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Full-Text Articles in Law
’Til Death Do Us Part? What Every Legal Practitioner Should Know About Premarital Agreements: A Law Student’S Perspective, Lauren Ludvigsen
’Til Death Do Us Part? What Every Legal Practitioner Should Know About Premarital Agreements: A Law Student’S Perspective, Lauren Ludvigsen
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Student Publications
It is rare that a couple will enter into a marriage expecting to divorce each other. It may be the romance or the excitement of the impending nuptials, but couples do not include an expiration date on their marriage certificate. However, not all marriages last until “death do us part.” The United States Census Bureau conducted its first survey into marriages, divorces, and widowhood in America in 2009, finding that 9.2 of every 1,000 men and 9.7 of every 1,000 women over the age of fifteen reported being divorced. Despite these rates, research suggests that only one-fourth of Americans believe …
Unsex Mothering: Toward A New Culture Of Parenting, Darren Rosenblum
Unsex Mothering: Toward A New Culture Of Parenting, Darren Rosenblum
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
In this Article, I observe that “mothering” and “fathering” have been inappropriately tethered to biosex. “Mothering” should be unsexed as the primary parental relationship. “Fathering,” correspondingly, should be unsexed from its breadwinner status. In an ideal world, people now considered “mothers” and “fathers” would be “parents” first, a category that includes all forms of caretaking. One could even imagine an androgynous world in which parenting has no sexed subcategories, whether attached to biosex or not. I doubt our world is anywhere near that; I also wonder whether universal androgyny is a utopian ideal worth pursuing. I instead focus in this …
Nature And Nurture: Revisiting The Infant Adoption Process, Barbara L. Atwell
Nature And Nurture: Revisiting The Infant Adoption Process, Barbara L. Atwell
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Adopted children constitute approximately two percent of the United States' childhood population, but are disproportionately represented in mental health settings, where they make up an estimated four to fifteen percent of the population. Science suggests that for those adopted at birth, this discrepancy may be due in part to their abrupt removal from the biological parents. We are now beginning to understand the importance of the bonding that takes place in utero and the infant's awareness at birth. This article suggests three changes to the infant adoption process to align it with scientific knowledge. First, all adults involved in the …
The Lawmaking Family, Noa Ben-Asher
The Lawmaking Family, Noa Ben-Asher
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Increasingly there are conflicts over families trying to "opt out" of various legal structures, especially public school education. Examples of opting-out conflicts include a father seeking to exempt his son from health education classes; a mother seeking to exempt her daughter from mandatory education about the perils of female sexuality; and a vegetarian student wishing to opt out of in-class frog dissection. The Article shows that, perhaps paradoxically, the right to direct the upbringing of children was more robust before it was constitutionalized by the Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925). In …