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Law and Society

Katharine K. Baker

Articles 1 - 10 of 10

Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

Campus Sexual Misconduct As Sexual Harassment: A Defense Of The Doe, Katharine K. Baker May 2016

Campus Sexual Misconduct As Sexual Harassment: A Defense Of The Doe, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

This article explains and defends the Department of Education’s campaign against sexual misconduct on college campuses. It does so because DOE has inexplicably failed to make clear that their goal is to protect women from the intimidating and hostile environment that results when men routinely use women sexually, without regard to whether women consent to the sexual activity. That basic point, that schools are policing harassing and intimidating behavior, not necessarily rape, has been lost on both courts and commentators. Boorish, entitled, sexual behavior that stops well short of rape, if pervasive enough, has been actionable as sexual harassment for …

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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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Marriage And Parenthood As Status And Rights: The Growing, Problematic And Possibly Constitutional Trend To Disaggregate Family Status From Family Rights, Katharine K. Baker Dec 2009

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

Katharine K. Baker

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 …

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Bionormativity And The Construction Of Parenthood, Katharine K. Baker Jun 2008

Bionormativity And The Construction Of Parenthood, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

This piece explores the relationship between legal and biological parenthood. It examines how neither history, nor evolutionary biology nor moral philosophy dictate a legal regime in which parenthood must be based on biological connection, but that attraction to a biological (or “bionormative”) regime remains strong. In explaining why, it suggests that much of what attracts people to bionormativity is not biology itself, but the way in which a biological regime constructs parenthood as a private, exclusive and binary enterprise. It is these ancillary qualities of bionormativity that people may care the most about. Today, a variety of forces put pressure …

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Supporting Children, Balancing Lives, Katharine K. Baker Feb 2007

Supporting Children, Balancing Lives, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

This paper examines how U.S. child support policy validates traditional divisions of labor and thereby hinders individual attempts to achieve an acceptable work/family balance. It argues that by using the household as the relevant unit of measurement for child support purposes, family law doctrine legitimates the specialization contracts that arise within households. These specialization contracts, used most extensively in wealthy, elite households, undermine attempts to distribute caretaking and provider roles more equally between parents. The article suggest that by dispensing with the household as the relevant unit of measurement and treating all parents individually, each with a responsibility to caretake …

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Bargaining Or Biology? The History And Future Of Paternity Law And Parental Status, Katharine K. Baker Feb 2004

Bargaining Or Biology? The History And Future Of Paternity Law And Parental Status, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

In practice, paternity rulings are remarkably unimportant. With the exception of state welfare authorities pursuing mostly impoverished biological fathers, few paternity actions are brought, few mothers want to bring them and (even with state-sponsored pursuit) very few dollars get transferred to children as a result of them. In theory, however, paternity judgments are very and perniciously important because they keep alive the biological fatherhood ideal, an ideal that has never been reflected in law or fact and that is inconsistent with the emerging law of parental rights and responsibilities. This article challenges the biological fatherhood ideal and suggests that contract, …

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Biology For Feminists, Katharine K. Baker Feb 2000

Biology For Feminists, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

No abstract provided.

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Text, Context And The Problem With Rape, Katharine K. Baker Feb 1999

Text, Context And The Problem With Rape, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

No abstract provided.

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Once A Rapist? Motivational Evidence And Relevancy In Rape Law, Katharine K. Baker Jan 1997

Once A Rapist? Motivational Evidence And Relevancy In Rape Law, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

Feminist scholars and activists have long sought to reform rape laws and evidence rules in order to increase the number of successful rape prosecutions in the United States. In partial response to these efforts, and in an effort to decrease crime, the 104th Congress amended the Federal Rules of Evidence by adding Rule 413, which makes prior acts of sexual assault by alleged rapists admissible in criminal sexual assault cases. The new Rule 413 was meant to level the legal playing field between rapists and their accusers. Professor Baker argues that the new Rule is misguided because it fails to …

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Taking Care Of Our Daughters, A Book Review Of Martha Fineman, The Neutered Mother, The Sexual Family And Other Twentieth Century Tragedies, Katharine K. Baker Jan 1997

Taking Care Of Our Daughters, A Book Review Of Martha Fineman, The Neutered Mother, The Sexual Family And Other Twentieth Century Tragedies, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

No abstract provided.

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