Law Commons^™

Feminist Perspectives On Disaster, Pandemics, And Intimate Partner Violence, Margaret Drew

Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic brought international awareness to the likelihood of increased abuse of those in abusive intimate partner relationships because of the forced confinement with their abusers (Bettinger-Lopez and Bro, A double pandemic: domestic violence in the age of COVID 19, Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/double-pandemic-domestic-violence-age-covid-19, 2020). While this awareness was much discussed, assistance to survivors of abuse was limited because survivors often could not reach out for help, nor could advocates wishing to offer assistance safely reach in to advise them (Taub, A new Covid-19 crisis: domestic abuse rises worldwide. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/coronavirus-domestic-violence.html, 2020). The ever-present influence of the …

No Right To Counsel, No Access Without: The Poor Child's Unconstitutional Catch-22, Lisa V. Martin

Faculty Publications

In the midst of the push for universal access to counsel in civil cases and the increasing proportion of litigants who represent themselves, a critical barrier to access to justice for children has been overlooked. Federal courts have created a catch-22 for child litigants. Children cannot bring claims themselves, so parents must bring the claims on their behalf. Federal courts refuse to allow parents to pursue these claims pro se, stating that parents cannot provide adequate legal representation. Yet, there is no right to counsel in civil cases, and these same courts typically conclude the children’s cases do not warrant …

A Human Capital Theory Of Alimony And Tax, Tessa R. Davis

Faculty Publications

The current taxation of alimony is a broken scheme. Severed from any strong theoretical mooring, it draws lines in the sand between property settlement, child support, and alimony. The lack of coherence between the substance of alimony in family law and the tax concept of alimony (“tax alimony”) could be justified on other policy grounds, however. Yet current law, which allows the payor a deduction under §215 and requires inclusion by the recipient per §71, is difficult to interpret, resulting in frequent litigation and costly noncompliance. In short, the current concept of tax alimony fails to satisfy any of the …

Turner In The Trenches: A Study Of How Turner V. Rogers Affected Child Support Contempt Proceedings, Elizabeth Patterson

Faculty Publications

In its 2011 ruling in Turner v. Rogers, the Supreme Court held that a nonpaying child support obligor may not be incarcerated in a civil contempt proceeding if he did not have the ability to pay the ordered support or the purge necessary to regain his freedom. The Turner case arose in South Carolina, a state in which civil contempt proceedings are a routine part of the child support enforcement process. The author observed child support contempt proceedings in South Carolina both before and after the Turner decision to assess the extent to which indigent obligors were being held in …

The Strange Life Of Stanley V. Illinois: A Case Study In Parent Representation And Law Reform, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

This Article helps describe the growth of parent representation through an analysis of Stanley v. Illinois—the foundational Supreme Court case that established parental fitness as the constitutional lynchpin of any child protection case. The Article begins with Stanley’s trial court litigation, which illustrates the importance of vigorous parental representation and an effort by the court to prevent Stanley from obtaining an attorney. It proceeds to analyze how family courts applied it (or not) in the years following the Supreme Court’s decision and what factors have led to a recent resurgence of Stanley’s fitness focus.

Despite Stanley’s requirement that states prove …

Collaboration And Intention: Making The Collaborative Family Law Process Safe(R), Margaret Drew

Faculty Publications

Since the beginning of the collaborative family law movement, commentators from various professions have discouraged collaborative lawyers from accepting cases involving intimate partner abuse. The collaborative process, with its face to face meetings and emphasis on transparency and good faith, carries with it many risks for the partner who has been abused and who is attempting to end the relationship with the abusive partner. There may be occasions, however, when the at-risk partner believes that the collaborative process will enhance her safety or at least provide her with less exposure to future harm than other resolution processes. This article will …

Collaboration And Coercion: Domestic Violence Meets Collaborative Law, Margaret B. Drew

Faculty Publications

‘Collaboration and Coercion’ addresses the systemic and individual concerns that arise when family members that have experienced abuse enter into the collaborative law process. A form of alternative dispute resolution, collaborative law is a method of resolving disputes without engagement of the legal system. The author addresses the structural and cultural difficulties that survivors of abuse encounter throughout the process as well as the ethical concerns that are raised when collaborative practitioners accept cases where the parties have a history of coercion within the intimate relationship.

Beyond The Polemics: Realistic Options To Help Divorcing Families Manage Domestic Violence, Elayne E. Greenberg

Faculty Publications

Children, adult survivors, and their batterers who remain engaged in violence, even after they live apart, are living legacies of the historical perniciousness of domestic violence, a legacy that must change. True, over the past thirty years the politicization of domestic violence has raised public awareness, spurred legislative reforms, and propelled court innovations. However, the children, survivors, and batterers who still live domestic violence after divorce know all too well that all of our political advancements, legal victories, court innovations, and social awareness have not stopped the violence they live within their day-to-day lives. For many of these families, an …

That Guy's A Batterer!: A Scarlet Letter Approach To Domestic Violence In The Information Age, Elaine M. Chiu

Faculty Publications

Despite the remarkable reliance on the Internet as a source of information, we have yet to fully take advantage of it in our movement against domestic violence. Information is used as a weapon in the battle against domestic violence in several limited ways. Yet there is still more we can do with information and, specifically, the Internet, in combating domestic violence. The Scarlet Letter proposal seeks to empower potential victims of domestic violence with information so that they themselves can make choices that will avoid years of suffering and abuse. The idea is to allow public access to the data …

The Culture Differential In Parental Autonomy, Elaine M. Chiu

Faculty Publications

When the laws of a community reflect a dominant culture and yet many of its members are from other minority cultures, there is often conflict. When this conflict occurs in the legal regulation of the parent-child relationship, the consequences are tremendous for the children, the parents, and the State. This Article focuses on the federal statute criminalizing female genital surgeries, and, in doing so, it makes two major claims. The first claim is that the decisions of minority parents are scrutinized and regulated to a greater degree than the decisions of parents from the dominant culture, even when their decisions …

Family Structure, Children, And Law, Vivian E. Hamilton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Confronting The Agency In Battered Mothers, Elaine M. Chiu

Faculty Publications

Despite the progress of the last three decades, the American public and even feminists remain caught in a web of ambivalence and contradictory attitudes and beliefs about battered women. Are battered women traumatized victims who suffer at the hands of their individual abusers and from the systemic failures of a male-dominated culture? Are they, therefore, unable to save themselves or their children? In contrast, are these women survivors who manage to protect themselves as best they can under uniquely difficult circumstances? Do they deserve recognition for their efforts, or do battered women somehow contribute to or exacerbate their own abuse …

The Children We Abandon: Religious Exemptions To Child Welfare And Education Law As Denials Of Equal Protection To Children Of Religious Objectors, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

The story of children who die because their parents, in observance of their own religious principles, withhold conventional medical treatment from them is a familiar one. In this Article, James G. Dwyer shows that the phenomenon of parents denying secular benefits to their children for religious reasons goes far beyond these few highly publicized cases, extending into the realm of education as well as medical care. Moreover, Dr. Dwyer shows that the federal and state governments endorse this practice by statutorily exempting 'religious objector' parents from otherwise generally applicable compulsory child care and education laws. He argues that courts addressing …

Parents' Religion And Children's Welfare: Debunking The Doctrine Of Parents' Rights, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

The scope, weight, and assignment of parental rights have been the focus of much debate among legal commentators. These commentators generally have assumed that parents should have some rights in connection with the raising of their children. Rarely have commentators offered justifications for attributing rights to persons as parents, and when they have done so they have failed to subject those justifications to close scrutiny. This Article takes the novel approach of challenging parental rights in their entirety. The author explores the fundamental questions of what it means to say that individuals have rights as parents, and whether it is …

A Constitutional Right To Home Instruction?, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.