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Full-Text Articles in Law
Adultery: Trust And Children, Margaret F. Brinig
Adultery: Trust And Children, Margaret F. Brinig
Journal Articles
Deborah Rhode writes that while adultery is admittedly not good, it should not be criminal. She argues that it should not generate a tort action either, because the original purposes for which the torts of alienation of affections and criminal conversation come from a time with quite different views about marriage and gender, while no-fault and speedy divorce today give adequate remedies to the wronged spouse. Further, adultery should not affect employment (as a politician or in the military) unless it directly impacts job performance.
My own reluctance to disengage adultery and law stems from the seriousness of adultery. First, …
Revisiting Mary Ann Glendon: Abortion, Divorce, Dependency, And Rights Talk In Western Law, Margaret F. Brinig, Linda C. Mcclain
Revisiting Mary Ann Glendon: Abortion, Divorce, Dependency, And Rights Talk In Western Law, Margaret F. Brinig, Linda C. Mcclain
Journal Articles
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 …
The One-Size-Fits-All Family, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
The One-Size-Fits-All Family, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Journal Articles
Family policy and the law based on it assume universals. That is, if marriage improves the welfare of the majority of couples and their children, it is worth pushing as a policy initiative. Further, laws will be written (or kept on the books) that privilege marriage over other family forms. Similarly, research that tells us that divorce harms children except following the relatively small number of highly conflicted marriages, spawns efforts to preserve troubled marriages or even to roll back liberal or relatively inexpensive divorce laws. With yet another example, since adopted children mostly do better than children left either …
Legal Status And Effect On Children, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Legal Status And Effect On Children, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Journal Articles
One of the haunting claims of each poor, unmarried mother in Edin and Kefalas' Promises I Can Keep is that at least she can guarantee she will love her child, even though she cannot promise to make a lifelong commitment to a mate. That love, each young mother says, will be a sustaining gift both to her and the child. Similarly, in work done by sociologists McLanahan and Garfinkel to counteract the claim that it was not single parenting that made children's prospects dim, but poverty, sociologists have found that many of the bad effects of single parenting go away …
From Family To Individual And Back Again, Margaret F. Brinig
From Family To Individual And Back Again, Margaret F. Brinig
Journal Articles
Loving v. Virginia has been thought of in many ways: as an important step toward full equality for African-Americans, as, more generally, a statement about the suspect classification of race, as a declaration about the fundamental nature of marriage, and as a critical addition to the construction of the right to privacy (as well as, of course, exemplified in the validation of the Lovings' own marriage).
In my contribution to the first Loving symposium, I wrote about the increasing tendency of the Supreme Court, following the 1967 decision, to treat the rights of intimacy as belonging to the individual adults …
Marry Me, Bill: Should Cohabitation Be The (Legal) Default Option?, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Marry Me, Bill: Should Cohabitation Be The (Legal) Default Option?, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Journal Articles
Are cohabitation and marriage similar enough to warrant similar legal treatment? Earlier public reports on cohabitation have focused on the question of whether cohabitation before marriage increases or decreases the divorce rate.
But increasingly cohabitation is being proposed not as a testing ground for marriage, but as a functional substitute for it. The trend in family law and scholarship in Europe and Canada is to treat married and cohabiting couples similarly, or even identically.
In this country, the American Law Institute [ALl] recently proposed that, at least when it comes to the law of dissolution, couples who have been living …
The Supreme Court's Impact On Marriage, 1967-90, Margaret F. Brinig
The Supreme Court's Impact On Marriage, 1967-90, Margaret F. Brinig
Journal Articles
In the twenty years following Loving, the Supreme Court decided a number of cases dealing with the family. Although the Court reasoned that it was protecting marriage and extending such protection to other forms of families, the perverse effect of these decisions was to weaken the most traditional family type of all, the nuclear family. Adults, and particularly pregnant women and unwed fathers, triumphed in this move towards autonomy and rights. The vanquished included those who depended upon the family for love and sustenance: minor children, elderly adults, and longtime homemakers.
This paper discusses these cases from a family law …
The Good Of Marriage And The Morality Of Sexual Relations: Some Philosophical And Historical Observations, John M. Finnis
The Good Of Marriage And The Morality Of Sexual Relations: Some Philosophical And Historical Observations, John M. Finnis
Journal Articles
This article examines the morality of sexual relations, referencing the views of many other scholars on the subject including Acquinas, Grisez, Noonan, and Koppelman.
Property Distribution Physics: The Talisman Of Time And Middle Class Law, Margaret F. Brinig
Property Distribution Physics: The Talisman Of Time And Middle Class Law, Margaret F. Brinig
Journal Articles
Should the young professional's spouse get some share in a newly acquired career while the young military officer's will not? Does the division between alimony and property make any sense, given no-fault divorce? Is reimbursement for lost career opportunities plus a share in the couple's tangible property fair compensation for a divorcing spouse? Such difficult questions frame this piece, which will also—and I believe necessarily—digress into the nature of marriage, the duties of parenting, and modern divorce philosophy.
Marriage And Opportunism, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven M. Crafton
Marriage And Opportunism, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven M. Crafton
Journal Articles
Spouse abuse is no longer a secret. It has become a thorn in America's conscience. Abuse even warranted a lengthy Supreme Court discussion in an opinion on abortion. It is certainly worth thinking about whether anything systemic caused the apparent outbreak of violence in the home. If there is a legal "fix" that would remove incentives to abuse, and therefore reduce the incidence of abuse at the margin, we should know about it.
It is the thesis of this article that increased abuse and other undesirable behavior is a natural consequence of the fact that in some states the marriage …
Analytical And Comparative Variations On Selected Provisions Of Book One Of The Louisiana Civil Code With Special Consideration Of The Role Of Fault In The Determination Of Marital Disputes, Thomas E. Carbonneau
Analytical And Comparative Variations On Selected Provisions Of Book One Of The Louisiana Civil Code With Special Consideration Of The Role Of Fault In The Determination Of Marital Disputes, Thomas E. Carbonneau
Journal Articles
This article is intended to be a type of "structuralist" commentary upon selected provisions in Book I of the Louisiana Civil Code. Its sole purpose is to illustrate, both for pedagogical and doctrinal reasons, some of the analytical difficulties to which these code provisions might give rise when they are read in a close textual fashion. It should be emphasized that this study is a textual commentary and not a historical assessment of the sources or origins of the code texts – the latter analysis is outside the purview of the present endeavor.
Accordingly, this article consists of a critical …
Natural Law And The Marriage Of Christians, Robert E. Rodes
Natural Law And The Marriage Of Christians, Robert E. Rodes
Journal Articles
Traditional Catholic marriage doctrine is under a good deal of pressure these days, and much of the pressure seems to come from canonists. It is not surprising that this should be the case. The ideal of Christian lovers giving themselves to one another irrevocably, and living out their commitment, with God's help, until death has lost none of its attractiveness. But as the canonists reflect on what they are doing, they become increasingly disturbed by their inability to offer a practical way out to people who have signally failed to implement the ideal in their lives.
Nevertheless, it seems to …