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Full-Text Articles in Law
Civil Marriage: Threat To Democracy, Jessica Knouse
Civil Marriage: Threat To Democracy, Jessica Knouse
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Article argues that civil marriage and democracy are inherently incompatible, whether assessed from a transcultural perspective that reduces them to their most universal aspects or a culturally situated perspective that accounts for their uniquely American elaborations. Across virtually all cultures, civil marriage privileges sexual partners by offering them exclusive access to highly desirable government benefits, while democracy presupposes liberty and equality. When governments privilege sexual partners, they effectively deprive their citizens of liberty by encouraging them to enter sexual partnerships rather than selfdetermining based on their own preferences; they effectively deprive their citizens of equality by establishing insidious status …
Property And Relative Status, Nestor M. Davidson
Property And Relative Status, Nestor M. Davidson
Michigan Law Review
Property does many things-it incentivizes productive activity, facilitates exchange, forms an integral part of individual identity, and shapes communities. But property does something equally fundamental: it communicates. And perhaps the most ubiquitous and important messages that property communicates have to do with relative status, with the material world defining and reinforcing a variety of economic, social, and cultural hierarchies. This status-signalingf unction of property-withp roperty serving as an important locus for symbolic meaning through which people compare themselves to others-complicates premises underlying central discourses in contemporary property theory. In particular, status signaling can skew property's incentive and allocative benefits, leading …