Family Law Commons^™

Blockchain Wills, Bridget J. Crawford

Indiana Law Journal

Blockchain technology has the potential to radically alter the way that people have

executed wills for centuries. This Article makes two principal claims—one

descriptive and the other normative. Descriptively, this Article suggests that

traditional wills formalities have been relaxed to the point that they no longer serve

the cautionary, protective, evidentiary, and channeling functions that scholars have

used to justify strict compliance with wills formalities. Widespread use of digital

technology in everyday communications has led to several notable cases in which

individuals have attempted to execute wills electronically. These wills have had a

mixed reception. Four states currently recognize ...

Indian Child Welfare Act Annual Case Law Update And Commentary, Kathryn Fort, Adrian T. Smith

American Indian Law Journal

Annually there is an average of 200 appellate cases dealing with the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) —though this includes published and unpublished opinions.[1] Since our first annual review of the case law in 2017, the numbers remain stable. There are approximately thirty reported state appellate court cases involving ICWA each year. This annual review is the only systematic look at the ICWA cases on appeal, including an analysis of who is appealing, what the primary issues are on appeal, and what topical trends are.

This article provides a comprehensive catalogue of published ICWA cases from across all fifty ...

Young Children's Ability To Describe Intermediate Clothing Placement, Breanne E. Wylie, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Kelly Mcwilliams, Angela Evans, Thomas D. Lyon

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

Children’s ability to adequately describe clothing placement is essential to evaluating their allegations of sexual abuse. Intermediate clothing placement (partially removed clothing) may be difficult for young children to describe, requiring more detailed explanations to indicate the location of clothing (e.g., the clothes were pulled down to the knees). The current study investigated 172 3- to 6-year-olds’ descriptions of clothing placement when responding to commonly used questions (yes/no, forced-choice, open-choice, where), as well as children’s on-off response tendencies when describing intermediate placement (i.e.., labeling the clothing as fully on or off). Results revealed that "where ...

Faith, Law, And Love: Peg Brinig's Legacy, Stephanos Bibas

Notre Dame Law Review

The central question in Peg Brinig’s work is how the law can help intimate associations to raise healthy kids. She pursues this theme through a variety of inquiries, ranging from parochial schools in big-city neighborhoods to covenant-marriage laws in Louisiana. Her answers depend on context, varying with how close each social actor or institution is to the process of raising children. But nearly all her recommendations seek to foster permanent, loving, involved social environments.

Following Brinig’s lead, I’ll celebrate her work by highlighting some of the answers she offers in three different social contexts. In Part I ...

The Place Of Empirical Studies, F.H. Buckley

Notre Dame Law Review

It was chance that brought Peg Brinig to George Mason University School of Law, and curiosity that took her to a law-and-economics and then to empirical research. She realized that only the curious would be able to keep up to new things, and that law teaching, not journalism, was the profession of the curious.

At the time, it took not only curiosity, but also a certain measure of courage to embark on law and economics. Traditional legal scholars correctly surmised that it would shake up the discipline, and that is never a pleasant experience. Conservatives who were fond of saying ...

In Defense Of Empiricism In Family Law, Elizabeth S. Scott

Notre Dame Law Review

It is fitting to include an essay defending the application of empirical research to family law and policy in a symposium honoring the scholarly career of Peg Brinig, who is probably the leading empiricist working in family law. While such a defense might seem unnecessary, given the expanding role of behavioral, social, and biological research in shaping the regulation of children and families, prominent scholars recently have raised concerns about the trend toward reliance on empirical science in this field. A part of the criticism is directed at the quality of the science itself and at the lack of sophistication ...

The Institutional Economics Of Marriage: A Reinterpretation Of Margaret Brinig's Contribution To Family Law, Douglas W. Allen

Notre Dame Law Review

Margaret (Peg) Brinig has made a massive contribution to family law over the course of the past thirty-five years. Spanning the two fields of economics and law, her views have evolved over time to ones that see family as a matter of covenant. The concept of a covenant is mostly unknown in the modern secular world and is absent in economics. Without (hopefully) changing Brinig’s meaning, I reinterpret her work and argue that her concept of a covenant is equivalent to the economist’s understanding of an institution. The goal of reinterpreting her work in light of institutional economics ...

A Consumer Guide To Empirical Family Law, June Carbone

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article will consider the framework for empirical work on family law, arguing that the failure to ask more sophisticated questions at the beginning of the research has limited its effectiveness. In this sense, Professor Peg Brinig’s work stands out for the creativity of the questions she has asked, her exploration of underutilized databases, and her work’s potential to serve as a foundation for a new paradigm for the integration of empirical work into family law theory.

This Article will discuss the way that theory—and the creation of discourses associated with it—informs empirical research. First, it ...

Lessons Learned, Lessons Offered: Creating A Domestic Violence Drug Court, Judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, Dr. Stacy Speedlin Gonzalez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Can We Have Our Cake And Eat It Too?: What Masterpiece Cakeshop And Religious Refusals Mean For Texas’S Adoption Bill, Nadeen Abou-Hossa

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Conceptualizing Legal Childhood In The Twenty-First Century, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott

Michigan Law Review

The law governing children is complex, sometimes appearing almost incoherent. The relatively simple framework established in the Progressive Era, in which parents had primary authority over children, subject to limited state oversight, has broken down over the past few decades. Lawmakers started granting children some adult rights and privileges, raising questions about their traditional status as vulnerable, dependent, and legally incompetent beings. As children emerged as legal persons, children’s rights advocates challenged the rationale for parental authority, contending that robust parental rights often harm children. And a wave of punitive reforms in response to juvenile crime in the 1990s ...

Under Ten Eyes, Anthony Michael Kreis

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Carliss Chatman’s If a Fetus Is a Person, It Should Get Child Support, Due Process and Citizenship brilliantly captures the moment America is in, where abortion rights hang in the balance as state legislators, like those in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, and elsewhere clamor to embrace fetal personhood. But, as Professor Chatman illustrates, legislators have expressed no interest in the full logical extent of this policy or the rights that should attach to a fetus if their measures ultimately become effective. The article incisively demonstrates how fetal personhood is singularly focused on ending abortion in the United States and is ...

Personhood: Law, Common Sense, And Humane Opportunities, Helen M. Alvaré

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

It is pointless to approach Professor Chatman’s argument on its own terms (to wit, “tak[ing] our laws seriously,” or equal application across myriad legal categories of “full personhood” rights) because these terms are neither seriously intended nor legally comprehensible. Instead, her essay is intended to create the impression that legally protecting unborn human lives against abortion opens up a Pandora’s box of legal complications so “ridiculous” and “far-fetched” that we should rather just leave things where they are under the federal Constitution post-Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This impression, in turn, is a ...

If A Fetus Is A Person, It Should Get Child Support, Due Process, And Citizenship, Carliss N. Chatman

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Article was originally published in The Washington Post on May 17, 2019. It has been edited and updated prior to its publication in the Washington and Lee Law Review.

Alabama has joined the growing number of states determined to overturn Roe v. Wade by banning abortion from conception forward. The Alabama Human Life Protection Act subjects a doctor who performs an abortion to as many as ninety-nine years in prison. The law has no exceptions for rape or incest. It redefines an “unborn child, child or person” as “[a] human being, specifically including an unborn child in utero at ...

Family Values: The Child Citizenship Act’S Ability To Protect The Foreign-Born Children Of U.S. Citizens From Deportation, Conor Mcnulty

Boston College Law Review

On March 19, 2019, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Duncan v. Barr held, as a matter of first impression, that the physical custody requirement of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 is a mixed question of law and fact and thus requires more than clear error review by an appellate body. In so doing, the court rejected broad deference to immigration judges on the question of physical custody and permitted greater independent judgment by appellate bodies. This Comment argues that, although the Fourth Circuit correctly ruled on the proper standard of review, it missed an opportunity to correct ...

Inadequate Protection: Examining The Due Process Rights Of Individuals In Child Abuse And Neglect Registries, Amanda S. Sen, Stephanie K. Glaberson, Aubrey Rose

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article seeks to advance due process protections for people included in state child abuse and neglect registries. Between states, there are differences in the types of cases included in the state registry and the process required to be placed on or removed from the registry. To obtain judicial due process review, a plaintiff must demonstrate that a protected liberty or property interest is at stake. When federal courts have evaluated the individual liberty interest(s) implicated by placement on state child abuse and neglect registries, they have so far only found such an interest when the plaintiff’s employment ...

Kids, Not Commodities: Proposing A More Protective Interpretation Of The Child Sex Trafficking Statute For Victims And Defendants, Kimberly Blasey

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Note addresses how courts should interpret the “reasonable opportunity to observe” standard when assessing evidence. In other words, what quantum of evidence is, and should be, sufficient to prove a defendant had a “reasonable opportunity to observe” a sex trafficking victim? Would a singular brief encounter with an older-appearing prostitute satisfy the standard? If so, would the mere fact that the “prostitute” was actually a minor be the only evidence needed to obtain a conviction? Or would the defendant’s intention and attempt to order services from an adult prostitute shed light on the reasonableness of his observation opportunity ...

Gender And Specialization In The Practice Of Divorce Law, Richard J. Maiman, Lynn Mather, Craig A. Mcewen

Maine Law Review

In the past two decades, the gender composition of the legal profession in the United States has changed dramatically. While women comprised less than five percent of the nation's lawyers in 1970, the proportion of women lawyers had increased to more than 19% by the end of 1988, and roughly 40% of new lawyers each year are now women. However, the movement of women into the legal profession has not been easy. As a consequence, considerable commentary has been focused on the significant problems of sexual harassment, discrimination, and other forms of gender bias, and on such issues as ...

Toward A Coherent Interpretation Of Maine's Marital Property Act, John C. Sheldon

Maine Law Review

Interpreted literally, Maine's Marital Property Act (MPA) excludes all wedding gifts from the marital estates of divorcing spouses. Wedding gifts received before a wedding are nonmarital because they were not received during the marriage. Wedding gifts received after a wedding are nonmarital because they were gifts, which appear to be expressly excluded from the marital estate by the statute's definition of marital property. In short, a literal reading of the MPA prevents Maine's divorce courts from exercising any discretion in the distribution of what must, by any measure of common sense, be quintessential examples of marital property ...

Gender And Specialization In The Practice Of Divorce Law, Richard J. Maiman, Lynn Mather, Craig A. Mcewen

Maine Law Review

In the past two decades, the gender composition of the legal profession in the United States has changed dramatically. While women comprised less than five percent of the nation's lawyers in 1970, the proportion of women lawyers had increased to more than 19% by the end of 1988, and roughly 40% of new lawyers each year are now women. However, the movement of women into the legal profession has not been easy. As a consequence, considerable commentary has been focused on the significant problems of sexual harassment, discrimination, and other forms of gender bias, and on such issues as ...