Family Law Commons^™

National Report: New Zealand, Kenneth Mck. Norrie

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

National Report: Ireland, Aisling Parkes

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

National Report: Italy, Virginia Zambrano

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

National Report: Hungary, Zsolt Körtvélyesi, András L. Pap

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

National Report: Greece, Alexander G. Fessas

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

National Report: Germany, Jens M. Scherpe

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

National Report: France, Hugues Fulchiron

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

National Report: Denmark, Christina G. Jeppesen De Boer, Annette Kronborg

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

National Report: Colombia, Universidad De Los Andes Public Interest Law Group

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Against The New Maternalism, Naomi Mezey, Cornelia T. Pillard

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The biggest challenge for sex equality in the 21st Century is to dismantle inequality between women and men’s family care responsibilities. American law has largely accomplished formal equality in parenting by doing away with explicit gender classifications, along with many of the assumptions that fostered them. In a dramatic change from the mid-20th Century, law relating to family, work, civic participation and their various intersections is now virtually all sex-neutral. As the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Nevada Department of Social Services v. Hibbs demonstrates, both Congress and the Court have accepted the feminist critique of sex roles and stereotyping …

Animus Thick And Thin: The Broader Impact Of The Ninth Circuit Decision In Perry V. Brown, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay is a response to an article by: Eskridge Jr., William N., The Ninth Circuit's Perry Decision and the Constitutional Politics of Marriage Equality, in 64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 93 (2012).

This essay examines the impact of Perry v. Brown, 671 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2012), the first appellate federal court decision on the constitutional validity of marriage exclusion laws. The author argues that the major contribution of the Perry decision is to illuminate the meaning of animus, a term that is sharply contested in Equal Protection jurisprudence, and to explicate its relationship to standards of …

Moving Forward Together: The Lgbt Community And The Family Mediation Field , Mark J. Hanson

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This is a time of great change for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender ("LGBT") community. Members of the LGBT community have gained increased awareness and rights. The United States Supreme Court found state sodomy laws that ban same-sex sexual activity unconstitutional. Thirty-three states have enacted hate crime legislation that protects members of the LGBT community. Recently from the streets of San Francisco, to New Platz, New York and to Sandoval County, New Mexico, LGBT couples have received marriage licenses despite being prohibited by state law. Other states, such as Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont have enacted legislation giving LGBT couples …

The Ninth Circuit's Perry Decision And The Constitutional Politics Of Marriage Equality, William N. Eskridge

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Perry v. Brown, the Ninth Circuit ruled that California’s Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause. Reacting to the state supreme court’s recognition of marriage equality for lesbian and gay couples, Proposition 8 was a 2008 voter initiative that altered the state constitution to “restore” the “traditional” understanding of civil marriage to exclude same-sex couples. The major theme of the Yes-on-Eight campaign was that the state should not deem lesbian and gay unions to be “marriages” because schoolchildren would then think that lesbian and gay relationships are just as good as straight “marriages.”

Proposition 8 intended that gay …

Marriage In California: Is The Federal Lawsuit Against Proposition 8 About Applying The Fourteenth Amendment Or Preserving Federalism? , Charles M. Cannizzaro

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Legal Regulation Of Gay And Lesbian Families As Interstate Immigration Law, Sarah Abramowicz

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Regulating At The Margins: Non-Traditional Kinship And The Legal Regulation Of Intimate And Family Life, Courtney Megan Cahill

Scholarly Publications

This Article offers a new theory of how the law attempts to control intimate and family life and uses that theory to argue why certain laws might be unconstitutional. Specifically, it contends that by regulating non-traditional relationships and practices that receive little or no constitutional protection— same-sex relationships, domestic partnerships, de facto parenthood, and nonsexual procreation—the law is able to express its normative ideals about all marriage, parenthood, and procreation. By regulating non-traditional kinship, then, the law can be aspirational in a way that the Constitution would ordinarily prohibit and can attempt to channel all of us in ways that …

Hospital Visitation: The Forgotten Gay Rights Struggle, 45 J. Marshall L. Rev. 939 (2012), Meredith Fileff

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Displaced Mothers, Absent And Unnatural Fathers: Lgbt Transracial Adoption, Kim H. Pearson

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

While some might believe that Black versus gay discourse only surfaces in highly politicized settings like the military and marriage, it holds sway in the area of LGBT transracial adoption. LGBT transracial adoptions are a relatively small percentage of all adoptions, which include private adoptions, LGBT second-parent adoptions, and step-parent adoptions, but they are an important site for interrogating the Black versus gay discourse because adoption and custody decisions often address parent-child transmission. When claims intersect, as they do in a case where a White LGBT foster parent and a Black maternal grandmother dispute the adoption of a Black child, …

Response: And Baby Makes How Many - Using In Re M.C. To Consider Parentage Of A Child Conceived Through Sexual Intercourse And Born To A Lesbian Couple, Nancy Polikoff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

I Do. Is That Okay With You?: A Look At How Most States Are Circumventing The Full Faith And Credit Clause And Equal Protection Clause To Not Recognize Legal Same-Sex Marriages From Other States And Its Effect On Society, Rebecca Hameroff

Florida A & M University Law Review

Due to statutes, bans, and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, states do not have to recognize legal same-sex marriages from sister states that recognize same-sex marriage. This paper examines the denial of the fundamental right to marriage for same-sex couples, the violation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution by not recognizing same-sex marriages legally performed in other states. It starts by looking at the impact these practices have on same-sex couples and the toll it …

Reconfiguring Sex, Gender, And The Law Of Marriage, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article brings together legal, historical, and social science research to analyze how couples allocate income-producing and domestic responsibilities. It develops a framework—what I call the marriage equation—that shows how sex-based classifications, (non-sex-specific) substantive marriage law, and gender norms interrelate to shape these choices. Constitutional decisions in the 1970s ended legal distinctions between the duties of husbands and wives but left largely in place both gender norms and substantive rights within marriage, tax, and benefits law that encourage specialization into breadwinning and caregiving roles. By permitting disaggregation of the marriage equation, the new reality of same-sex marriage can serve as …

The Lawmaking Family, Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

Increasingly there are conflicts over families trying to “opt out” of various legal structures, especially public school education. Examples of opting-out conflicts include a father seeking to exempt his son from health education classes; a mother seeking to exempt her daughter from mandatory education about the perils of female sexuality; and a vegetarian student wishing to opt out of in-class frog dissection. The Article shows that, perhaps paradoxically, the right to direct the upbringing of children was more robust before it was constitutionalized by the Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925). In …

Conscientious Objection To Creating Same-Sex Unions: An International Analysis, Bruce Macdougall, Elsje Bonthuys, Kenneth Mck. Norrie, Marjolein Van Den Brink

All Faculty Publications

In jurisdictions that recognize same-sex marriages and unions, the question arises as to the extent to which civic officials who normally preside at such unions can refuse such participation for religious reasons. This paper examines this issue in the context of four jurisdictions: Scotland, Canada, the Netherlands and South Africa. What is striking is how different is the process of reaching a resolution in each jurisdiction, though the actual result might be the same. This difference arises because of the jurisdiction-specific reasons why same-sex marriages and unions are recognized, how they are recognized, the status of the officers who preside …

The Curious Relationship Of Marriage And Freedom, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

Marriage is surely at a crossroad, as the chapters in this volume so richly attest. In fact, marriage may be at more than one crossroad, some pointing toward new, uncharted terrain, others amounting to intersections we have visited before. My principal interest in exploring this dynamic moment in the evolution of the institution of marriage is to better understand why and how today's marriage equality movement for same-sex couples might benefit from lessons learned by African Americans when they too were allowed to marry for the first time in the immediate post–Civil War era. I find it curious that the …

The New Illegitimacy: Winning Backward In The Protection Of The Children Of Lesbian Couples, Nancy Polikoff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Custody Rights Of Lesbian And Gay Parents Redux: The Irrelevance Of Constitutional Principles, Nancy Polikoff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Disputes over custody and visitation can arise when a marriage ends and one parent comes out as gay or lesbian. the heterosexual parent may seek custody or may seek to restrict the activities of the gay or lesbian parent, or the presence of the parent's same-sex partner, during visitation. A gay or lesbian parent's assertion of constitutional rights has not been an effective response to such efforts. that is not likely to change. Advocates for gay and lesbian parents have argued forcefully for a nexus text, permitting consideration of a parent's sexual orientation only when there is evidence of an …

The Future Impact Of Same-Sex Marriage: More Questions Than Answers, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Same-sex relationships have already significantly altered family law, by leading to new formal relationship statuses and incorporation of the principle that both of a child’s legal parents can be of the same sex. This essay explores further changes that may lie ahead as same-sex marriage debates increasingly affect both family law and the social meanings of marriage. Marriage as an institution has changed most dramatically because of the cumulative effects of the last half-century of de-gendering family law. Same-sex marriage–and perhaps even more so, the highly visible cultural debate over it–is contributing to this process.

The author argues that the …

Ozzie & Harriet Are Perfect Candidates To Adopt, But Ozzie & Harry Are Barred: Boseman V. Jarrell & The Effects Of Prohibition On Second Parent Adoptions, Amanda Von Schmid

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Confounding Identities: The Paradox Of Lgbt Children Under Asylum Law, Susan Hazeldean

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Winning The Battle Or Losing The War: The Implications Of Boseman V. Jarrell On The Same-Sex Adoption Debate In North Carolina, Jacinta Jones

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.