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Full-Text Articles in Law

Navigating A Post-Windsor World: The Promise And Limits Of Marriage Equality, Nancy J. Knauer May 2014

Navigating A Post-Windsor World: The Promise And Limits Of Marriage Equality, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

When the 2013 landmark decision in U.S. v. Windsor invalidated part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), it was hailed as a landmark civil rights victory, but its implementation has been far from seamless. The federal government has not applied a uniform rule for marriage recognition, applying a state-of-domicile rule for some purposes (Social Security) and a broader state-of-celebration rule for others (e.g., federal tax matters). Moreover, Windsor did not directly address the state-level marriage prohibitions that remain in place in the majority of states. As a result, the United States continues to be a patchwork of marriage laws …


Identity/Time, Nancy J. Knauer Sep 2013

Identity/Time, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This paper engages the unspoken fourth dimension of intersectionality — time. Using the construction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) identities as an example, it establishes that identity, as it is lived and experienced, is not only multivalent, but also historically contingent. It then raises a number of points regarding the temporal locality of identity — the influence of time on issues of identity and understanding, its implications for legal interventions, social movement building, and paradigms of progressive change. As the title suggests, the paper asks us to consider the frame of identity over time.


Critical Tax Policy: A Pathway To Reform?, Nancy J. Knauer Apr 2013

Critical Tax Policy: A Pathway To Reform?, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The Global Recession of 2008 and ensuing austerity measures have renewed the urgency surrounding the call for fundamental tax reform. Before embarking on fundamental tax reform, this Article proposes adding a critical lens to existing US tax policy to ensure that any proposals for change are informed, transparent, and responsive to the needs (and abilities) of individual taxpayers. This Article makes the case for a specific method of inquiry – Critical Tax Policy – that is built on the articulation of difference rather than false assumptions of sameness. Critical Tax Policy incorporates the insights of a growing international tax equity …


Bullying Across The Lifecourse: Redefining Boundaries, Responsibility, And Harm, Nancy J. Knauer Jan 2013

Bullying Across The Lifecourse: Redefining Boundaries, Responsibility, And Harm, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

Over the last fifteen years, our understanding of bullying has experienced a radical redefinition. In our schools, universities, workplaces, and assisted living facilities, behavior that we once dismissed as “horseplay” or “teasing” has increasingly been labeled as unacceptable and, in some instances, criminal. We seem to have reached one of those societal tipping points where certain behaviors we once took for granted are no longer acceptable. Not that long ago, sexual harassment was simply the cost of being female in the workplace, but the 1980s saw a period of redefinition when sexual harassment was reinterpreted and understood to be a …


Legal Fictions And Juristic Truth, Nancy J. Knauer Jan 2010

Legal Fictions And Juristic Truth, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This Essay cautions against the revisionist trend in legal scholarship to dismiss discredited legal regimes and burdensome statutory schemes as mere "legal fictions." In the first instance, the expansive view of legal fictions employed in this new scholarship dilutes the analytic force of the classic definition proposed by Lon L. Fuller. More importantly, it misapprehends the constitutive power of law and the nature of juristic truth. The classic legal fiction is a curious artifice of legal reasoning. In a discipline primarily concerned with issues of fact and responsibility, the notion of a legal fiction should seem an anathema or, at …


Gender Matters: Making The Case For Trans Inclusion, Nancy J. Knauer Mar 2007

Gender Matters: Making The Case For Trans Inclusion, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

Gender Matters: Making the Case for Trans Inclusion Nancy J. Knauer, Peter J. Liacouras Professor of Law Beasley School of Law, Temple University ABSTRACT The transgender communities are producing an important and nuanced critique of our gender system. For community members, the project is self-constitutive and, therefore, has an immediacy that also marks the efforts of other marginalized groups who have attempted to make sense of the world through description, interrogation, and, ultimately, a program for transformation. The transgender project also has universalizing elements because, existing within the gender system, each one of us embodies a particular gender articulation. It …


Gender Matters: Making The Case For Trans Inclusion, Nancy J. Knauer Jan 2007

Gender Matters: Making The Case For Trans Inclusion, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The transgender communities are producing an important and nuanced critique of our gender system. For community members, the project is self-constitutive and, therefore, has an immediacy that also marks the efforts of other marginalized groups who have attempted to make sense of the world through description, interrogation, and, ultimately, a program for transformation. The transgender project also has universalizing elements because, existing within the gender system, each one of us embodies a particular gender articulation. It is through this articulation that we define ourselves in relation to the gender we were assigned at birth, the gender we choose, the gender …


The Recognition Of Same-Sex Relationships: Comparative Institutional Analysis, Contested Social Goals, And Strategic Institutional Choice, Nancy J. Knauer Jan 2006

The Recognition Of Same-Sex Relationships: Comparative Institutional Analysis, Contested Social Goals, And Strategic Institutional Choice, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The emerging field of comparative institutional analysis (CIA) has much to offer public policy analysts. However, the failure of CIA to address the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated limits the scope of its application to the largely prescriptive pronouncements of legal scholars. By examining the movement for equal recognition of same-sex relationships, this Essay builds on the basic observations of CIA and introduces a new dimension, namely the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated and social change is pursued. The acknowledgment that the production of social goals involves institutional behavior, as well as multiple sites …


The Recognition Of Same-Sex Relationships: Comparative Institutional Analysis, Contested Social Goals, And Strategic Institutional Choice, Nancy J. Knauer Sep 2005

The Recognition Of Same-Sex Relationships: Comparative Institutional Analysis, Contested Social Goals, And Strategic Institutional Choice, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The emerging field of comparative institutional analysis (CIA) has much to offer public policy analysts. However, the failure of CIA to address the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated limits the scope of its application to the largely prescriptive pronouncements of legal scholars. By examining the movement for equal recognition of same-sex relationships, this Essay builds on the basic observations of CIA and introduces a new dimension, namely the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated and social change is pursued. The acknowledgment that the production of social goals involves institutional behavior, as well as multiple sites …


Defining Capacity: The Competing Interests Of Autonomy And Need, Nancy J. Knauer Jan 2003

Defining Capacity: The Competing Interests Of Autonomy And Need, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This Essay addresses the question of capacity - the basic threshold determination that pervades all areas of the law. An individual must have the requisite level of capacity to consent to sex, refuse medical treatment, enter into a contract, marry, divorce, relinquish parental rights, execute a will, make a gift, donate organs, vote, serve on a jury, stand trial, and even to hire a lawyer. The standards regulating determinations of capacity are not monolithic. An individual may lack the capacity to contract, but may have the requisite capacity to write a will or to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment. As individuals, …


Science, Identity, And The Construction Of The Gay Political Narrative, Nancy J. Knauer Jan 2003

Science, Identity, And The Construction Of The Gay Political Narrative, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This Article contends that the current debate over gay civil rights is, at base, a dispute over the nature of same-sex desire. Pro-gay forces advocate an ethnic or identity model of homosexuality based on the conviction that sexual orientation is an immutable, unchosen, and benign characteristic. The assertion that, in essence, gays are "born that way," has produced a gay political narrative that rests on claims of shared identity (i.e., homosexuals are a blameless minority) and arguments of equivalence (i.e., as a blameless minority, homosexuals deserve equal treatment and protection against discrimination). The pro-family counter-narrative is based on a behavioral …


"Simply So Different": The Uniquely Expressive Character Of The Openly Gay Individual After Boy Scouts V. Dale, Nancy J. Knauer Jan 2001

"Simply So Different": The Uniquely Expressive Character Of The Openly Gay Individual After Boy Scouts V. Dale, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

Boy Scouts v. Dale was uniformly considered a set back for gay rights. Undeniably, it was not a good result for James Dale or other openly gay individuals who would like to participate in the largest youth organization in the U.S. This Article views Boy Scouts v. Dale in a different light and suggests that the expressive character of the openly gay individual endorsed by the majority may signal an opportunity to argue for greater First Amendment protections. The majority recognized that a single avowal of homosexuality imbues the openly gay individual with a uniquely expressive character. Wherever he goes, …


Homosexuality As Contagion: From The Well Of Loneliness To The Boy Scouts, Nancy J. Knauer Jan 2000

Homosexuality As Contagion: From The Well Of Loneliness To The Boy Scouts, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

In the political arena, there are currently two central and competing views of homosexuality. Pro-family organizations, working from a contagion model of homosexuality, contend that homosexuality is an immoral, unhealthy, and freely chosen vice. Many pro-gay organizations espouse an identity model of homosexuality under which sexual orientation is an immutable, unchosen, and benign characteristic. Both pro-family and pro-gay organizations believe that to define homosexuality is to control its legal and political status. This sometimes bitter debate regarding the nature of same-sex desire might seem like an exceedingly contemporary development. However, the ex-gay media blitz of 2000 represents only the latest …


Same-Sex Domestic Violence, Nancy J. Knauer Jan 1999

Same-Sex Domestic Violence, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

Same-sex domestic violence is a difficult topic. The LGBT communities have been reluctant to discuss same-sex domestic violence for fear of validating negative stereotypes and detracting from the push for legal recognition of such relationships. The relative silence on this issue continues despite the fact that individuals in same-sex relationships are more likely to be abused by their partners than beaten in an act of anti-gay violence. and despite legislative efforts to restrict domestic violence laws to cover only different-sex couples. The political downside of discussing same-sex domestic violence is obvious. Anti-gay organizations invoke same-sex domestic violence to bolster their …