Law Commons^™

Promoting The General Welfare: Legal Reform To Lift Women And Children In The United States Out Of Poverty, Jill Engle

Jill Engle

American women and children have been poor in exponentially greater numbers than men for decades. The problem has historic, institutional roots which provide a backdrop for this article’s introduction. English and early U.S. legal systems mandated a lesser economic status for women. Despite numerous legal changes aimed at combating the financial disadvantage of American women and children, the problem is worsening. American female workers, many in low-paying job sectors, earn roughly twenty percent less than their male counterparts. Nearly forty percent of single mothers and their children subsist below the poverty level. The recession exacerbated this problem, mostly because unemployment …

Rethinking Women's And Gender Studies, Gender And Education, Colleen Mcgloin

Colleen McGloin

This compilation of scholarly articles examines the (inter)disciplinary field of Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) looking at the genealogy of WGS, its foundational principles, its language and practices. The work considers the use of language, in particular the way certain terminology within the field invites engagement with the political aims of WGS, or limits its potential for more rigorous pedagogical practices and analytic frameworks. Chapters are organised into five sections: ‘foundational assumptions’, ‘ubiquitous descriptions’, ‘epistemologies rethought’, ‘silences and disavowals’, and ‘establishment challenges’. Within these themes, specific terms (among them ‘feminism’, ‘interdisciplinarity’, ‘pedagogy’, ‘intersectionality’, and ‘community’) are examined for their application …

California Egg Toss - The High Costs Of Avoiding Unenforceable Surrogacy Contracts, Jennifer Jackson

Jennifer Jackson

In an emotionally charged decision regarding surrogacy contracts, it is important to recognize the ramifications, costs, and policy. There are advantages to both “gestational carrier surrogacy” contracts and “traditional surrogacy” contracts. However, this paper focuses on the differences between these contracts using case law. Specifically, this paper will focus on the implications of California case law regarding surrogacy contracts. Cases such as Johnson v. Calvert and In Re Marriage of Moschetta provide a clear distinction between these contracts. This distinction will show that while gestational carrier surrogacy contracts are more expensive, public policy and court opinions will provide certainty and …

California Egg Toss - The High Costs Of Avoiding Unenforceable Surrogacy Contracts, Jennifer Jackson

Jennifer Jackson

In an emotionally charged decision regarding surrogacy contracts, it is important to recognize the ramifications, costs, and policy. There are advantages to both “gestational carrier surrogacy” contracts and “traditional surrogacy” contracts. However, this paper focuses on the differences between these contracts using case law. Specifically, this paper will focus on the implications of California case law regarding surrogacy contracts. Cases such as Johnson v. Calvert and In Re Marriage of Moschetta provide a clear distinction between these contracts. This distinction will show that while gestational carrier surrogacy contracts are more expensive, public policy and court opinions will provide certainty and …

Veiled Discrimination, Sahar F. Aziz

Sahar F. Aziz

Should employees have the legal right to “be themselves” at work? Most Americans would answer in the negative because work is a privilege, not an entitlement. An employer’s workplace rules that define professionalism, therefore, are his prerogative and defined by the demands of the marketplace. Underlying this conclusion is the false premise that objective and neutral factors shape modern notions of professionalism. To the contrary, professionalism is a subjective concept dependent on the decision makers’ worldview, norms, values, and definitions of propriety. Employees who belong to the employer’s social group or fall within society’s majority are advantaged as minimal effort …

Killers Shouldn't Inherit From Their Victims . . . Or Should They?, Carla Spivack

Carla Spivack

The article offers a profound reassessment of so-called “Slayer Rules,” laws that, in all states, bar killers from inheriting from their victims. For the first time in the literature, this piece questions the underlying rationale for these rules by examining the context of family violence and mental illness in which these killing occur, and argues that, given that context, these rules are often neither legally nor morally justified. My argument is as follows: at first glance, the idea behind Slayer Rules seems reasonable, indeed, morally obvious: a killer should not be able to profit from his or her crime. This …

Wie Featured Person Of The Month Highlights (Katina Michael), Keyana Tenant, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

The WIE Featured Person of the Month is Katina Michael, editor-in-chief of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine. After working at OTIS Elevator Company and Andersen Consulting, Katina was offered and exciting graduate engineering position at Nortel in 1996; and her career has been fast track from there. Read Katina’s story on Page 7.

Dirty Harry Meets Dirty Diapers: Masculinities, At-Home Fathers & Making The Law Work For Families, Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

Who is the “man”? Implicit in that question is whether the man at issue demonstrates traits traditionally associated with masculinity: traits such as power, rejecting all things associated with being female, aggression, and being the family breadwinner. If a man, then, abandons paid work and stays at home full-time with his children, is he still a “man” as typically defined? The answer to this question bears both on whether families are truly evolving away from the gendered construct that places men as family breadwinners and women as caregivers and whether work-family balance law meets the needs of these—and all—families. This …

Killers Shouldn't Inherit From Their Victims . . . Or Should They?, Carla Spivack

Carla Spivack

The article offers a profound reassessment of so-called “Slayer Rules,” laws that, in most states, bar killers from inheriting from their victims. For the first time in the literature, this piece questions the underlying rationale for these rules by examining the context of family violence and mental illness in which these killing occur, and argues that, given that context, they are often neither legally nor morally justified. at first glance, the idea behind Slayer Rules seems reasonable, indeed, morally obvious: a killer should not be able to profit from his or her crime. This truism, however, may not necessarily be …

Essay: A Decade After Abu Ghraib: Lessons In "Softening Up" The Enemy And Sex-Based Humiliation, Johanna Bond

Johanna Bond

A DECADE AFTER ABU GHRAIB: LESSONS IN “SOFTENING UP” THE ENEMY AND SEX-BASED HUMILIATION Johanna Bond* A decade after Abu Ghraib, there remains a dearth of analysis exploring the role that women played as perpetrators of violence and the socio-cultural factors that supported the abuse. This essay fills that gap in the legal literature. Although women were among the perpetrators of sexual abuse and men among its victims, the abuse played upon and reinforced gender-subordinating stereotypes that serve to regulate male and female behavior, enforce heterosexuality, and privilege whiteness. The sexual abuse became a process whereby the enemy was “feminized,” …

Taxing Polygamy: Married Filing Jointly (And Severally?), Samuel D. Brunson

Samuel D. Brunson

The tax law treats married and unmarried taxpayers differently in several respects. Married persons, for example, can file and pay their taxes as a unified taxpayer, with rates that are different than those that apply to unmarried taxpayers. This different treatment of married persons has elicited criticism over the years. Some of the more salient criticisms include that married persons do not necessarily function as an economic unit, that joint filing discourages women from working, and that the various exclusions from the joint filing regime—including gay couples—is unfair.

This Article looks at joint filing through the lens of polygamy. Polygamy …

Killers Shouldn't Inherit From Their Victims . . . Or Should They?, Carla Spivack

Carla Spivack

The article offers a profound reassessment of so-called “Slayer Rules,” laws that, in most states, bar killers from inheriting from their victims. For the first time in the literature, this piece questions the underlying rationale for these rules by examining the context of family violence and mental illness in which these killing occur, and argues that, given that context, they are often neither legally nor morally justified. My argument is as follows: At first glance, the idea behind Slayer Rules seems reasonable, indeed, morally obvious: a killer should not be able to profit from his or her crime. This truism, …

Selling Sex: Analyzing The Improper Use Defense To Contract Enforcement Through The Lens Of Carroll Versus Beardon, Julie M. Spanbauer

Julie M. Spanbauer

The 1963 decision of the Supreme Court of Montana in Carroll v. Beardon, occupies less than three full pages in the Pacific Reporter and involves a simple real estate transaction in which a “madam” sold a house used for prostitution to another “madam.” The opinion is the last in a long line of cases to speak specifically to the issue of enforcement of facially legitimate contracts that in some manner arguably involve or are related to prostitution and is commonly cited in treatises and hornbooks as representative of the movement by courts toward enforcement of such contracts under the law …

Selling Sex: Analyzing The Improper Use Defense To Contract Enforcement Through The Lens Of Carroll V. Beardon, Julie M. Spanbauer

Julie M. Spanbauer

The 1963 decision of the Supreme Court of Montana in Carroll v. Beardon, occupies less than three full pages in the Pacific Reporter and involves a simple real estate transaction in which a “madam” sold a house used for prostitution to another “madam.” The opinion is the last in a long line of cases to speak specifically to the issue of enforcement of facially legitimate contracts that in some manner arguably involve or are related to prostitution and is commonly cited in treatises and hornbooks as representative of the movement by courts toward enforcement of such contracts under the law …

“The Good Mother” Mothering, Feminism, And Incarceration, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Deseriee A. Kennedy

No abstract provided.

Let's Get Serious: Spousal Abuse Should Be A Complete Bar To Inheritance, Carla Spivack

Carla Spivack

I argue that a finding that a spouse or intimate partner committed domestic violence should bar that person’s inheritance from the victim under a will, a will substitute (such as a trust) and under intestacy – in other words, in any form. Unlike the few similar proposals in the literature, I advocate a complete bar, and I situate the proposal in the context of inheritance law in general and fault-based inheritance regimes in particular. Further, unlike previous proposals, I justify the bar as an important use of the law’s expressive function and as a systemic approach to domestic violence. I …

Hiv And Women: Incongruent Policies, Criminal Consequences, Aziza Ahmed

Aziza Ahmed

The new agency UN WOMEN must play an active role in the standardization of laws and policies at the global and national level where their incongruence has negative and often criminal consequences for the health and lives of women and girls. This article focuses in on three such examples: opt-out testing for HIV, criminalization of vertical transmission, and the new World Health Organization guidelines on breastfeeding.

The Abortion Informed Consent Debate: More Light, Less Heat, Nadia N. Sawicki

Nadia N. Sawicki

State abortion informed consent laws – including those requiring physicians to disclose that abortion terminates the life of a “whole, separate, unique, living human being” or display ultrasound images to patients seeking abortions – are being adopted at a rapid pace. Health law scholars who oppose these laws uniformly criticize them as being fundamentally inconsistent with the doctrine of informed consent. This Article directly challenges this conventional approach. It argues that the doctrine of informed consent does not impose nearly as significant a barrier to abortion disclosure laws as many critics claim. Rather, the ethical and legal principles of informed …

Labeling The Victim Of Sex Trafficking: Exploring The Borderland Between Rhetoric And Reality, Michelle Dempsey, Mary Bosworth, Carolyn Hoyle

Michelle Madden Dempsey

In this article we discuss findings from a small scoping study into the experiences of victims of trafficking and those who work with them. We use testimonies from our interviews to examine issues of choice, slavery and escape. We challenge some of the current language and terminology in the literature on trafficking and call for a more nuanced appreciation of the relationship between agency and victimization.

Teaching Controversial Topics, Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

At the 2009 Future of Family Law Education conference at the William Mitchell School of Law, the authors participated in a panel discussing strategies for teaching controversial topics, which focused on teaching reproductive rights and related gender issues. This essay collects some of the strategies discussed at the conference. First we address what constitutes a “controversial” legal topic, outlining the several different ways in which a topic might be or become controversial within the context of a particular class. Next, we discuss the importance of laying the groundwork, throughout the semester, for the anticipated—and unanticipated— discussions surrounding controversial topics and …

The Costs Of Multiple Gestation Pregnancies In Assisted Reproduction, Urska Velikonja

Urska Velikonja

The United States, unlike most developed countries, does not regulate its fertility industry. Rather, it has vested control over the industry to professional organizations and to market forces. While lack of regulation has produced a vibrant market for ART services, it has also produced an undesirable consequence: a high rate of multiple gestation pregnancies. In this article I summarize the data on the medical, psychological, and financial costs associated with multiple pregnancies to the parents, the children, and the American society. I suggest that the current U.S. regulatory regime has not only failed to address these costs as they surfaced, …

A Charade Of Change: Qisas And Diyat Ordinance Allows Honor Killings To Go Unpunished In Pakistan, Stephanie Palo

Stephanie Palo

This article begins with the story of Samia Sarwar. At age 17, Samia was forced to marry her cousin by arranged marriage. After enduring years of abuse, she hoped to obtain a divorce and sought the advice of her parents. Instead of advice, her parents threatened her life. While her parents were making their Hajj pilgrimage, Samia fled and met with human rights lawyer, Hina Jilani. While visiting in her offices, Samia was shot dead by an assassin hired by her parents.

Even though there is no doubt that Samia Sarwar was murdered, the current law in Pakistan has allowed …

"The Woman Is Out:" A New Look At The Law In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Carla Spivack

Carla Spivack

No abstract provided.

Escogedoras And Molineras In Veracruz, Mexico (1928-32): Exploring The Political Role Of Popular Women In Post-Revolutionary Society, Ernesto A. Hernandez-Lopez

Ernesto A. Hernandez

This article suggests that during Revolutionary state formation (1928-32) in Mexico, Veracruzano women had active roles in state politics. This political participation existed despite women in Mexico being denied legal rights to vote or to hold political office. This essay demonstrates how escogedoras (coffee sorters) and molineras (maize grinders) used their economic influence to negotiate with central and regional governments in Mexico. For escogedoras their participation in an export industry provided 'negotiation power' to participate in politics. For molineras working in an industry which dramatically decreased a woman's work-week from 30 plus hours to 4 hours provided them with similar …

Feminisms And Feminist Voices: An Introduction, Nancy Marder

Nancy S. Marder

No abstract provided.

Achievement Values And Anomie Among Women In A Low-Income Housing Project, Larry Barnett

Larry D Barnett

No abstract provided.