Digital Commons Network^™

Regulating Social Media Through Family Law, Katharine B. Silbaugh, Adi Caplan-Bricker

Faculty Scholarship

Social media afflicts minors with depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, addiction, suicidality, and eating disorders. States are legislating at a breakneck pace to protect children. Courts strike down every attempt to intervene on First Amendment grounds. This Article clears a path through this stalemate by leveraging two underappreciated frameworks: the latent regulatory power of parental authority arising out of family law, and a hidden family law within First Amendment jurisprudence. These two projects yield novel insights. First, the recent cases offer a dangerous understanding of the First Amendment, one that should not survive the family law reasoning we provide. First Amendment jurisprudence …

Developmental Justice And The Voting Age, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

Several municipalities have lowered the voting age to 16, with similar bills pending in state legislatures and one considered by Congress. Meanwhile, advocates for youth are trying to raise the ages of majority across an array of areas of law, including ages for diverting criminal conduct into the juvenile justice system (18 to 21); buying tobacco (18 to 21); driving (16 to 18); and obtaining support from the foster care system (18 to 21). Child welfare advocates are fighting the harms of Adultification, meaning the projection of adult capacities, responsibilities, and consequences onto minors. In legal and social history, seeing …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars Of The Constitutional Rights And Interests Of Children In Support Of Respondents, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Catherine E. Smith, Tanya Washington Hicks, Lauren Fontana, Jessica Dixon Weaver, Cary Martin Shelby

Faculty Scholarship

This Brief of Amici Curiae Scholars of the Constitutional Rights and Interests of Children in Support of Respondents filed in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia makes two points. First, a categorical exemption, based on religious beliefs rather than foster children’s needs, does not serve the best interests of children and violates the government’s duty to foster youth. Such an exemption needlessly restricts the pool of prospective foster parents, increasing the risk of a greater number of children being confined to long-term, institutional care. The reduction of same-sex foster parents would also have a disproportionate impact on “special needs” and LGBT …

The Legal Design For Parenting Concussion Risk, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses a question as yet unexplored in the emerging concussion risk literature: how does the statutorily assigned parental role in concussion risk management conceptualize the legal significance of the parent, and does it align with other areas of law that authorize and limit parental risk decision-making? Parents are the centerpiece of the “Lystedt” youth concussion legislation in all fifty states, and yet the extensive legal literature about that legislation contains no discussion of parents as legal actors and makes no effort to situate their statutory role into the larger legal framework of parental authority. This Article considers the …

Brief Amici Curiae Of Professors Of History, Political Science, And Law In Support Of Respondent, Kristin Collins, Catherine E. Stetson, Jessica K. Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

Sex-based laws premised on archaic presumptions about the proper roles of men and women run afoul of established constitutional principles, especially when they interfere with the parent-child relationship. Amici write to explain the history of the federal government’s use of sex-based classifications in the regulation of citizenship. In its regulation of intergenerational and interspousal citizenship transmission, the federal government has perpetuated outdated gender-based norms concerning proper parental roles, even when those norms have been rejected in other legal and social contexts. In addition, the laws governing derivative citizenship have significantly encumbered the ability of American fathers to transmit citizenship to …

A Diversity Approach To Parenthood In Family Life And Family Law, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Extraordinary changes in patterns of family life and family law have dramatically altered the boundaries of parenthood and opened up numerous questions and debates. What is parenthood and why does it matter? How should society define, regulate, and support it? Is parenthood separable from marriage or couplehood when society seeks to foster childrens well-being? What is the better model of parenthood from the perspective of child outcomes? Intense disagreements over the definition and future of marriage often rest upon conflicting convictions about parenthood. What Is Parenthood? asks bold and direct questions about parenthood in contemporary society, and it brings together …

Revisiting Mary Ann Glendon: Abortion, Divorce, Dependency, And Rights Talk In Western Law, Linda C. Mcclain, Margaret F. Brining

Faculty Scholarship

This essay revisits Mary Ann Glendon’s comparative law study, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law and her subsequent book, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. Glendon’s comparative study actually included a third topic: “forms of dependency which are connected with pregnancy, marriage, and child raising.” The topic of dependency has obvious relevance to consideration of intergenerational obligations and the interplay between family responsibility and societal responsibility for addressing dependency needs.

A central claim Glendon made in both books is that the U.S. legal tradition is “libertarian,” views individuals as “lone rights bearers,” and exalts the “right to be let …

What Is Parenthood?: Contemporary Debates About The Family Introduction, Linda C. Mcclain, Daniel Cere

Faculty Scholarship

Extraordinary changes in patterns of family life – and family law – have dramatically altered the boundaries of parenthood and opened up numerous questions about debates. What is parenthood and why does it matter? How should society define, regulate, and support it? Despite this uncertainty, the intense focus on the definition and future of marriage diverts attention from parenthood. Demographic reports suggesting a shift away from marriage and toward alternative family forms also keep marriage in constant public view, obscuring the fact that disagreements about marriage are often grounded in deeper, conflicting convictions about parenthood. This book (as the posted …

Federal Family Policy And Family Values From Clinton To Obama, 1992-2012 And Beyond, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This Article traces the evolution of federal family law and policy from 1992-2012 and beyond by considering the legacy of Clintonism, the “Third Way” political philosophy developed by William Jefferson Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council. Present day economic inequality is spurring reflection on the role of government and on the meaning and form of progressive politics. Clintonism’s centrist, progressive approach linked governmental provision of opportunity to personal responsibility (“working hard and playing by the rules”) and appealed to values of family, community, faith, liberty, and inclusion. By linking family values to family policies, Clintonism’s New Covenant successfully challenged the …

Nature, Culture, And Social Engineering: Reflections On Evolution And Equality, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This book chapter explores evolution and morality by considering the appeal to nature, and in particular to how evolution has shaped female and male brains differently, to explain evident sex differences and the persistence of sex inequality. It uses as illustrative the popularizing accounts of male and female brains found in Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain and The Male Brain, and the portrayal in such accounts of fundamental male and female differences in human mate selection and parenting. Drawing on the work of scientist and philosophers, the chapter critiques these accounts for engaging in an increasingly popular “neurosexism.” Such neurosexism …

A Short History Of Sex And Citizenship: The Historians' Amicus Brief In Flores-Villar V. United States, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

The historians’ amicus brief that accompanies this essay was submitted to the Supreme Court in Flores-Villar v. United States, an equal protection challenge to federal statutes that regulate the citizenship status of foreign-born children of American parents. When the parents of such children are unmarried, federal law encumbers the ability of American fathers to secure citizenship for their children, while providing American mothers with a nearly unfettered ability to do the same. The general question before the Court in Flores-Villar – and a question that the Court has addressed in sum and substance on two other occasions during the last …

What's So Hard About Sex Equality?: Nature, Culture, And Social Engineering, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Why is sex equality so hard to achieve? Social cooperation between women and men in various domains of life is assumed to be a fundamental and necessary building block of society, but proves hard to secure on terms of equality. One answer is that feminist quests for equality in private and public life are a form of misguided social engineering that ignores natural sex difference. This chapter examines arguments that nature and culture constrain feminist law reform. Appeals to nature argue that brain science and evolutionary psychology find salient differences between women and men, limiting what social engineering can achieve …

The Changing Face Of Family Law: Global Consequences Of Embedding Physicians And Biotechnology In The Parent-Child Relationship, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Sexual reproduction, also known as making babies the old-fashioned way, has always brought with it significant challenges for family law, especially regarding protecting the best interests of children, and the identification of parents with the right and responsibility to rear them. But these challenges often seem mundane in the face of what has evolved since physicians have been injected into baby making and thus into novel parent-child relationships. The addition of physicians and their "new" medical technologies, sometimes called Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), have forced the law to reconsider the very definition of motherhood and have radically altered society's view …

Red Versus Blue (And Purple) States In The Same-Sex Marriage Debate: From Values Polarization To Common Ground?, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

What is the role of courts in circumstances of "values polarization"? The framing of this question brings to mind, but differs from, some familiar inquiries about the judicial role in circumstances of conscientious moral disagreement or value pluralism and debates about liberty, morality, and community. Using the conflict over whether civil marriage should extend to same-sex couples as an example, I contrast two recent analyses of values polarization and its implications for finding agreement, Ronald Dworkin’s book, Is Democracy Possible Here?, and June Carbone and Naomi Cahn's project, Red Families v. Blue Families. Dworkin's strategy is to identify shared principles …

Family Life, The Politics Of The Family, And Social Transformation, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Why do families matter? Is it simply because of their role in social reproduction, or does this ignore the personal goods, the benefits and burdens, of intimate life? Does an emphasis on the formative role of families risk treating them merely as serving the state and divert attention from the rights of persons to form families and the rights - and needs - of children to nurturing relationships? What kind of social and economic transformation would be necessary to implement a normative vision of family that supports families, is egalitarian, and respects diversity? What is the best way to rectify …

The 'Male Problematic' And The Problems Of Family Law: A Response To Don Browning's 'Critical Familism', Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores the relationship between the male problematic and the problems of family law. The problem of fatherhood, or what religion scholar and marriage movement leader Don Browning calls the male problematic, is a central concern of that movement. The premise is that marriage addresses a core societal challenge - binding men to the mothers of the children they foster and securing men's paternal investment in those children. The essay responds to Browning's review (in 56 Emory Law Journal 1383 (2007)) of my book, The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality, and Responsibility (Harvard University Press, 2006), in which …

The Role Of The 'Natural Family' In Religious Opposition To Human Rights Instruments, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines how the vision of the natural family articulated by several prominent conservativereligious organizations in the United States shapes their opposition to certain human rights instruments. TheUnited Nations' 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child seems to reflect an advance in internationalhuman rights formulations and to have generated a high degree of formal commitment by governments, as evidenced by its quick and virtually universal ratification. However, the United States stands nearly alone innot having ratified the Convention, and the religious groups examined in this chapter strenuously urge that it should not do so, lest it undermine the …

Women's Place: Urban Planning, Housing Design, And Work-Family Balance, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

In the past decade a substantial literature has emerged analyzing the role of work-family conflict in hampering women's economic, social, and civil equality. Many of the issues we routinely discuss as work family balance problems have distinct spatial dimensions. 'Place' is by no means the main factor in work-family balance difficulties, but amongst work-family policy-makers it is perhaps the least appreciated. This article examines the role of urban planning and housing design in frustrating the effective balance of work and family responsibilities. Nothing in the literature on work-family balance reform addresses this aspect of the problem. That literature focuses instead …

What Place For Marriage (E)Quality In Marriage Promotion?, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

The place of marriage in a just and fair constitutional democracy reverberates as one of the most challenging questions posed in debates over family law and policy. Should government properly support and promote marriage, defined as the union of one man and one woman, as the proxy for the form of family best able to undergird our polity by allowing realization of the goods associated with family life and carrying out the important functions society assigns to families? Or is marriage's privileged place undeserved because it is an imperfect and inadequate proxy for these purposes. This article argues that, although …

'God's Created Order', Gender Complementarity, And The Federal Marriage Amendment, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Does marriage, in the United States, need the protection of an amendment to the federal constitution, which would enshrine marriage as only the union of a man and a woman? In answering "yes" to this question, sponsors and supporters of the Federal Marriage Protection Amendment (FMPA), in the House of Representatives and the Senate, have made various appeals to the gender complementarity of marriage: (1) opposite-sex marriage is part of "God's created order;" (2) procreation is the purpose of marriage and has a tight nexus with optimal mother/father parenting; (3) marriage bridges the "gender divide" by properly ordering heterosexual desire …

The Practice Of Marriage, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past 40 years, robust law has developed addressing the treatment of non-marital cohabitants. Consequently, the government's gatekeeping role operates somewhat differently than before. States are now more clearly policing the social benefits and the symbolism accompanying marriage, having agreed to provide many of its legal benefits to non-marital couples. This article investigates the state's current role in articulating and managing, as well as responding to, the social meaning of marriage in the context of three recent high profile cases: the prosecution of polygamist Tom Green, the Goodridge same sex marriage case in Massachusetts, and the challenge to Michael …

Intimate Affiliation And Democracy: Beyond Marriage?, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This article takes up the question: Should family law and policy move beyond marriage? It assesses a spectrum of answers to that question. Rejecting proposals, on the one hand, to shore up traditional marriage, and, on the other, to abolish marriage, it argues that family law and policy should not move wholly beyond marriage, but should support marriage in a way that better fosters greater equality within and among families. The article is part of a symposium on "Marriage, Families, and Democracy," published in 32 Hofstra Law Review 23-421 (2003).

Mapping The Human Genome And The Meaning Of Monster Mythology, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Pre-Columbian cartographers drew their maps to the extent of their knowledge, and then wrote in the margins, "Beyond this point there are dragons." With the voyage of Columbus, we lost both our fear of the geographic frontier and our innocence. We accept that knowledge can generally overpower fear; but we have also learned that the application of new knowledge often has a dark side that can lead to brutality and disaster. The discovery of America, for example, led to unforeseen value conflicts of justice and fairness involving native Americans that were "resolved" only by their merciless subjugation and genocidal destruction. …

Parents' Rights And Juvenile Court Jurisdiction: A Review Of Before The Best Interests Of The Child, Stanley Z. Fisher

Faculty Scholarship

This new book¹ by the authors of Beyond the Best Interests of the Child² also makes a major contribution to the field of family law. Concentrating this time on the subject of child neglect and abuse, the authors mount a powerful attack on state intrusion into families under current child protection laws. Like Beyond the Best Interests, this book has attracted wide attention and provoked intense controversy. It should be read by all those concerned about the law's impact on children and families.

Families With Service Needs: The Newest Euphemism, Stanley Z. Fisher

Faculty Scholarship

Juvenile court jurisdiction over "status offenders" - juveniles engaging in noncriminal misconduct such as truancy, running away, and "incorrigibility" - has become the subject of national debate. Most participants in the many-sided discussion agree that the system needs reform. The major disagreement, however, is between those who wish merely to reform the court's jurisdiction over this conduct, and those who would substantially eliminate it. This article concerns the newest reform proposal: to revise status offense jurisdiction under a new category entitled "Families With Service Needs" (FWSN). Proposed in 1977 by a federally funded task force, 5 the FWSN concept has …