Law Commons^™

Marital Status And Privilege, Laura Rosenbury

Laura A. Rosenbury

This essay challenges the privilege attaching to marriage as a distinct form of relationship. Responding to Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s new book, According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family, the essay identifies the legal and extralegal privileges flowing not just to monoracial marriage but to marriage. States recognize and support one form of relationship between adults to the exclusion of all others, creating privilege that flows outside of the home into the workplace and beyond. Instead of arguing that such privilege should be distributed more equally between monoracial and multiracial couples, this essay seeks to …

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 …

Work Wives, Laura A. Rosenbury

Laura A. Rosenbury

Traditional notions of male and female roles remain tenacious at home and work even in the face of gender-neutral family laws and robust employment discrimination laws. This Article analyzes the challenge of gender tenacity through the lens of the “work wife.” The continued use of the marriage metaphor at work reveals that the dynamics of marriage flow between home and work, creating a feedback loop that inserts gender into both domains in multiple ways. This phenomenon may reinforce gender stereotypes, hindering the potential of law to achieve gender equality. But such gender tenacity need not always lead to subordination. The …

Sex In And Out Of Intimacy, Laura A. Rosenbury, Jennifer E. Rothman

Laura A. Rosenbury

The state has long attempted to regulate sexual activity by channeling sex into various forms of state-supported intimacy. Although commentators and legal scholars of diverse political perspectives generally believe such regulation is declining, the freedom to engage in diverse sexual activities has not been established as a matter of law. Instead, courts have extended legal protection to consensual sexual acts only to the extent such acts support other state interests, most often marriage and procreation. Although Lawrence v. Texas altered some aspects of that vision, it reinscribed others by suggesting that sexual activity should be protected from state interference only …

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 …

A Postcolonial Theory Of Spousal Rape: The Carribean And Beyond, Stacy-Ann Elvy

Stacy-Ann Elvy

Many postcolonial states in the Caribbean continue to struggle to comply with their international treaty obligations to protect women from sexual violence. Reports from various United Nations programs, including UNICEF, and the annual U.S. State Department Country Reports on Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia (“Commonwealth Countries”), indicate that sexual violence against women, including spousal abuse, is a significant problem in the Caribbean. Despite ratification of various international instruments intended to eliminate sexual violence against women, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Commonwealth Countries have retained the …

Defining The Scope Of The Constitutional Right To Marry: More Than Tradition, Less Than Unlimited Autonomy, Donald L. Beschle

Donald L. Beschle

No abstract provided.

Crimes In The Name Of Honour By Prof. Vibhuti Patel, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

Crimes in the Name‘Honour’ Marriage and Spousal Selection: Choices beyond Caste, Endogamy and Religion by Vibhuti Patel Director, Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Inclusive Policy, Professor and Head, Department of Economics, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai-400020 Email: vibhuti.np@gmail.com Mobile-9321040048 Summary Crimes in the name of ‘honour’ are on a rise in our country. Both rural as well as urban areas are gripped with instances of horrific crimes where young citizens of our country are being killed for exercising their democratic right of choosing their life partners. The democratic minded people of our country are both shocked and distressed by …

Seventeen Years Since The Sunset: The Expiration Of 245(I) And Its Effect On U.S. Citizens Married To Undocumented Immigrants, Marisa Cianciarulo

Marisa S. Cianciarulo

One of the most pervasive myths of U.S. immigration law is that marriage to a U.S. citizen confers citizenship, or at least some form of legal status, upon a foreign national. It is an intuitive notion: that a U.S. citizen enjoys, as part of his or her package of privileges and protections, the right to live anywhere in the United States with a spouse of his or her choosing, and to confer automatically some form of legal status upon that spouse. It comes as a surprise and an affront to many U.S. citizens that their immigration laws do not always …

The Illusion Of Equality: The Failure Of The Community Property Reform To Achieve Management Equality, Elizabeth Carter

Elizabeth R. Carter