Law Commons^™

Embracing The Affective Family: Tribute To Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars are often quick to label the affective family a relic. Indeed, the description of this panel invites us to "return to the conventional understanding of the family as a primarily affective, altruistic, and solidaristic social domain," and then asks "[w]hat is to be done with this archaic remnant of separate spheres ideology?"' As this description accurately expresses, the separate spheres ideology demands that we bifurcate emotion and rationality, directing the former into the family and the latter into the market.

Although I reject the separate spheres ideology, I am not ready to disown the affective family. The corrective to …

Familial Norms And Normality, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Social norms exert a powerful influence on families. They shape major life decisions, such as whether to marry and how many children to have, as well as everyday decisions, such as how to discipline children and divide household labor. Emotion is a defining feature of these familial social norms, giving force and content to norms in contexts as varied as reproductive choice, parenting, and same-sex relationships. These emotion-laden norms do not stand apart from the law. Falling along a continuum of involvement that ranges from direct regulation to choice architecture, state sway over social norms through their emotional valence is …

Pregnant Man?: A Conversation, Darren Rosenblum, Noa Ben-Asher, Mary Anne Case, Elizabeth F. Emens, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Vivian M. Gutierrez, Lisa C. Ikemoto, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, Kimberly Mutcherson, Peter Siegelman, Beth Jones

Faculty Scholarship

I'm a law professor who works on gender, sexuality, and culture in the international and comparative context. That's my head working. In "real" life, my partner, Howard, and I have been engaged in having a baby together for several years, a project that came to fruition with the birth of our daughter Melina. Of course, such a project evokes intensely complex feelings and thoughts. Beyond a simple transposition of the personal onto the political, I feel so fortunate to have engaged in myriad conversations with a variety of friends and colleagues who think much more carefully about the family and …

The Emotional State And Localized Norms: Reply Piece, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

I am grateful to Professor Fineman for her probing and engaged response to my Article. I will take this opportunity to make explicit some of the implicit assumptions of the Article that Professor Fineman identifies as worthy of elaboration.

Filling The Due Process Donut Hole: Abuse And Neglect Cases Between Disposition And Permanency, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

Abuse and neglect cases involve constantly changing facts. They “are unlike civil cases, which typically involve only facts gone by ... The ultimate parties in interest are the [children] themselves. And for them, their lives are ... ongoing event[s].” A child’s need to return to his parent may ebb or flow. His parent’s fitness may improve, regress, or remain the same. Federal law, followed in all states that wish to receive federal funds to support foster care, requires regular permanency hearings so family courts can make decisions based on evolving factual situations. These decisions, and the lack of greater procedural …

A Conversation About Problem-Solving Courts: Take 2, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

The University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class symposium on problem-solving courts surfaced a wide array of issues on the meaning and practices of these courts. My prepared remarks at the symposium addressed the first issue discussed in this article: the potential disparate impact of problem-solving courts on minority families who are disproportionately affected by these court processes. The second part of the article draws on the discussion during the symposium to reflect on the difficulty supporters and critics of the problem-solving court movement have in talking and listening to each other.

The Impact Of The Adoption And Safe Families Act On Children Of Incarcerated Parents, Arlene F. Lee, Philip Genty, Mimi Laver Child Welfare League Of America

Faculty Scholarship

On November 9, 1997, President Bill Clinton signed the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) to improve the safety of children, to promote adoption and other permanent homes for children, and to support families. The changes in ASFA are important to ensure the safety of children and increase their likelihood of placement in permanent homes. The change that requires close examination is the timeline for initiating the termination of parental rights (TPR) proceedings. Many people have questioned whether these changes, if applied in their strictest terms, have had a detrimental effect on children of prisoners, because a large …