Law Commons^™

Emerging Models For Alternatives To Marriage, Sanford N. Katz

Sanford N. Katz

Perhaps one of the most important changes in family law in the past thirty years has been the inclusion of certain kinds of friendships in the range of relationships from which rights and responsibilities can flow. Domestic partnership laws, a phenomenon of the 1990s, may be seen as a natural development from the judicial recognition of contract cohabitation and the legislative and judicial response to same-sex couples who, unable to meet statutory requirements for marriage, have sought official recognition of their relationships. This essay discusses an aspect of certain kinds of domestic partnership laws-their formal requirements and the extent to …

New Directions For Family Law In The United States, Sanford N. Katz

Sanford N. Katz

This article provides a survey of one major development in family law in the United States that has occurred during the most recent past. This development is the change that has occurred in marriage-like relationships. The article begins with a discussion of contract cohabitation and the extent to which it reflected a change from traditional views of formal or informal marriage as the only legally acceptable model for adults who desired to live together. It shows how contract cohabitation laid the groundwork for the establishment of domestic partnership laws. These laws were first adopted by municipalities and then by states …

Procreative Justice And The Recognition Of Marriage, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

This paper proposes that fully procreatively just affiliations -– the ones which satisfy the criteria developed here -- deserve special support and recognition. It proposes that procreative justice requires such recognition. This paper proposes that it is unjust to conflate and revise the usual categories so as to confuse procreatively just affiliations with other forms. It discusses the harm that ensues.

"Just Like Little Dogs": The Law Should Speak With Veracity And Respect, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

This article proposes veracity and respect as basic guides for law. It thus supplements dominant lines of thought which emphasize instrumentalist criteria such as promoting efficiency, maximizing utility, and deterring and remedying harm. This article proposes that it is a great good for a judge, a legislator, and all who speak as the law to exercise the virtue of veracity and to speak with respect, and that it is especially bad in the case of such legal officers to depart from those practices. It points out some implications for family law.

Modernizing Marriage, Adam Candeub, Mae Kuykendall

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article proposes to modernize the archaic procedures states use to authorize marriages so as to provide legal flexibility, promote efficiency, and enhance individual choice. Almost universally, states require couples' presence within their borders, however briefly, for a ceremony. After considering the historical and policy rationales for this requirement and finding them either obsolete or incoherent, we propose that states offer marriages to those outside their borders. Such distance marriages could occur via video-conference, using the internet or even telephone, with readily available safeguards to prevent fraud. This simple reform would allow certain couples who cannot marry under local law …

Reviewing Racism And The Right To Marry: An Analysis Of Loving V. Virginia, Kathryn L. Jordan

Senior Honors Theses

Prior to the 1967 United States Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia, many states had laws that banned the intermarriage of whites with black or other minorities. Since then, the number of interracial marriages has increased and the attitudes of society have shifted. This thesis uses Loving as basis to explore the ways in which societal views have changed since the overruling of the anti-miscegenation statutes. It first discusses the culture in America before Loving and then, explains the details of the Loving case. This is then followed by a synopsis of how the culture changed after Loving. After …

Plural Marriage And Community Property Law, Diane J. Klein

Golden Gate University Law Review

Plural marriage makes strange bedfellows. Fundamentalist Mormons, polyamorous/ polyfidelitous sex radicals, and some feminists and proponents of same-sex marriage (including this author), share the view that freedom of intimate association under the United States Constitution, properly understood, must extend beyond the right to marry exactly one person of the opposite gender from oneself. But while it is one thing to endorse marriage freedom, as a matter of principle, it is quite another actually to implement it in law. If people could simultaneously have more than one spouse, the lawyer must ask, how would things actually work, from a marital property …

Polygamy, Publicity, And Locality: The Place Of The Public In Marriage Practice, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

This Article offers a reading of State v. Holm that highlights the Utah court's struggle to define marriage and presents the court's eventual definition of marriage as one that is based on visual indicators.

A Modest Proposal: To Deport The Children Of Gay Citizens, & Etc: Immigration Law, The Defense Of Marriage Act And The Children Of Same-Sex Couples, Scott Titshaw

Scott Titshaw

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines the terms “marriage” and “spouse” for federal purposes, clearly prevents the recognition of same-sex spouses under U.S. immigration law. Unless judges and immigration officials are careful to limit it as Congress intended, DOMA might also have a tragic unintended effect on some parent-child relationships. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) employs terms like “born in wedlock” and “stepparent” to define parent-child relationships for various immigration and citizenship purposes. One could argue, therefore, that DOMA prevents INA recognition of parent-child relationships stemming from a same-sex marriage. These relationships determine whether a person can …

National Report: Canada, Marie-France Bureau

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Same-Sex Marriage, Same-Sex Cohabitation, And Same-Sex Families Around The World: Why ‘Same’ Is So Different?, Macarena Saez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This paper briefly explains the situation of same sex couples in countries that have opened marriage to individuals of the same sex, offers a summary and analysis of the status of same sex unions in several countries that have not opened marriage to same sex couples, and provides a comparative analysis of the most recurrent arguments used in the processes of recognition and denial of same sex unions in the countries reviewed.

Forty years ago, same sex couples were not legally accepted in any country. In the last thirty years, however, around 20% of the world has granted some rights …

Yours, Mine, Ours? Renovating The Antiquated Apartheid In The Law Of Property Division In Native American Divorce, Vickie Enis

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Availability Of Spousal Privileges For Same-Sex Couples, Lisa Yurwit Bergstrom, W. James Denvil

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Social Security Spouse And Survivor Benefits 101: Practical Primer Part Ii (Or Another Reason To Put A Ring On It), Francine J. Lipman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Domestic Violence And State Intervention In The American West And Australia, 1860-1930, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article calls into question stereotypical assumptions about the presumed lack of state intervention in the family and the patriarchal violence of Anglo-American frontier societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By analyzing previously unexamined cases of domestic assault and homicide in the American West and Australia, Professor Ramsey reveals a sustained (but largely ineffectual) effort to civilize men by punishing violence against women. Husbands in both the American West and Australia were routinely arrested or summoned to court for beating their wives in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Judges, police officers, journalists, and others expressed dismay …

A Diva Defends Herself: Gender And Domestic Violence In An Early Twentieth-Century Headline Trial, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This short article was presented as part of a symposium on headline criminal trials, organized by St. Louis University School of Law in honor of Lawrence Friedman. It describes and analyzes the self-defense acquittal of opera singer Mae Talbot in Nevada in 1910 on charges of murdering her abusive husband. Based on extensive research into archival trial records and newspaper reports, the article discusses how the press, the court, and trial lawyers on both sides depicted the killing and Mae’s possible defenses. Without discounting the sensationalism and entertainment value, to a scandal-hungry public, of stories about violent marriages, I contend …

Requirements Of A Valid Islamic Marriage Vis-À-Vis Requirements Of A Valid Customary Marriage In Nigeria, Olanike Sekinat Odewale Mrs

Olanike Sekinat Adelakun