?: Reflections On The Impasse Over Same-Sex Marriage, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

The debate over legalization of same-sex marriage implicates the question of whether doing so would signal the end - or destruction - of the institution of marriage, or instead would be an appropriate evolution of marriage laws that is in keeping with the ends of marriage and with relevant public values. This essay comments on an earlier published debate on that question: Special Issue: The Evolution of Marriage, 44 Family Court Review 33-105 (2006). The essay contends that the appeal to preserving a millennia-old tradition of marriage against destruction fails to reckon with the evolution of the institution of civil …

The Legal Status Of Pregnant And Parenting Youth In Foster Care, Cynthia Godsoe, Eve Stotland

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bringing Up Baby: Adoption, Marriage, And The Best Interests Of The Child, Robin Fretwell Wilson, W. Bradford Wilcox

Faculty Scholarship

In the piece, Professor Brad Wilcox and I ask who should care for children when their biological parents cannot? This is a question of potentially explosive dimensions under new definitions of legal parentage proposed in this volume of the WILLIAM & MARY BILL OF RIGHTS JOURNAL. This question is also important today for evaluating state adoption laws. A significant number of states bar consideration of a prospective adopter’s marital or non-marital status. We believe these laws miss an important opportunity to maximize the best interests of each child being placed. In this piece, we take an exclusively child-centered approach, drawing …

The Constitutionality Of Best Interests Parentage, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Constitutionality Of Best Interests Parentage, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Privacy Right To Public Recognition Of Family Relationships - The Cases Of Marriage And Adoption, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Domestic Violence And The Lawyer As Good Samaritan: What Responsibility To Become Involved?, Debra Moss Curtis

Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, "Good Samaritan" laws are designed to protect from liability--in case things go wrong--those who choose to aid an injured stranger. The idea is to "reduce bystander's hesitation to assist" those in distress. Good Samaritan laws are clearly intended to cover immediate physical harm, as they tend to include the provision of first aid and the relief of the responsibility when trained assistance arrives. In other countries, Good Samaritan laws actually may require citizens to assist people, as long as it would not cause harm to the helper. These legal requirements were famously put into play recently …

Private Ordering Under The Ali Principles: As Natural As Status, Martha M. Ertman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

To Protect And Defend: Assigning Parental Rights When Parents Are Living In Poverty, Karen Czapanskiy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Marriage, Biology, And Paternity: The Case For Revitalizing The Marital Presumption, Jana B. Singer

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the recent history and current status of the marital presumption of paternity. It explores the social, economic and legal developments that have contributed to the erosion of the presumption, focusing in particular on the efforts of federal and state governments to identify and collect financial support from unmarried biological fathers. The article then describes the procedural and equitable doctrines that some courts and legislatures have used to bolster the marital presumption in the face of conflicting biological evidence. Finding these approaches problematic, the article advocates a revitalized marital presumption as a substantive rule of law. It argues …

Standing In Babylon, Looking Toward Zion, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

The UNLV Conference on Representing Children in Families convened an impressive group of academics, policymakers, practitioners, and participants in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems to consider how to move beyond recommendations made ten years earlier about how lawyers for children should approach their work. This essay examines the interrelationship between idealism and realism in the definition of lawyers’ roles as representatives of children and the importance of idealized visions to the process of reforming dysfunctional systems, using examples of child welfare and juvenile justice system reform.

Mutual Dependency In Child Welfare, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

The child welfare system is in need of fundamental reform. To the great detriment of parents and children, in the current system the state waits for a crisis in a family and then intervenes in a heavy-handed fashion. The state pays scant attention to the prevention of child abuse and neglect. This article argues that the principle conceptual barrier to the adoption of a prevention-oriented approach to child welfare is the dominant conception of family autonomy, which venerates freedom from state control. This article proposes a novel reconfiguration of family autonomy that encourages engagement with the state, rather than simply …

Rights Myopia In Child Welfare, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

For decades, legal scholars have debated the proper balance of parents' rights and children's rights in the child welfare system. This Article argues that the debate mistakenly privileges rights. Neither parents' rights nor children's rights serve families well because, as implemented, a solely rights-based model of child welfare does not protect the interests of parents or children. Additionally, even if well-implemented, the model still would not serve parents or children because it obscures the important role of poverty in child abuse and neglect and fosters conflict, rather than collaboration, between the state and families. In lieu of a solely rights-based …

Newfound Religion: Mothers, God, And Infanticide, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

This essay focuses on cultural constructions of infanticide and psychosis, especially cases in which the mother heard delusional commands to kill her children. Part I examines the background of the Yates, Laney, and Diaz cases. Part II explores whether these mothers can be seen paradoxically as feminist subjects of empowerment rather than as victims. This essay argues that psychotic mothers have been disempowered and silenced, so their acts cannot be seen as subversive feminist gestures. Part III, however, arguest that the legal trials of Laney and Diaz demonstrate a possible subversion through trial strategy. These two trials more fully told …

Immigration Status And The Best Interests Of The Child Standard, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Case For Civil Marriage, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

There has been a frenzy of legislative activity aimed at nailing down the legal definition of marriage to make sure that there will be no more nonsense about same-sex monograms or same-sex marriage applications. In an effort to slow down the frenzy, and to encourage those within the academy to think harder about the on-going problem of what to do about marriage, Professor Edward Stein has posed a straightforward question: Should civil marriage simply be abolished? In this mini-symposium, Professors Edward Zelinsky and Daniel Crane have provided two answers to his question: yes and yes.

Although I am a Contract …

Infant Safe Haven Laws: Legislating In The Culture Of Life, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes the politics, implementation, and influence of Infant Safe Haven laws. These laws, enacted across the states in the early 2000s in response to much-publicized discoveries of dead and abandoned infants, provide for the legal abandonment of newborns. They offer new mothers immunity and anonymity in exchange for leaving their babies at designated Safe Havens. Yet despite widespread enactment, the laws have had relatively little impact on the phenomenon of infant abandonment. This Article explains why this is so, focusing particularly on a disconnect between the legislative scheme and the characteristics of neonaticidal mothers that makes the use …

'God's Created Order', Gender Complementarity, And The Federal Marriage Amendment, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Does marriage, in the United States, need the protection of an amendment to the federal constitution, which would enshrine marriage as only the union of a man and a woman? In answering "yes" to this question, sponsors and supporters of the Federal Marriage Protection Amendment (FMPA), in the House of Representatives and the Senate, have made various appeals to the gender complementarity of marriage: (1) opposite-sex marriage is part of "God's created order;" (2) procreation is the purpose of marriage and has a tight nexus with optimal mother/father parenting; (3) marriage bridges the "gender divide" by properly ordering heterosexual desire …

Domestic Partnerships, Implied Contracts, And Law Reform, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The domestic partnership chapter of the Principles is the shortest chapter, but, as the contributions to this volume suggest, among the most interesting to many people. The legal regulation of informal intimate unions generally and particularly the Principles' approach of creating a status that carries the legal rights and obligations of marriage between cohabiting parties have generated considerable debate. In some quarters, the domestic partnership provisions are admired as an effective mechanism to protect dependent partners in marriage-like unions who otherwise may be unable to establish claims to property and support when their relationships end. Others praise the Principles for …