Law Commons^™

Rethink The Laws Relating To Fathers (Change: With The Decline In Married Mothers And Traditional Families, The Legal Image Of Dads Needs Re-Examination), Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

This "marital presumption" permitted courts to assume a set of biological facts in the name of preserving the sanctity and stability of what was assumed to be the cornerstone of a healthy society — the traditional family of husband, wife and children. In the last decades of the 20th century, science developed paternity testing with results approaching certainty. Despite the availability of DNA testing, the marital presumption is still used in many courtrooms to answer the question of who is the legal father. What one scholar has called "the law's struggle to preserve the fiction of an older moral order" …

Virtual Mothers And The Meaning Of Parenthood, Annette Ruth Appell

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Professor Appell supports the use of the traditional parental rights doctrine, which accords biological parents, particularly mothers, parental status alienable only voluntarily or upon proof of unfitness. She defends the doctrine against the criticisms that it is regressive and does not protect the interests of children or de facto parents. She contends that the attacks on traditional parental rights doctrine are misguided because they work to the disadvantage of families who do not easily fit the dominant norm-minority, single-mother, lower income, or politically and legally under-represented families. After examining the constitutional underpinnings and application of the parental rights doctrine as …

Gender Bias Task Force: Comments On Family Law Issues, Philip Trompeter

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lochner Redeemed: Family Privacy After Troxel And Carhart, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Restitching The American Quilt: Untangling Marriage From The Nuclear Family, Lisa Milot

Scholarly Works

Part I of this Note will trace the various threads of American marriage law, particularly the perception that marriage is unraveling today due to an unprecedented divorce crisis. Part II will disentangle the conflicting patterns of contract law and status regimes that variously govern marriage, focusing on the uneven enforcement of antenuptial contracts and the implications of such. Part III will argue that the true focus of regulation is the status of the nuclear family, not of marriage per se. Finally, Part IV will propose a bifurcation of the legal regimes governing marriage and the family, recognizing the ability of …

How To Plot Love On An Indifference Curve, Brian H. Bix

Michigan Law Review

In From Partners to Parents: The Second Revolution in Family Law, June Carbone offers nothing less than a whirlwind tour of the current doctrinal and policy debates of Family Law - an astounding feat in a book whose main text (excluding endnotes and appendices) does not reach 250 pages. There seem to be few controversies about which Carbone has not read widely and come to a conclusion, and usually a fair-minded one: from the effect of no-fault divorce reforms on the divorce rate, to the long-term consequences of slavery for the African-American family (pp. 67-84), to whether the Aid to …

Are We Protecting The Wrong Rights?, Jennifer L. Saulino

Michigan Law Review

Elizabeth Bartholet, in her book Nobody's Children, takes a strong step toward beginning a new kind of dialogue about abused and neglected children. She positions herself as a liberal who has come to terms with the fact that traditional liberal ideals are in conflict with the needs of abused and neglected children (p. 5). In doing so, she tries to convince her readers that, regardless of ideology, we all should have a different focus in the area of child abuse and neglect law. She uses Sabrina as one of several examples of how programs for abused and neglected children that …

Relatives As Parents Coalition Speaker, Charlotte Hughart

Charlotte Hughart

No abstract provided.

Re-Evaluating Grandparental Visitation In North Carolina In Light Of Troxel V. Granville, John M. Lewis

Campbell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Closing The Window Of Opportunity: The Limited Rights Of Putative Fathers Under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 48-3-601 And In Re Byrd, Lauren Vaughan

Campbell Law Review

This note will discuss whether the court's interpretation of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 48- 3-601 is consistent with legislative intent and with North Carolina case law, and will then address whether this statute adequately protects the constitutional rights of unmarried putative fathers as mandated by the United States Supreme Court.

Florida's Foster Care System Fails Its Children, Timothy L. Arcaro

Faculty Scholarship

This article will attempt to draw attention to the pervasive problem of child sexual abuse in foster care by identifying circumstances that contribute to sexual victimization. Hopefully the discussion will illuminate the plight of child victims of sexual abuse and generate discourse on a new paradigm of protection initiatives for foster children. Part I of the article will explain child protection proceedings and how children enter the foster care system. Part II will describe common characteristics of state foster care systems. Part III will discuss traditional notions of child sexual abuse and their illusory application in the context of sexual …

A "Frozen Exception" For The Frozen Embryo: The Davis "Reasonable Alternatives Exception", Jennifer L. Medenwald

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Grandma Got Run Over By The Supreme Court: Suggestions For A Constitutional Nonparental Visitation Statute After Troxel V. Granville, Eric B. Martin

Washington Law Review

Every state in the Union has a statute allowing for court-ordered child visitation by non-parents. Until the summer of 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court had never ruled on the constitutionality of such statutes. When the Court finally tackled Washington's statute in Troxel v. Granville, the Court left the most significant questions unanswered, while casting doubt on the validity of Washington's statute. Prior to Troxel, the Washington Supreme Court had held Washington's nonparental visitation statute facially unconstitutional, finding that the statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment rights of parents. After granting certiorari, the U.S. Supreme Court held Washington's statute unconstitutional …

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Vasquez V. Hawthorne Wrongfully Denied Washington's Meretricious Relationship Doctrine To Same-Sex Couples, Amanda J. Beane

Washington Law Review

Washington's property-division scheme for unmarried couples is among the most progressive in the nation. The scheme has evolved from a time when courts treated unmarried couples unfavorably and generally refused to divide their property equitably. The Washington Supreme Court took a step forward from this approach when it created the meretricious relationship doctrine. Under this doctrine, courts may equitably divide unmarried couples' property at the termination of their relationship if the relationship was stable, marital-like, and the parties cohabited knowing they were not lawfully married. Now, however, the Washington Court of Appeals has restricted the application of this doctrine to …

Constitutional Pragmatism For A Changing American Family, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Domestic Partnership And Erisa Preemption, Jeffrey G. Sherman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Golden Eggs: Towards The Rational Regulation Of Oocyte Donation, Kenneth Baum

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Johnson V. Rodrigues (Ovozco): An Analysis Of The Constitutionality Of Utah's Adoption Statutes, Sarah K.L. Chow

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

"A Lawyer Class": Views On Marriage And "Sexual Orientation" In The Legal Profession, William C. Duncan

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Alternative Caretaking And Family Autonomy: Some Thoughts In Response To Dorothy Roberts, Katharine K. Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dialectics And Domestic Abuse, Katharine K. Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dialectics And Domestic Abuse (Reviewing Elizabeth M. Schneider, Battered Women And Feminist Lawmaking (2000)), Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

No abstract provided.

Alternative Caretaking And Family Autonomy: Some Thoughts In Response To Dorothy Roberts, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

The Ali Principles: A Farewell To Fault--But What Remedy For The Egregious Marital Misconduct Of An Abusive Spouse, Peter N. Swisher

Law Faculty Publications

The fundamental premise of this commentary is that the ALl has erred in not including appropriate nonfinancial fault-based factors in the Principles for three major reasons: 1) other no-fault laws, including no-fault automobile insurance law, no-fault workers compensation law, and strict liability in tort law, have all incorporated a number of fault-based exceptions to their general no-fault framework for serious or egregious conduct, and American divorce law should likewise have a similar fault-based exception for serious or egregious marital misconduct; 2) a substantial number of states continue to recognize and utilize a number of fault-based statutory factors in divorce for …

What Constitutional Law Can Learn From The Ali Principles Of Family Dissolution, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Economics Of Dowry: Causes And Effects Of An Indian Tradition, Tonushree Jaggi

University Avenue Undergraduate Journal of Economics

I argue that dowries exist because of a combination of two reasons. First, there is an excess supply of women in the Indian marriage market that results in the use of dowry as an equilibrating mechanism. Secondly, a differential in the patterns of human capital accumulation of men and women have led to a larger positive benefit from marriage for women than for men, the net difference of which is theoretically equivalent to the amount of the dowry. Both these explanations for the existence of dowry are fundamentally grounded in the powerful social and cultural ideologies of marriage held by …

The Strange History Of Adult Adoptee Access To Original Birth Records, Elizabeth Samuels

All Faculty Scholarship

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, contemporary accounts reported that most states had sealed adoption court records completely but, typically, had sealed original birth certificates from all persons except adult adoptees. Through the 1950s influential experts recommended that original birth certificates remain available to adult adoptees, while birth and court records otherwise be closed to all persons except upon court order. In 1960 the laws in some 40 percent of the states still permitted adult adoptees to inspect them, but between 1960 and 1990 all but a handful of the rest of the states closed the birth records to …

The Idea Of Adoption: An Inquiry Into The History Of Adult Adoptee Access To Birth Records, Elizabeth Samuels

All Faculty Scholarship

There has been in recent years and there continues to be intense debate around the country about whether to open original birth records to adult adoptees. Our understanding of the legal history relevant to the debate has been incomplete and inaccurate. According to this understanding, the state laws that closed court and birth records to the parties to adoptions generally closed these records for all time to all parties; the laws had a primary purpose of insuring lifelong anonymity for birth parents; and the laws became nearly universal by about the middle of the twentieth century. In fact, the history …

Kinship Care And The Price Of State Support For Children, Dorothy E. Roberts

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reflecting Reality: Adding Elder Abuse And Neglect To Legal Education, Seymour H. Moskowitz

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.