Family Law Commons^™

Men's Reproductive Rights: A Legal History, Mary Ziegler

Pepperdine Law Review

This Article offers the first legal history of men’s procreative rights, filling a gap in scholarship on assisted reproduction, constitutional law, and social movements. A rich literature addresses women’s procreative rights in contexts from abortion to infertility. By comparison, we know relatively little about the history of the debate about reproductive rights for men. This void is particularly troubling at a time when the law of reproductive rights is increasingly up for grabs, especially in the context of assisted reproduction technologies (ART). Men’s rights advocates—and the abortion-rights supporters responding to them—championed a jurisprudential approach to parenting that casts a long …

Indian Child Welfare Act Annual Case Law Update And Commentary, Kathryn Fort, Adrian T. Smith

American Indian Law Journal

Annually there is an average of 200 appellate cases dealing with the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) —though this includes published and unpublished opinions.[1] Since our first annual review of the case law in 2017, the numbers remain stable. There are approximately thirty reported state appellate court cases involving ICWA each year. This annual review is the only systematic look at the ICWA cases on appeal, including an analysis of who is appealing, what the primary issues are on appeal, and what topical trends are.

This article provides a comprehensive catalogue of published ICWA cases from across all fifty …

The New Maternity, Courtney Megan Cahill

Scholarly Publications

Constitutional law has long assumed that mothers andfathers are fundamentally different. Maternity, that law posits, is certain, obvious, and monolithic - consolidated in an easily identifiable person who is at once a biological, social, and legal parent. Paternity, in contrast, is construed as uncertain, nonobvious, relative, and often unclear. Over time, constitutional law has grown more insistent about the obviousness of motherhood. It also has cemented its idea of maternity into a fundamental principle of sex equality law that applies in settings - like transgender rights - that have nothing to do with certain mothers and uncertain fathers.

Constitutional law's …

Lessons Learned, Lessons Offered: Creating A Domestic Violence Drug Court, Judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, Dr. Stacy Speedlin Gonzalez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Can We Have Our Cake And Eat It Too?: What Masterpiece Cakeshop And Religious Refusals Mean For Texas’S Adoption Bill, Nadeen Abou-Hossa

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Personhood: Law, Common Sense, And Humane Opportunities, Helen M. Alvaré

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

It is pointless to approach Professor Chatman’s argument on its own terms (to wit, “tak[ing] our laws seriously,” or equal application across myriad legal categories of “full personhood” rights) because these terms are neither seriously intended nor legally comprehensible. Instead, her essay is intended to create the impression that legally protecting unborn human lives against abortion opens up a Pandora’s box of legal complications so “ridiculous” and “far-fetched” that we should rather just leave things where they are under the federal Constitution post-Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This impression, in turn, is a tool to …

Under Ten Eyes, Anthony Michael Kreis

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Carliss Chatman’s If a Fetus Is a Person, It Should Get Child Support, Due Process and Citizenship brilliantly captures the moment America is in, where abortion rights hang in the balance as state legislators, like those in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, and elsewhere clamor to embrace fetal personhood. But, as Professor Chatman illustrates, legislators have expressed no interest in the full logical extent of this policy or the rights that should attach to a fetus if their measures ultimately become effective. The article incisively demonstrates how fetal personhood is singularly focused on ending abortion in the United States and is gaining …

If A Fetus Is A Person, It Should Get Child Support, Due Process, And Citizenship, Carliss N. Chatman

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Article was originally published in The Washington Post on May 17, 2019. It has been edited and updated prior to its publication in the Washington and Lee Law Review.

Alabama has joined the growing number of states determined to overturn Roe v. Wade by banning abortion from conception forward. The Alabama Human Life Protection Act subjects a doctor who performs an abortion to as many as ninety-nine years in prison. The law has no exceptions for rape or incest. It redefines an “unborn child, child or person” as “[a] human being, specifically including an unborn child in utero …

Gender And Specialization In The Practice Of Divorce Law, Richard J. Maiman, Lynn Mather, Craig A. Mcewen

Maine Law Review

In the past two decades, the gender composition of the legal profession in the United States has changed dramatically. While women comprised less than five percent of the nation's lawyers in 1970, the proportion of women lawyers had increased to more than 19% by the end of 1988, and roughly 40% of new lawyers each year are now women. However, the movement of women into the legal profession has not been easy. As a consequence, considerable commentary has been focused on the significant problems of sexual harassment, discrimination, and other forms of gender bias, and on such issues as the …

Gender And Specialization In The Practice Of Divorce Law, Richard J. Maiman, Lynn Mather, Craig A. Mcewen

Maine Law Review

In the past two decades, the gender composition of the legal profession in the United States has changed dramatically. While women comprised less than five percent of the nation's lawyers in 1970, the proportion of women lawyers had increased to more than 19% by the end of 1988, and roughly 40% of new lawyers each year are now women. However, the movement of women into the legal profession has not been easy. As a consequence, considerable commentary has been focused on the significant problems of sexual harassment, discrimination, and other forms of gender bias, and on such issues as the …

Building Queer Families And The Ethics Of Gestational Surrogacy, Kimberly Mutcherson

University of Richmond Law Review

Throughout American history, government has used the law to deny some citizens the right to create or sustain families with children to show contempt for those citizens. As LGBT people fought for dignity, equality, and justice from Stonewall to the present, one of the greatest success stories of that fight is the change in how the law defines and protects families. Into the 1990s, people in samesex relationships had cause to fear that their sexual orientation could be used to deprive them of custody of their children. Now, many states, through statute or case law, routinely recognize two parents of …

Free Battered Texas Women: Survivor-Advocates Organizing At The Crossroads Of Gendered Violence, Disability, And Incarceration, Cathy Marston Phd

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

This article recaps my symposium presentation, where I argue that feminist organizing strategies are central to healing our society and creating restorative justice from my perspective as a survivor of occupational injury, battering, and criminalization for self-defense. This includes the creation of Free Battered Texas Women. We prefer to think of ourselves as survivor-advocates who use a variety of tactics to empower ourselves, incarcerated battered women, and citizens. These strategies include pedagogy; poetry and other written forms; art; and legislative advocacy. I blend this grassroots activism with feminist disability theory, radical feminist theory, feminist ethnography, and feminist criminology.

Evaluation Of Unm's Parental Leave Policy, Julia Fulghum, Karlyn A. Edwards, Charlie Christian, Steven Verney, Lisa A. Marchiondo, Teagan Mullins

ADVANCE Reports

Experiences with UNM’s parental leave policy C215 have been evaluated using the ADVANCE 2018 Main Campus Faculty Climate Survey, a series of junior faculty interviews, and concerns brought to the ADVANCE leadership. Key findings are:

• Women and STEM faculty are more hesitant to use family-leave policies, and perceive greater disadvantage in using them than men and non-STEM faculty
• Sharing of information about, and implementation of, parental leave varies significantly between units
• The attitude of the department chair and senior faculty strongly influence the experience of faculty who use parental leave
• Appropriately implemented, the parental leave policy contributes to faculty recruitment …

Where Is Home? The Challenge Of Finding Safe Housing Via Early Lease Termination For Victims Of Domestic Violence, Charlotte Gerchick

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note addresses the legal recourse of domestic violence victims who are attempting to terminate a lease early for the purpose of escaping domestic violence at home. In March 2013, President Barack Obama signed the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). This version of the Act includes Title VI, which protects victims of domestic violence and stalking. Title VI applies to federally subsidized housing. It allows domestic violence victims to terminate a lease early for the purpose of removing themselves from an abusive household. Title VI also makes it illegal to deny or terminate housing assistance based on …

The Many Harms Of Forced Marriage: Insights For Law From Ethnography In Northern Uganda, Myriam S. Denov, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Harnessing an interdisciplinary framework that merges elements of law and social science, this article aims to recast the crime of forced marriage, and thereby enhance accountability, in light of knowledge acquired through ethnographic fieldwork in northern Uganda. More specifically, we draw upon the perspectives and experiences of 20 men who were "bush husbands" in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). These men were abducted by the LRA between the ages of 10 and 38 and spent between 6 and 24 years in captivity. During their time in the LRA, these men became ‘bush husbands’ with each man fathering between 1 and …

Not All Violence In Relationships Is “Domestic Violence", Tamara L. Kuennen

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The article proceeds in four parts. Part I describes in more detail the work of Donileen Loseke, and Part II applies her methodology by taking stock of the constructs as they currently exist. Part III examines social science data available since Loseke published her study, demonstrating that the current construct reflects, in reality, only a subset of relationship violence and a subset of the people who experience it. Part IV examines whether the main service designed to help people experiencing relationship violence today—law—perpetuates, rather than challenges norms. I argue that it does the former, because legal decision makers, like the …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Battle Of The Sexes: A History Of Social Change And A Solution For Maintaining A Child’S Best Interest In Light Of The #Metoo Movement, Jackie Calvert

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Arizona's Torres V. Terrell And Section 318.03: The Wild West Of Pre-Embryo Disposition, Catherine Wheatley

Indiana Law Journal

In this Note, Part I examines the three main approaches used in other state supreme court decisions to decide pre-embryo disposition disputes, as well as three perspectives on the legal status of the pre-embryo, and compares them with Arizona’s emerging law. Part II summarizes Arizona’s Torres trial court order and opinion and section 318.03. Part III then analyzes whether the Torres orders and Arizona’s new statutory “most likely to lead to birth standard”12 present constitutional issues and concludes that the trial court’s order, if reinstated by the Arizona Supreme Court, and section 318.03 can be challenged on substantive due process …

The Homesteading Rights Of Deserted Wives: A History, Hannah Haksgaard

Faculty Publications

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the federal government of the United States distributed 270 million acres of land to homesteaders. The federal land-grant legislation allowed single women, but not married women, to partake in homesteading. Existing in a “legal netherworld” between single and married, deserted wives did not have clear rights under the federal legislation, much like deserted wives did not have clear rights in American marital law. During the homesteading period, many deserted wives litigated claims in front of the Department of the Interior, arguing they had the right to homestead. This is the first article …

The Right Family, Noa Ben-Asher, Margot J. Pollans

Faculty Publications

The family plays a starring role in American law. Families, the law tells us, are special. They merit many state and federal benefits, including tax deductions, testimonial privileges, untaxed inheritance, and parental presumptions. Over the course of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court expanded individual rights stemming from familial relationships. In this Article, we argue that the concept of family in American law matters just as much when it is ignored as when it is featured. We contrast policies in which the family is the key unit of analysis with others in which it is not. Looking at four seemingly …

On The Proposed Legalization Of Commercial Surrogacy: I Thought We Had Abolished The Sale Of Human Beings, Phyllis Chesler

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

In Memory Of Professor James E. Bond, Janet Ainsworth

Seattle University Law Review

Janet Ainsworth, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law: In Memory of Professor James E. Bond.

(Un)Common Law And The Female Body, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

A dissonance frequently exists between explicit feminist approaches to law and the realities of a common law system that has often ignored and even at times exacerbated women’s legal disabilities. In The Common Law Inside the Fe-male Body, Anita Bernstein mounts a challenge to this story of division. There is, and has long been, she asserts, a substantial interrelation between the common law and feminist jurisprudential approaches to law. But Bernstein’s central argument, far from disrupting broad understandings of the common law, is in keeping with a claim that other legal scholars have long asserted: decisions according to precedent, …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Parental Gender Designations On Children’S Birth Certificates: The Need For A Modifiable Form, Megan Brodie Maier

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

No abstract provided.

Pengarusutamaan Gender Dalam Pengembangan Sistem Pendayagunaan Zakat Melalui Modal Usaha Bergulir Di Desa Sindanglaka Kabupaten Cianjur, Cucu Solihah, Muhammad Budi Mulyadi, Aji Mulyana

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

The participation of women in the community welfare improvement program is a choice that must be developed today. The gender mainstream is the right policy considering the women is vunerable to poverty crises. The business development patterns by implementing the revolving capital coming from zakat community development of BAZNAS is an alternative effort to improve the welfare of women. It is assessed from the women's ability in maintaining business and the managing capital in implementing the programs whose capital is collected from zakat

The Gendered Burdens Of Conviction And Collateral Consequences On Employment, Joni Hersch, Erin E. Meyers

Journal of Legislation

Ex-offenders are subject to a wide range of employment restrictions that limit the ability of individuals with a criminal background to earn a living. This Article argues that women involved in the criminal justice system likely suffer a greater income-related burden from criminal conviction than do men. This disproportionate burden arises in occupations that women typically pursue, both through formal pathways, such as restrictions on occupational licensing, and through informal pathways, such as employers’ unwillingness to hire those with a criminal record. In addition, women have access to far fewer vocational programs while incarcerated. Further exacerbating this burden is that …

In The Right Direction, Family Diversity In The Inter-American System Of Human Rights, Macarena Sáez

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Article argues that the Inter-American System of Human Rights has contributed to a family system that embraces gender equality and non-heterosexual and gender non-conforming families. It argues that the system had, from its inception, an expansive idea of the family that included associations outside marriage. This was the basis for a robust development of the concepts of equality and non-discrimination by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Although the IACtHR has only decided a handful of cases related to the non-heterosexual family, its rich case law on equality and the right to …

Misunderstanding Judy Norman: Theory As Cause And Consequence, Martha R. Mahoney

Articles

Judy Norman shot her abusive husband during a late afternoon nap while he rested before violently trafficking her that night. The sharp contrast between the extreme violence and danger Judy faced and the denial of a self-defense instruction triggered extensive academic debates about justification and the use of deadly force. Norman became one of the most famous cases involving battered women, appearing in many casebooks and hundreds of law review articles. Despite all this work, the facts of the case contradict much of what scholars have said about Norman. Misconceptions about expert evidence, "Battered Woman Syndrome, "and battered women drive …