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

2012

Selected Works

Women

Law and Society

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

Penny Wise But Pound Foolish In The Heartland: A Case Study Of Decriminalizing Domestic Violence In Topeka, Kansas, Shelley Santry Feb 2012

Penny Wise But Pound Foolish In The Heartland: A Case Study Of Decriminalizing Domestic Violence In Topeka, Kansas, Shelley Santry

Shelley M. Santry

ABSTRACT Domestic violence has been present in every society that has ever existed. Oftentimes, violence against women has been not only part of a culture but also codified into its laws. As societies and nations have progressed, so too has the outcry for a structured governmental response to the problem of domestic violence. Laws have been passed by cities, states, and nations; treaties have been entered into among nations, but still the problem of domestic violence persists. In October of 2011, the city council of Topeka, KS, voted to decriminalize misdemeanor domestic violence cases. It did so in a dispute …

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Exchange As A Cornerstone Of Families, Martha Ertman Feb 2012

Exchange As A Cornerstone Of Families, Martha Ertman

Martha M. Ertman

This essay up-ends critical theorist Ivan Illich’s critique of economic thinking as replacing households defined by vernacular gender with married pairs in “inhumane” sex-neutral economic partnerships. It challenges Illich’s view of exchange as a destroyer that has meddled in families for only a few hundred years, citing sociobiological literature to counter his case against exchange with one valorizing two exchanges that I call “primal deals” that played crucial roles in the evolution of humans, families, and day-to-day life. These primal deals—especially the primal pair-bonding deal between men and women—continue to play a central role in families and family law today. …

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Women's Legal History Symposium Introduction: Making History, Felice J. Batlan Dec 2011

Women's Legal History Symposium Introduction: Making History, Felice J. Batlan

Felice J Batlan

This essay introduces the Chicago-Kent Symposium on Women's Legal History: A Global Perspective. It seeks to situate the field of women's legal history and to explore what it means to begin writing a transnational women's history which transcends and at times disrupts the nation state. In doing so, it sets forth some of the fundamental premises of women's legal history and points to new ways of writing such histories.

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Homogenous Rules For Heterogeneous Families: The Standardization Of Family Law When There Is No Standard Family, Katharine K. Baker Dec 2011

Homogenous Rules For Heterogeneous Families: The Standardization Of Family Law When There Is No Standard Family, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

The article explores the ironies involved in the contemporary enforcement of family obligations. As forms of intimate partnership and parenthood become ever more varied, the law of family obligation - child support, property division and alimony - has become increasingly routine and formulaic. As scholars increasingly call for more attention to the varied ways in which different individuals and communities structure their care networks and their intimate lives, the law of family obligation has become less, not more attentive to context. This piece explains how the law’s rejection of context is an understandable reaction to the growing diversity of family …

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