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The Constitutional Status Of Marriage, Kinship, And Sexual Privacy -- Balancing The Individual And Social Interests, Bruce C. Hafen

Michigan Law Review

Today's lopsided competition between the individual and social interests has made the law a party to the contemporary haze that clouds our vision of what a family is or should be. In that sense, recent legal developments have contributed to the crisis Stanley Hauerwas has identified regarding American family life today - our inability to define "what kind of family should exist" and our inability to articulate ''why we should think of [the family] as our most basic moral institution."

In response to those two questions, this Article considers whether, as a constitutional matter, the courts should recognize claims by …

Fornication, Cohabitation, And The Constitution, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note begins with the indisputable assumption that laws prohibiting fornication and cohabitation are nowhere explioitly forbidden by the Constitution. If a right to engage in consensual adult heterosexual activity exists, it will most convincingly be inferred from the Court's cases establishing a right of "privacy." The Note first seeks to discover an adequate definition of privacy which might lead to a decision whether "privacy" encompasses the right .to fornicate or cohabit (a right which, for brevity's sake, we will somewhat imprecisely call the right to, sexual privacy), but it finds no such definition. The Note therefore proceeds to investigate …

Conjugal Visitation Rights And The Appropriate Standard Of Judicial Review For Prison Regulations, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Conjugal visitation rights allow prison inmates and spouses to visit privately and have sexual relations. A number of countries, particularly in Latin America, permit conjugal visits. Although in the United States only Mississippi and California currently permit conjugal visitation, the experience of these two states shows that such programs are workable. Conjugal visitation has met with varied reaction in the literature, but persuasive arguments have been made that it would offer potential psychological benefits to the prisoner, reduce prison homosexuality, and allow the inmate to preserve his or her marital ties. Nevertheless, the reaction of penal administrators in this country …

The Constitutionality Of Laws Forbidding Private Homosexual Conduct, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

The laws of forty-three states and the District of Columbia impose criminal penalties on consenting adults who engage in private homosexual conduct. Most of these laws are sodomy statutes, which also prohibit oral and anal intercourse between heterosexuals and sexual acts with animals. Two states have statutes explicitly limited to homosexual conduct. These statutes also prohibit nonconsensual homosexual activity and homosexual acts involving a minor, but this Note addresses only prohibitions on private consensual adult homosexual conduct.