Law Commons^™

The Rhetoric Of Bigotry And Conscience In Battles Over "Religious Liberty V. Lgbt Rights", Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

Charges, denials, and countercharges of “bigotry” are a familiar feature in debates over the evident conflict between LGBT rights and religious liberty. A frequent claim is that religious individuals who reject the extension of civil marriage to same-sex couples and seek conscience-based exemptions from state public accommodations law that protect against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation are being “branded” as bigots. The rhetoric of bigotry raises a number of puzzles. Is sincerity or the appeal to conscience a defense to charge of bigotry? Is a charge of bigotry inferred simply from asserting that society should learn lessons from …

From Marriage To Households: Towards Equal Treatment Of Intimate Forms Of Life, Deborah Zalesne, Adam Dexter

Buffalo Law Review

Law and attitudes around marriage have changed drastically in our own history and are widely different across cultures. Same-sex marriage is now legal, polyamorous relationships are on the rise, and, as an empirical matter, marriage serves a different purpose than it did as little as forty years ago -- marriage is no longer a prerequisite for sexual intimacy, cohabitation, or parenthood. There are no essential elements to a definition of marriage to which the state can appeal without arbitrarily restricting citizens’ possibilities with respect to their most intimate relationships. Therefore, because any state-sanctioned version of marriage will be arbitrary, the …

Maine's "Act To Protect Traditional Marriage And Prohibit Same-Sex Marriages": Questions Of Constitutionality Under State And Federal Law, Jennifer B. Wriggins

Maine Law Review

In 1997, Maine's Legislature passed “An Act to Protect Traditional Marriage and Prohibit Same-Sex Marriages” (Act). The summary attached to the bill states that the bill “prohibits persons of the same sex from contracting marriage.” The bill was the verbatim text of an initiative petition. Civil marriage in Maine and other states is regulated by state statute, and marriage regulation is generally considered to be within the state's police power. However, the state's power to regulate marriage is subject to constitutional limitations. I maintain that “heightened scrutiny” should be applied to the Act because the Act creates a gender-based classification, …

The Marital Wealth Gap, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

Married couples are wealthier than people in all other family structures. The top 10% of wealth holders are, in great proportion, married. Even among the wealthiest households, married couples hold significantly more wealth than others. The Article identifies this phenomenon as the “Marital Wealth Gap,” and critiques the role of diverse legal mechanisms in creating and maintaining it. Marriage also contributes to the concentration of wealth because marriage patterns are increasingly assortative: wealth marries wealth. The law entrenches or even exacerbates these class-based marriage patterns by erecting structural barriers that hinder people from meeting across economic strata.

How can the …

Marriage, Millennials, And Massive Student Loan Debt, Victoria J. Haneman

Victoria J. Haneman

The purpose of this Essay is to explore the idea that the student loan indebtedness bearing down upon the majority of today’s college graduates creates economic insecurity that forces borrowers to reject or significantly delay marriage, and that burden, taken together with an already lukewarm Millennial attitude, may not bode well for the future of the institution. Record numbers of Millennials have rejected the traditional path of marriage-homeownership-children, and the percentage of Millennials who will marry by age 40 is projected to fall lower than the figure for any previous generation of Americans. To the extent that marriage is an …

Ménage À What? The Fundamental Right To Plural Marriage, Renuka Santhanagopalan

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Introduction: For Better Or For Worse? Relational Landscapes In The Time Of Same-Sex Marriage, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

As same-sex marriage has become a legal reality in a rapidly growing list of countries, the time has come to assess what this means for families and relationships on the ground. Many scholars have already begun to examine how marriage is helping some same-sex couples, but in this introduction I call for a broader and more critical research agenda. In particular, I argue that same-sex marriage crystallizes a key tension surrounding families and relationships in many contemporary societies. On the one hand, strict family norms are relaxing in many places, allowing more people to form more diverse types of caring …

Old Issues New Perspectives, Ronald Griffin

Faculty Books and Book Contributions

The book commences with Ronald C. Griffin‟s essay Ghost Town: The Death of Marriage, the Birth of Cohabitation, and the Emergence of the Single Woman. In his essay he revisits the history of marriage, the economics of marriage, the rise and demise of childhood, the emergence of new couplings and the social traumas that come with them.

The Strange Pairing: Building Alliances Between Queer Activists And Conservative Groups To Recognize New Families, Nausica Palazzo

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article explores some of the legal initiatives and reforms that opponents of same-sex marriage in Canada and the United States have pushed forward. Despite being animated by a desire to dilute the protections for same-sex couples, these reforms resulted in “queering” family law, in the sense that they functionalized the notion of family. Consequently, two cohabiting relatives or friends would be eligible for legal recognition, along with all the public and private benefits of such recognition. I term these kinds of “unions” and other nonnormative relationships to be “new families.”

The central claim of this Article is thus that …

Solving Millennial Marriage Evolution, Kathleen E. Akers, Lynne Marie Kohm

University of Baltimore Law Review

No abstract provided.

Chained Against Her Will: What A Get Means For Women Under Jewish Law, Michelle Kariyeva

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.