Jurisprudence Commons^™

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 …

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 …

This Article compares the methodological similarities between evolutionary biology and conventional law and economics. It shows how these methodologies diverge, in critical and parallel ways, from what has come to be known as feminist method. In doing so, the Article suggests that feminists in the legal academy should be suspicious of the parsimonious models upon which both conventional evolutionary biologists and conventional law and economics scholars rely. Biological and economic models employ analogous concepts of maximization (including theories of autonomy, choice, and measurement) and stable equilibria (usually produced by stable preferences) to make predictions and proscriptions for law. The simplicity …