Law Commons^™

Racial Myopia In [Family] Law, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Racial Myopia in [Family] Law presents a critique of Family Law for the One-Hundred-Year Life, an Article that claims that age myopia within family law fails older adults and prevents them from creating legal bonds with other adults outside the traditional marital model. This Response posits that racial myopia is a common yet complex phenomenon in almost every area of law, and it presents most often by centering whiteness as the default standard while failing to account for race and its impact on the law. Race—as well as the scholarship that incorporates race into normative family structure and identity—must be …

A Critical Race Theory Approach To Children’S Rights, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article uses critical race theory to analyze the impact of corporal punishment and physical child abuse on African American children’s rights in the United States. From an international perspective, the banning of corporal punishment is consistent with multidisciplinary research about the negative effects of physical discipline on children. However, throughout United States history, African American parenting oftentimes utilizes physical discipline to teach children strict compliance with authority in order to prevent deadly violence from being inflicted upon them by white people. Using critical race theory concepts, this Article illustrates how state endorsement of corporal punishment within the family and …

Ag Barr Ruling Puts Asylum Seekers At Deadly Risk, Natalie Nanasi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Are Domestic Abusers Terrorists: Rhetoric, Reality, And Asylum Law, Natalie Nanasi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The terms terrorism and terrorist are highly charged but all too often imprecisely utilized in legal, media, and political arenas. The terminology has even entered the field of intimate partner violence, where the phrases terrorism in the home or intimate terrorism have been used to describe domestic abuse. This language has proliferated not only due to identified commonalities between intimate partner abuse and terroristic behaviors but also because of the rhetorical impact of the words in highlighting the gravity of domestic violence. However, expanding the legal framework of terrorism into new areas has potentially serious and far-reaching consequences. It is …

Constitutional Parentage, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Close Encounters: A Feminist Legal Theory Analysis Of The State Treatment Of Female Child Sexual Abuse Victims, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article explores the way in which the law currently deals with sexual violence against female children in the home – evaluating the ways in which the state has access to the private realm of the family and the ways in which civil and criminal legal systems deal with this type of trauma to girls across a spectrum of time. Research shows that the child protection system only captures a small percentage of sexual abuse right after it happens. However, research also shows that female child sex abuse survivors appear in statistically significant numbers among other groups – drug and …

Cruel Techniques, Unusual Secrets, William W. Berry, Meghan J. Ryan

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In the recent case of Glossip v. Gross, the Supreme Court denied a death row petitioner’s challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol. An important part of Justice Alito’s majority opinion highlighted the existence of a relationship between the constitutionality of a punishment and the requirement of a constitutional technique available to administer the punishment.

Far from foreclosing future challenges, this principle ironically highlights the failure of the Court to describe the relationship under the Eighth Amendment between three distinct categories of punishment: (1) the type of punishment imposed by the court — i.e., death penalty, life without parole, life with …

Domestic Violence Asylum And The Perpetuation Of The Victimization Narrative, Natalie Nanasi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Pitiful. Helpless. Powerless. The words often used to describe survivors of domestic violence conjure a vivid and specific image of a woman lacking both strength and agency. These (mis)conceptions stem from the theories of “Battered Woman Syndrome” and “learned helplessness,” developed in 1979 by psychologist Lenore Walker, who hypothesized that intimate partner abuse ultimately causes a woman to resign herself to her fate and cease efforts to free herself from violence or dangerous situations.

Although widely criticized, learned helplessness has permeated the legal establishment, for example, serving as the foundation for mandatory arrest and “no drop” policies in the criminal …

Parentage Without Gender, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Dramatic changes in the family form over the last several decades have put increasing pressure on the parent-child relationship. This elevation of the parent-child relationship in law and policy means that parents have both greater rights and more onerous obligations than in a system that spreads responsibility for children more broadly. The question of what constitutes a legal parent-child relationship under American law has become increasingly important because of its primacy in the determination of rights and obligations, but also increasingly complex because of reproductive technology and changing patterns of childbearing. The complexity and lack of cohesion that characterizes modern …

Family Law's Loose Cannon Book Review, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

An 'I Do' I Choose: How The Fight For Marriage Access Supports A Per Se Finding Of Persecution For Asylum Cases Based On Forced Marriage, Natalie Nanasi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

There is something special about marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court, in striking down anti-miscegenation laws, restrictions on the right to marry for disadvantaged groups, and most recently, the Defense of Marriage Act, has long recognized the marital union to be "sacred" and "fundamental to…existence." Yet this analysis is dramatically different when courts consider asylum law, where a woman who is seeking refuge in the United States to protect her from a forced marriage abroad will likely be denied protection because the harm she fears is not considered to be a "persecutory" act. She may therefore be forced to spend a …

Overstepping Ethical Boundaries? Limitations On State Efforts To Provide Access To Justice In Family Courts, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Family law courts in America are overwhelmed with self-represented parties who try their best to navigate an unfamiliar territory laden with procedural and evidentiary rules. Efforts to level the playing field in these courts have resulted in state entities and judges taking on roles that previously belonged to attorneys. State supreme court judges and state agencies draft and promulgate family law forms, such as divorce pleadings and paternity acknowledgments, to provide poor citizens access to justice. While these efforts have resulted in positive outcomes for some families, reliance on the state’s imprimatur has caused significant harm to others. Upon closer …

Grandma In The White House: Legal Support For Intergenerational Caregiving, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Marian Robinson’s status as the live-in First Grandmother is an example of a growing trend in the United States - the multigenerational family. The 2010 United States Census Data reflects that the number of households with multiple generations living under one roof has increased by 25% this decade. Mrs. Robinson also reflects another new development in American families: grandparents helping their adult children with caregiving. More than 70% of grandparents are taking care of their grandkids on a regular basis, and 13% are primary caretakers. Many grandparents treat their role as caregiver like a profession, and they sacrifice jobs, residences, …

The New Illegitimacy: Tying Parentage To Marital Status For Lesbian Co-Parents, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Should a child be allowed two legal parents only if born into a marriage? For children of heterosexual parents, the answer, today, is definitively "no." Constitutional protection for parental rights does not permit the ties between an unwed father and his child to be severed simply because he is not married to the child's mother. But the answer is often different for the child of a lesbian mother. In a recent opinion, Debra H. v. Janice R., the New York Court of Appeals ruled that a lesbian co-parent- a woman who had participated in the conception, birth, and early rearing …

The Principle Of Subsidiarity Applied: Reforming The Legal Framework To Capture The Psychological Abuse Of Children, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Psychological abuse is the most prevalent type of child abuse. It lies at the core of child maltreatment because it is embedded in and interacts with physical and sexual abuse, as well as physical neglect. It also has a more extensive and destructive impact on the development of children than any other type of abuse. Yet, the current child protection system fails to adequately address the problem because the normative framework of the child protection system does not always include the psychological abuse of children. For the majority of states, the physical health, safety, and well-being of children are focal …

The Texas Mis-Step: Why The Largest Child Removal In Modern U.S. History Failed, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article sets forth the historical and legal reasons as to how the State of Texas botched the removal of 439 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints parents residing in Eldorado, Texas. The Department of Family and Protective Services in Texas overreached its authority by treating this case like a class-action removal based on an impermissible legal argument, rather than focusing on the facts and circumstances that could have been substantiated for a select group of children at risk. This impermissible legal argument regarding the “pervasive belief system” of a polygamist sect that allowed minor …

Civil Rites: The Gay Marriage Controversy In Historical Perspective, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This short essay, written for a volume that celebrates and reflects on Lawrence M. Friedman’s work in legal history and legal culture, explores the modern controversy about same-sex marriage through a historical lens. The legalization of same-sex marriage by five states, and the express condemnation of it by more than forty others, has reintroduced the age-old problem of non-uniform marriage laws and the complicated interactions that follow. This modern story - a challenge to traditional marriage, a divisive moral debate, and the emergence of strong oppositional forces that are stuck, at least temporarily, but perhaps indefinitely, in a kind of …

The African-American Child Welfare Act: A Legal Redress For African-American Disproportionality In Child Protection Cases, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article proposes a radical change in the way African-American children and families are handled within the legal system when abuse and neglect are at issue. African-American disproportionality in child protection cases is significant for the United States because documentation shows that African-American children are overrepresented in the child welfare system in forty-eight states, although research shows that there is no difference in the occurrence of child abuse and neglect among the races. The first part of the article presents an overview of disproportionality by presenting the national statistics and research, revealing where racial bias and disparate treatment occurs within …

Caregiving And The Case For Testamentary Freedom, Joshua C. Tate

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Almost all U.S. states allow individuals to disinherit their descendants for any reason or no reason, but most of the world's legal systems currently do not. This Article contends that broad freedom of testation is defensible because it allows elderly people to reward family members who are caregivers. The Article explores the common-law origins of freedom of testation, which developed in the shadow of the medieval rule of primogeniture, a doctrine of no contemporary relevance. The growing problem of eldercare, however, offers a justification for the twenty-first century. Increases in life expectancy have led to a sharp rise in the …

Christianity And The Legal Status Of Abandoned Children In The Later Roman Empire, Joshua C. Tate

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Late Roman imperial legislation relating to abandoned or exposed children has been the subject of much debate. Some have argued that the constitutions of Constantine relating to abandoned children marked a new Christian influence, and that the years between Constantine and Justinian merely refined and explained Constantine's legislation. This paper argues that the legislation of Constantine was not distinctly Christian in content, but that some Christian influence can be seen in the rhetoric of imperial constitutions beginning in the fifth century, and that Christian ideas seem to have affected both the substance and the rhetoric of Justinian's legislation. The paper …

Punishing Family Status, Jennifer M. Collins, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article focuses upon two basic but under-explored questions: when does, and when should, the state use the criminal justice apparatus to burden individuals on account of their familial status? We address the first question in Part I by revealing a variety of laws permeating the criminal justice system that together form a string of family ties burdens, laws that impose punishment upon individuals on account of their familial status. The seven burdens we train our attention upon are omissions liability for failure to rescue, parental responsibility laws, incest, bigamy, adultery, nonpayment of child support, and nonpayment of parental support. …

Criminal Justice And The Challenge Of Family Ties, Dan Markel, Jennifer M. Collins, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article asks two basic questions: When does, and when should, the state use the criminal justice apparatus to accommodate family ties, responsibilities, and interests? We address these questions by first revealing a variety of laws that together form a string of family ties subsidies and benefits pervading the criminal justice system. Notwithstanding our recognition of the important role family plays in securing the conditions for human flourishing, we then explain the basis for erecting a Spartan presumption against these family ties subsidies and benefits within the criminal justice system. We delineate the scope and rationale for the presumption and …

Family Boundaries: Third-Party Rights And Obligations With Respect To Children, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Resurrecting Comity: Revisiting The Problem Of Non-Uniform Marriage Laws, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This paper addresses the age-old problem of interstate marriage recognition, raised anew by the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. The problem, in a nutshell, is whether and when a state should recognize a marriage validly celebrated elsewhere when its own laws would have prohibited the marriage from taking place.

Non-uniform marriage laws and the conflicts they engender are not new. To the contrary, states historically disagreed about many aspects of domestic relations laws, and in particular about marriage prohibitions. Conflicts arose when couples married in one state and then sought recognition of their union in a state that would …

Job Security Without Equality: The Family And Medical Leave Act Of 1993, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This piece reevaluates the passage and implementation of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) against the egalitarian ideal described by the Supreme Court in its recent decision in Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs. The Court in Hibbs upheld the FMLA against an Eleventh Amendment challenge, concluding that Congress enacted the law as a congruent and proportional remedy to the longstanding history of state-sponsored discrimination against working women. According to the Court, Congress enacted the FMLA to remedy a longstanding history of discrimination against working women by forcing employers to offer caretaking leave on gender-neutral terms. At least …

Separated Spouses, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Adoption In The Progressive Era: Preserving, Creating, And Re-Creating Families, Joanna L. Grossman, Chris Guthrie

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Road Less Taken: Annulment At The Turn Of The Century, Joanna L. Grossman, Chris Guthrie

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Guardianship: A Research Note, Lawrence M. Friedman, Joanna L. Grossman, Chris Guthrie

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.