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Full-Text Articles in Law

Privacy Torts: Unreliable Remedies For Lgbt Plaintiffs, Anita L. Allen Oct 2010

Privacy Torts: Unreliable Remedies For Lgbt Plaintiffs, Anita L. Allen

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In the United States, both constitutional law and tort law recognize the right to privacy, understood as legal entitlement to an intimate life of one’s own free from undue interference by others and the state. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“LGBT”) persons have defended their interests in dignity, equality, autonomy, and intimate relationships in the courts by appealing to that right. In the constitutional arena, LGBT Americans have claimed the protection of state and federal privacy rights with a modicum of well-known success. Holding that homosexuals have the same right to sexual privacy as heterosexuals, Lawrence v. Texas symbolizes the …


Diverging Family Structure And “Rational” Behavior: The Decline In Marriage As A Disorder Of Choice, Amy L. Wax May 2010

Diverging Family Structure And “Rational” Behavior: The Decline In Marriage As A Disorder Of Choice, Amy L. Wax

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The past fifty years have witnessed a growing divergence in family structure by social class, income, education, and race. The goal is to explain why significant segments of the population are moving away from the traditional patterns of family and reproduction. Most demographers acknowledge that external and material constraints fail to account for most of the present dispersion by class and race in marriage, divorce, and patterns of childbearing. Nor do these factors explain the widening of disparities over time. In attempting to improve on prior theories, this paper proposes a different explanation for these developments. It argues that demographic …


The Stories Of Marriage, Katharine K. Baker Jan 2010

The Stories Of Marriage, Katharine K. Baker

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The gay and lesbian community's response to California's Proposition 8 was strong and quick. Within days of the 2008 election, opponents of the measure had targeted its proponents, in particular the Mormon Church, as subjects for scorn. Singling out the Mormon Church on this issue was particularly ironic because to the extent that members of the Mormon Church were responsible for the success of Proposition 8, they simply did to the gay community what courts of the United States consistently did to their forebears: defined away their right to marry. In striking down individuals' rights to enter into polygamous marriages, …


Significant Statistics: The Unwitting Policy Making Of Mathematically Ignorant Judges, Michael I. Meyerson, William Meyerson Jan 2010

Significant Statistics: The Unwitting Policy Making Of Mathematically Ignorant Judges, Michael I. Meyerson, William Meyerson

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This article will explore several areas in which judges, hampered by their mathematical ignorance, have permitted numerical analysis to subvert the goals of our legal system. In Part II, I will examine the perversion of the presumption of innocence in paternity cases, where courts make the counter-factual assumption that regardless of the evidence, prior to DNA testing, a suspect has a 50/50 chance of being the father. In Part III, I will explore the unnecessary injection of race into trials involving the statistics of DNA matching, even when race is entirely irrelevant to the particular case. Next, in Part IV, …


Sex In And Out Of Intimacy, Laura Rosenbury, Jennifer Rothman Jan 2010

Sex In And Out Of Intimacy, Laura Rosenbury, Jennifer Rothman

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The state has long attempted to regulate sexual activity by channeling sex into various forms of state-supported intimacy. Although commentators and legal scholars of diverse political perspectives generally believe such regulation is declining, the freedom to engage in diverse sexual activities has not been established as a matter of law. Instead, courts have extended legal protection to consensual sexual acts only to the extent such acts support other state interests, most often marriage and procreation. Although Lawrence v. Texas altered some aspects of that vision, it reinscribed others by suggesting that sexual activity should be protected from state interference only …