Family Law Commons^™

Political And Social Construction Of Families Through Pedagogy In Family Law Classrooms, Lundy Langston

Journal Publications

Most family law materials available today fail to reflect the diversity' of family arrangements in modem society. Traditionally, family law is taught as a rules-based area of law. Students learn the requirements of marriage and the grounds for and consequences of divorce. Currently, there are efforts to expand the codification of family law through such things as support guidelines, uniform acts, and legislation listing specific factors to be considered in custody and property distribution cases. Many of these efforts stem from the underlying assumption that there is a uniform methodology describing and defining doctrine appropriate for resolution of family related …

Myths And Moms: Images Of Women And Termination Of Parental Rights, Odeana R. Neal

All Faculty Scholarship

For most of us, the word "mother" evokes a myriad of often conflicting images and emotions, expectations and disappointments, and gratitude and blame. What a mother is - our own mothers and the class of people who are mothers - means much more than that a woman has given birth. We expect mothers to provide their children with all the love, caring, nurturing, and emotional fulfillment that we perceive those children need and desire; we expect her to be all things that we want her to be when we need her to be them. A woman who can fulfill the …

'If Black Is So Special, Then Why Isn't It In The Rainbow?', Sharon E. Rush

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the modern day, defining "family" becomes less of a theoretical debate when one's own family unit is different from the traditional married, middle-class mother and father with their biological children. For non-traditional families, redefining family takes on enormous practical significance and may actually enable people to create families. Laws permitting transracial adoptions and surrogacy are illustrative. Moreover, a broader definition of family provides greater legal security to non-traditional families. Without such legal protection, non-traditional families live in fear of traditional laws tearing them apart. Rather than using a standard that promotes hegemony in custody disputes, decisionmakers should become aware …

Abortion Rights In America, Joan R. Bullock

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Parents' Religion And Children's Welfare: Debunking The Doctrine Of Parents' Rights, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

The scope, weight, and assignment of parental rights have been the focus of much debate among legal commentators. These commentators generally have assumed that parents should have some rights in connection with the raising of their children. Rarely have commentators offered justifications for attributing rights to persons as parents, and when they have done so they have failed to subject those justifications to close scrutiny. This Article takes the novel approach of challenging parental rights in their entirety. The author explores the fundamental questions of what it means to say that individuals have rights as parents, and whether it is …

Force African-American Fathers To Parent Their Delinquent Sons - A Factor To Be Considered At The Dispositional Stage, Lundy Langston

Journal Publications

What species can survive and function when a substantial segment of its young male population is harnessed by the burdens of substance abuse, unemployment, and incarceration? Empirical data suggests that these maladies have infected African-American males at a rate alarmingly disproportionate to that of other races. This trend, if it continues, suggests that America is creating a dysfunctional class. In this Article the term "dysfunctional" refers to a predicament wherein African-American males engage in violent activities.' Their conduct may be attributable to their inability to contribute to the family or smaller groups which form the foundation of the social order …

Racism And Patriarchy In The Meaning Of Motherhood, Dorthy E. Roberts

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Expanding Our Vision Of Legal Services Representation– The Hermanas Unidas Project, Stacy Brustin

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Roe V. Wade And The Dred Scott Decision: Justice Scalia's Peculiar Analogy In Planned Parenthood V. Casey, Jamin B. Raskin

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Babies, Parents, And Grandparents: A Story In Two Cases, Karen Czapanskiy

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Discovering Our Connections: Race And Gender In The Law Symposium Keynote Address, Margaret Walker Alexander

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

International Union V. Johnson Controls, Inc.: Sex-Specific Fetal Protection Policies Of Employers Are Prohibited By Title Vii As Amended By The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Amy H. Moorman

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Gender Discrimination In The Common Law Of Domicile And The Application Of The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, Annalise Acorn

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

A married woman must take her husband's domicile at common law. This rule exists in five of Canada's provinces. It is argued that the rule violates the right to equality. It is further argued that, notwithstanding the Supreme Court's decision in Dolphin Delivery, the Charter must apply to common law rules governing the relationship between husband and wife. Such rules impose a status on the parties. Therefore, a commitment to respect for the autonomous choice of individuals does not support the conclusion that the rules should be beyond constitutional review.

Battered Spouses' Section 1983 Damage Actions Against The Unreponsive Police After Deshaney, James T.R. Jones

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Indian Reservations And The Preservation Of Tribal Culture: Beyond Wardship To Stewardship, John W. Ragsdale Jr

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Ideal Of Liberty: A Comment On Michael H. V. Gerald D., Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What is the meaning and content of the "liberty" protected by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment? In Michael H. v. Gerald D. Justices Brennan and Scalia spelled out what at first blush appear to be sharply contrasting understandings of the meaning of liberty and of the substantive limits liberty imposes on state action. Justice Scalia argued that the "liberty" protected by a substantive interpretation of due process is only the liberty to engage in activities historically protected against state intervention by firmly entrenched societal traditions. I will sometimes call this the "traditionalist" interpretation of liberty. Justice Brennan, …

A Matter Of Difference: Domestic Contracts And Gender Equality, Brenda Cossman

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This essay explores the feminist debates around gender difference and gender equality in the context of the Supreme Court of Canada's Pelech trilogy. It argues that the Court's approach to the enforcement of separation agreements does not adequately account for gender difference. Based on feminist critiques of difference, the essay then suggests an approach which might allow us to move beyond the dilemmas that difference presents to feminist legal theory and practice, and to the enforcement of separation agreements in particular.

An Abused Child's Right To Life, Liberty, And Property In The Home: Constitutional Approval Of State Inaction, Michael J. Florio

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Charleston Policy: Substance Or Abuse, The , Kimani Paul-Emile

Faculty Scholarship

In 1989, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) adopted a policy that, according to subjective criteria, singled out for drug testing, certain women who sought prenatal care and childbirth services would be tested for prohibited substances. Women who tested positive were arrested, incarcerated and prosecuted for crimes ranging from misdemeanor substance possession to felony substance distribution to a minor. In this Article, the Author argues that by intentionally targeting indigent Black women for prosecution, the MUSC Policy continued the United States legacy of their systematic oppression and resulted in the criminalizing of Black Motherhood.

The Problem Of Selecting A Valuation Date For Property Subject To Equitable Distribution In New York

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Protecting The Parental Rights Of Incarcerated Mothers Whose Children Are In Foster Care: Proposed Changes To New York's Termination Of Parental Rights Law, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

In the past decade, the number of female prisoners in New York state and city jails has risen dramatically. Currently, there are 1,890 women incarcerated in New York State prisons, and an additional 1,626 women confined in New York City jails. Approximately seventy- two percent of the women in state prisons are parents, and, according to one informal study, nearly sixty percent of the women in city prisons are single parents with minor children. While some of these women can make formal or informal child care arrangements with relatives or close friends, many others must turn to state-regulated foster care. …

Surrogate Parenting After Baby M: The Ball Moves To The Legislature’S Court, John R. Dunne, Gregory V. Serio

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sterilization Of Mentally Retarded Persons: Reproductive Rights And Family Privacy, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Sterilization is one of the most frequently chosen forms of contraception in the world; many persons who do not want to have children select this simple, safe, and effective means of avoiding unwanted pregnancy. For individuals who are mentally disabled, however, sterilization has more ominous associations. Until recently, involuntary sterilization was used as a weapon of the state in the war against mental deficiency. Under eugenic sterilization laws in effect in many states, retarded persons were routinely sterilized without their consent or knowledge.

Sterilization law has undergone a radical transformation in recent years. Influenced by a distaste for eugenic sterilization …

Faculty Parenthood: Law School Treatment Of Pregnancy And Child Care, Richard H. Chused

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The 'Legalization' Of The Family: Toward A Policy Of Supportive Neutrality, David L. Chambers

Articles

The word "legalization" has conflicting meanings. One, intended to sound the theme of this conference, conveys the notion of government regulation permeating some area of human activity. The other-as found, for example, in the phrase "the legalization of marijuana"-is a near opposite: the process of making legal or permissible that which. was previously forbidden, taking government out of that which it had previously controlled. The recent history of government's relationship to the family amply displays both sorts of legalization, both government's intrusion and its withdrawal, and reveals a paradoxical relation between the two-that as government frees people to live their …

Exclusion Of Families With Children From Housing, George Palmer Schober

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note attempts to resolve the most significant problems raised by discrimination against children in housing. Part I briefly analyzes the prevalence of child exclusion in different types of housing. It also provides a statistical analysis of the rental housing market to enable the reader to gauge the extent of the problem in one type of housing. Part II discusses policy arguments supporting both those who seek to exclude children and those who advocate government policies forbidding exclusion. Part III then examines the various approaches that states have adopted in this area, as well as federal implications of the issue. …

Note: The Need To Value Homemaker Services Upon Divorce, Mary Downey

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Palmore V. Sidoti, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Involuntary Sterilization In Virginia: From Buck V. Bell To Poe V. Lynchburg, Paul A. Lombardo

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Marital Status Discrimination: A Survey Of Federal Caselaw, Joyce D. Edelman

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.