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Full-Text Articles in Law

Unfettered Discretion: Criminal Orders Of Protection And Their Impact On Parent Defendants, David Jaros Oct 2010

Unfettered Discretion: Criminal Orders Of Protection And Their Impact On Parent Defendants, David Jaros

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The last two decades have witnessed an astonishing increase in the use of the criminal justice system to police neglectful parents. Recasting traditional allegations of neglect as criminal charges of endangering the welfare of a child, prosecutors and the police have involved criminal courts in the regulation of aspects of the parent child relationship that were once the sole province of family courts. This Article explores the legal implications of vesting judges in these cases with the unfettered discretion to issue protective orders that criminalize contact between a parent and her child. I argue that procedures for issuing protective orders …


Addressing Truancy Is A Complex Challenge, Barbara A. Babb, Gloria Danziger Jul 2010

Addressing Truancy Is A Complex Challenge, Barbara A. Babb, Gloria Danziger

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No abstract provided.


Immigration, Association, And The Family, Matthew J. Lister Jul 2010

Immigration, Association, And The Family, Matthew J. Lister

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In this paper I provide a philosophical analysis of family-based immigration. This type of immigration is of great importance, yet has received relatively little attention from philosophers and others doing normative work on immigration. As family-based immigration poses significant challenges for those seeking a comprehensive normative account of the limits of discretion that states should have in setting their own immigration policies, it is a topic that must be dealt with if we are to have a comprehensive account. In what follows I use the idea of freedom of association to show what is distinctive about family-based immigration and why …


A More Humane Vision Of Family Law: Holistic Approach Needed To Shield Children From The Trauma Of Breakups, Barbara A. Babb, Mitchell K. Karpf Jul 2010

A More Humane Vision Of Family Law: Holistic Approach Needed To Shield Children From The Trauma Of Breakups, Barbara A. Babb, Mitchell K. Karpf

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No abstract provided.


Diverging Family Structure And “Rational” Behavior: The Decline In Marriage As A Disorder Of Choice, Amy L. Wax May 2010

Diverging Family Structure And “Rational” Behavior: The Decline In Marriage As A Disorder Of Choice, Amy L. Wax

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The past fifty years have witnessed a growing divergence in family structure by social class, income, education, and race. The goal is to explain why significant segments of the population are moving away from the traditional patterns of family and reproduction. Most demographers acknowledge that external and material constraints fail to account for most of the present dispersion by class and race in marriage, divorce, and patterns of childbearing. Nor do these factors explain the widening of disparities over time. In attempting to improve on prior theories, this paper proposes a different explanation for these developments. It argues that demographic …


Revitalizing The Adversary System In Family Law, Jane C. Murphy Apr 2010

Revitalizing The Adversary System In Family Law, Jane C. Murphy

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The way in which families resolve disputes has undergone dramatic change over the last decade. Scholars have focused much attention on a number of substantive law changes that have contributed to this transformation. These include the changing definitions of marriage, parenthood, and families. But less attention has been paid to the enormous changes that have taken place in the processes surrounding family dispute resolution. These changes have been even more comprehensive and have fundamentally altered the way in which disputing families interact with the legal system. Both the methods and goals of legal intervention for families in conflict have changed, …


Check-The-Box Regs And Gift Tax Discounts, Wendy G. Gerzog Feb 2010

Check-The-Box Regs And Gift Tax Discounts, Wendy G. Gerzog

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This article discusses the recent Tax Court decision in Pierre and the effect for gift tax purposes of an entity’s classification made under the check-the-box regulations. The court was split on what those regulations mean when they state that an entity is to be disregarded ‘‘for federal tax purposes.’’


Balancing Liberty, Dignity And Safety: The Impact Of Domestic Violence Lethality Screening, Margaret E. Johnson Jan 2010

Balancing Liberty, Dignity And Safety: The Impact Of Domestic Violence Lethality Screening, Margaret E. Johnson

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This Article undertakes the first ever analysis of the consequences of the justice and legal system’s extensive use of lethality assessment tools for women subjected to abuse. An increasing number of states are now requiring their police, prosecutors, civil attorneys, advocates, service providers, and court personnel to assess women in order to obtain a score that indicates the woman’s lethality risk because of domestic violence. The mandated danger assessment screen of all women subjected to violence focuses only on the risk of homicide and thereby limits the definition of what is domestic violence. In addition, the accompanying protocol for the …


Marriage And Parenthood As Status And Rights: The Growing, Problematic And Possibly Constitutional Trend To Disaggregate Family Status From Family Rights, Katharine K. Baker Jan 2010

Marriage And Parenthood As Status And Rights: The Growing, Problematic And Possibly Constitutional Trend To Disaggregate Family Status From Family Rights, Katharine K. Baker

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In upholding Proposition 8 one year after finding that same sex couples had a constitutional right to marry, the California Supreme Court followed a growing trend in family law to sever family rights from family status. The Court found that same sex couples were constitutionally entitled to the legal incidents of marriage, but not marriage itself. In the last 30 years, courts and legislatures have increasingly recognized a variety of different family forms by granting people in them the legal incidents of family relationship (Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships for couples, Visitation and De Facto Parenthood for caretakers) without granting …


Significant Statistics: The Unwitting Policy Making Of Mathematically Ignorant Judges, Michael I. Meyerson, William Meyerson Jan 2010

Significant Statistics: The Unwitting Policy Making Of Mathematically Ignorant Judges, Michael I. Meyerson, William Meyerson

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This article will explore several areas in which judges, hampered by their mathematical ignorance, have permitted numerical analysis to subvert the goals of our legal system. In Part II, I will examine the perversion of the presumption of innocence in paternity cases, where courts make the counter-factual assumption that regardless of the evidence, prior to DNA testing, a suspect has a 50/50 chance of being the father. In Part III, I will explore the unnecessary injection of race into trials involving the statistics of DNA matching, even when race is entirely irrelevant to the particular case. Next, in Part IV, …