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Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars Of The Constitutional Rights And Interests Of Children In Support Of Respondents In Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd, Et Al V. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Catherine E. Smith, Lauren Fontana, Tanya Washington, Barbara Bennett Woodhouse Jan 2017

Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars Of The Constitutional Rights And Interests Of Children In Support Of Respondents In Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd, Et Al V. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Catherine E. Smith, Lauren Fontana, Tanya Washington, Barbara Bennett Woodhouse

Faculty Scholarship

Masterpiece Cakeshop LTD, et al v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission is about much more than a wedding cake. It is about the rightful place of LGBT people and their families in the commercial and public sphere. In fact, children are already bearing the brunt of exclusionary practices in the public marketplace because of their relationship to or association with their LGBT parents. In Michigan, a pediatrician refused to treat an infant based solely on the fact that the child had lesbian mothers. In Kentucky, a judge refused to hear adoption cases of children involving LGBT adoptive-parents-to-be. In Tennessee, a nondenominational …


The Family, The State, And American Political Development As A Big Tent: Asking Basic Questions About Basic Institutions, Linda C. Mcclain Apr 2016

The Family, The State, And American Political Development As A Big Tent: Asking Basic Questions About Basic Institutions, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This article, contributed to a symposium on “The Family, the State, and American Political Development”, evaluates the proposition that the relationship between the basic institutions of the family and the state should be more central to the study of American political development (“APD”). It argues that, happily, such relationship is no longer as neglected by scholars as it once was, but that much work remains to be done. The article begins by comparing parallel efforts by pioneering feminist political and legal theorists to put on the table such issues as the public/private distinction between the polity and the family, assumptions …


Children's Health In A Legal Framework, Elizabeth S. Scott, Clare Huntington Jan 2015

Children's Health In A Legal Framework, Elizabeth S. Scott, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

The interdisciplinary periodical Future of Children has dedicated an issue to children’s health policy. This contribution to the issue maps the legal landscape influencing policy choices. The authors demonstrate that in the U.S. legal system, parents have robust rights, grounded in the Constitution, to make decisions concerning their children’s health and medical treatment. Following from its commitment to parental rights, the system typically assumes the interests of parents and children are aligned, even when that assumption seems questionable. Thus, for example, parents who would limit their children’s access to health care on the basis of the parents’ religious belief have …


Rethinking Criminal Law And Family Status , Dan Markel, Ethan J. Leib, Jennifer M. Collins Jan 2009

Rethinking Criminal Law And Family Status , Dan Markel, Ethan J. Leib, Jennifer M. Collins

Faculty Scholarship

In our recent book, Privilege or Punish: Criminal Justice and the Challenge of Family Ties (OUP 2009), we examined and critiqued a number of ways in which the criminal justice system uses family status to distribute benefits or burdens to defendants. In their review essays, Professors Alafair Burke, Alice Ristroph & Melissa Murray identify a series of concerns with the framework we offer policymakers to analyze these family ties benefits or burdens. We think it worthwhile not only to clarify where those challenges rest on misunderstandings or confusions about the central features of our views, but also to show the …


The Role Of The 'Natural Family' In Religious Opposition To Human Rights Instruments, Linda C. Mcclain Jan 2007

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 Jan 2007

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 …


Evaluating Marriage: Does Marriage Matter To The Nurturing Of Children?, Robin Fretwell Wilson Oct 2005

Evaluating Marriage: Does Marriage Matter To The Nurturing Of Children?, Robin Fretwell Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

Three decades ago, it would have been inconceivable for people to discuss seriously the idea of withdrawing the legal and financial support society gives to marriage. In recent years, however, thinkers and policymakers have given more serious thought to the possibility of eliminating marriage as a category entitled to the State’s support. An important consideration in this debate is whether keeping or eliminating the State’s support of marriage matters to the well-being of children. A wealth of studies contemplating modern family forms now exists, many of which invariably stack newer family structures up against the more traditional nuclear family. Until …


Intimate Affiliation And Democracy: Beyond Marriage?, Linda C. Mcclain Jan 2003

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).


Accounting For Family Change, Katharine B. Silbaugh Jan 2001

Accounting For Family Change, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

The legal focal point of familial obligation in the United States has long been the relationship between paired adults-most centrally marriage. Obligations to children, and rights to their company, were derivative; they were to be met through the framework of the all-important pairing of adults. Over the past several decades, that core source of legal obligation has shifted from the adult relationship between partners to the relationship between parent and child. The shift has occurred at a number of different levels, and it has had a variety of consequences, the majority of which are still shaking out. The legal catalyst …


The Liberal Future Of Relational Feminism: Robin West's Caring For Justice, Linda C. Mcclain Apr 1999

The Liberal Future Of Relational Feminism: Robin West's Caring For Justice, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Robin West is one of the most prolific1 and creative members of the legal academy. Her distinctive voice, as expressed in several books and numerous scholarly articles, informs and shapes debates within such diverse areas as constitutional theory (West 1990b; West 1994), feminist jurisprudence (West 1987; West 1988), and law and literature (West 1993). Indeed, some of her early articles concerning feminist jurisprudence (West 1987, West 1988) are now "classics" in a relatively new field of inquiry and appear in virtually every anthology or textbook in the field (Bartlett and Kennedy 1991, 201; Becker, Bowman, and Torrey 1994, 90; Fineman …