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Full-Text Articles in Law
Federal Visions Of Private Family Support, Laura A. Rosenbury
Federal Visions Of Private Family Support, Laura A. Rosenbury
Laura A. Rosenbury
This Article offers a new perspective on the relationship between family and federalism by analyzing why the government — whether state or federal — recognizes family at all. The Article examines the current balance between state and federal authority over family by reviewing the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Astrue v. Capato, upholding the Social Security Administration’s deference to states’ intestacy laws when distributing benefits to posthumously conceived children, and United States v. Windsor, in which the Court struck down a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Although each decision affirmed the states’ primary role in defining family …
Rights And Realities, Laura A. Rosenbury
Rights And Realities, Laura A. Rosenbury
Laura A. Rosenbury
The author responds to Melissa Murray's article, The Networked Family: Reframing the Legal Understanding of Caregiving and Caregivers, 94 Va. L. Rev. 385 (2008).
Between Home And School, Laura Rosenbury
Between Home And School, Laura Rosenbury
Laura A. Rosenbury
This article challenges family law's traditional paradigm for allocating authority between parents, children and the state. Pursuant to that paradigm, parents enjoy almost complete authority over their children while at home; the state may require children to attend school and may regulate school curricula; and children must submit to the authority of either their parents or teachers. This settled equilibrium ignores a fundamental reality: children are not confined to home and school. Much of childhood takes place in spaces between home and school, at playgrounds, churches, sporting fields, music rooms and after-school clubs. Family law has been virtually silent about …
Two Ways To End A Marriage: Divorce Or Death, Laura A. Rosenbury
Two Ways To End A Marriage: Divorce Or Death, Laura A. Rosenbury
Laura A. Rosenbury
Default rules governing property distribution at divorce and death are often identified as one of the primary benefits of marriage. This Article examines these default rules in all fifty states, exposing the ways property distribution differs depending on whether the marriage ends by divorce or death. The result is often counter-intuitive: in most states, a spouse is likely to receive more property if her marriage ends by divorce than if the marriage lasts until "death do us part." This difference can be explained in part by the choices of feminist activists over the past thirty-five years: feminists played a large …
Friends With Benefits, Laura A. Rosenbury
Friends With Benefits, Laura A. Rosenbury
Laura A. Rosenbury
Family law has long been intensely interested in certain adult intimate relationships, namely marriage and marriage-like relationships, and silent about other adult intimate relationships, namely friendship. This Article examines the effects of that focus, illustrating how it frustrates one of the goals embraced by most family law scholars over the past forty years: the achievement of gender equality, within the family and without. Part I examines the current scope of family law doctrine and scholarship, highlighting the ways that the home is still the organizing structure for family. Despite calls for increased legal recognition of diverse families, few scholars have …