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Full-Text Articles in Law

Misplaced Misrepresentations: Why Misrepresentation-Of-Age Statutes Must Be Reinterpreted As They Apply To Children’S Online Contracts, Michelle A. Sargent Nov 2013

Misplaced Misrepresentations: Why Misrepresentation-Of-Age Statutes Must Be Reinterpreted As They Apply To Children’S Online Contracts, Michelle A. Sargent

Michigan Law Review

The information age revolutionized the relationship between individuals and the internet. Today, children are the targets of online advertisements that lure them into accepting terms of service, thus entering into online agreements. While children may feel comfortable navigating websites, they are psychologically predisposed to be unsophisticated and impulsive actors online. Children lack the digital literacy to understand the implications of accepting website terms of service. Meanwhile, several states have misrepresentation-of-age statutes that prevent children from using the infancy doctrine to disaffirm online contracts because, in accepting the terms of service, children often represent that they are old enough to enter …


Transforming Juvenile Justice: Making Doctrine Out Of Dicta In Graham V. Florida, Jason Zolle Sep 2013

Transforming Juvenile Justice: Making Doctrine Out Of Dicta In Graham V. Florida, Jason Zolle

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In the late 1980s and 1990s, many state legislatures radically altered the way that their laws treated children accused of crimes. Responding to what was perceived of as an epidemic of juvenile violence, academics and policymakers began to think of child criminals as a "new breed" of incorrigible "superpredators." States responded by making it easier for prosecutors to try and sentence juveniles as adults, even making it mandatory in some circumstances. Yet in the past decade, the Supreme Court handed down four opinions that limit the states' ability to treat children as adults in the justice system. Roper v. Simmons …


It's Time To Start Showing A Little Restraint: In Search Of A Compromise On Federal Seclusion And Restraint Legislation, Cali Cope-Kasten Sep 2013

It's Time To Start Showing A Little Restraint: In Search Of A Compromise On Federal Seclusion And Restraint Legislation, Cali Cope-Kasten

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In 2009, the United States House of Representatives heard testimony that hundreds of students had been injured in schools by teachers secluding or physically restraining them. Congress had never legislated on seclusion and restraint, but the alarming allegations of student injuries and deaths prompted many parents to demand a ban on the use of the techniques in schools. In the continuing debate, school officials have protested that seclusion and restraint are important tools for teachers to protect their classrooms from out-of-control students. Torn between these two extreme positions, Congress has twice attempted — but failed — to pass federal legislation …


Adoptive Couple V. Baby Girl: Two-And-A-Half Ways To Destroy Indian Law, Marcia A. Yablon-Zug Apr 2013

Adoptive Couple V. Baby Girl: Two-And-A-Half Ways To Destroy Indian Law, Marcia A. Yablon-Zug

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In December 2011, Judge Malphrus of the South Carolina family court ordered Matt and Melanie Capobianco to relinquish custody of Veronica, their two-year-old, adopted daughter, to her biological father, Dusten Brown. A federal statute known as the Indian Child Welfare Act ("ICWA") mandated Veronica's return. However, the court's decision to return Veronica pursuant to this law incited national outrage and strident calls for the Act's repeal. While this outrage was misplaced, it may nonetheless have influenced the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to hear the appeal. The case of Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl is emotionally complicated, but it is not …


Neither Sad Nor Strange: Recovering The Logic Of Anticruelty Organizations In Gilded Age America, Bryn Resser Pallesen Apr 2013

Neither Sad Nor Strange: Recovering The Logic Of Anticruelty Organizations In Gilded Age America, Bryn Resser Pallesen

Michigan Law Review

In 1877, the American Humane Association ("AHA") incorporated as one of the first national organizations dedicated to the protection of animals. Nine years later, it amended its constitution to include the protection of children in its chartered mission. By 1908, there were 354 anticruelty organizations in the United States, 185 of which were, like the AHA, humane societies invested in the welfare of both animals and children (pp. 2-3). As primary source documents reveal, Gilded Age humanitarians viewed the joint pursuit of child and animal protection as entirely sensible (p. 5). One of the Illinois Humane Society's founding directors, for …


Family History: Inside And Out, Kerry Abrams Apr 2013

Family History: Inside And Out, Kerry Abrams

Michigan Law Review

The twenty-first century has seen the dawn of a new era of the family, an era that has its roots in the twentieth. Many of the social and scientific phenomena of our time - same-sex couples, in vitro fertilization, single-parent families, international adoption - have inspired changes in the law. Legal change has encompassed both constitutional doctrine and statutory innovations, from landmark Supreme Court decisions articulating a right to procreate (or not), a liberty interest in the care, custody, and control of one's children, and even a right to marry, to state no-fault divorce statutes that have fundamentally changed the …


Surrender And Subordination: Birth Mothers And Adoption Law Reform, Elizabeth J. Samuels Jan 2013

Surrender And Subordination: Birth Mothers And Adoption Law Reform, Elizabeth J. Samuels

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

For more than thirty years, adoption law reform advocates have been seeking to restore for adult adoptees the right to access their original birth certificates, a right that was lost in all but two states between the late 1930s and 1990. The advocates have faced strong opposition and have succeeded only in recent years and only in eight states. Among the most vigorous advocates for access are birth mothers who surrendered their children during a time it was believed that adoption would relieve unmarried women of shame and restore them to a respectable life. The birth mother advocates say that …