Law Commons^™

Reforming Family Court: Getting It Right Between Rhetoric And Reality, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

What do we say about the reform work we do, and to what degree is what we say accurate? How does the way in which we talk about family court reform implicate our analysis of what we are achieving? How does our place or role within the system affect our perceptions of reform? What limits our willingness and ability to apply rigorous evaluative techniques to determine whether we are reaching our goals? And if we are failing, can we acknowledge failure and learn from it? Answering these questions may lead to a better understanding of why family court reform is …

Happy Families? Translating Positive Psychology Into Family Law, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the well-documented finding in the field of positive psychology that close interpersonal relationships are significantly correlated with subjective well-being and thriving communities, scholars have yet to bring together positive psychology and family law. And what is family law if not the law of close interpersonal relationships? Positive psychology and related work have the potential to inform the what, the why, and the how of family law, but realizing the potential of positive psychology as a guide for family law involves challenges. In particular, it requires translating the descriptive science of psychology into the prescriptive policies of family law. This …

Surrogacy And The Politics Of Commodification, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

In 2004, the Illinois legislature passed the Gestational Surrogacy Act, which provides that a child conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF) and born to a surrogate mother automatically becomes the legal child of the intended parents at birth if certain conditions are met. Under the Act, the woman who bears the child has no parental status. The bill generated modest media attention, but little controversy; it passed unanimously in both houses of the legislature and was signed into law by the governor.

This mundane story of the legislative process in action stands in sharp contrast to the political tale of …

Raising The Cut-Off: The Empirical Case For Extending Adoption And Guardianship Subsidies From Age 18 To 21, Mary Eschelbach Hansen, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

This article begins with the context: despite increases in the number of adoptions from foster care achieved in the 1990s, tens of thousands of children remain in foster care awaiting adoption or permanent guardianship. The following section provides background on subsidy law and policy. The section describes the recent history of federal and state subsidies for parents who adopt children from the state foster care systems; the section describes state subsidies for caregivers who become legal permanent guardians of children in the state child welfare systems, and the section describes the disparities between adoption and guardianship subsidies and the subsidies …