Family Law Commons^™

The Sexual Regulation Dimension Of Contemporary Welfare Law: A Fifty State Overview, Anna Marie Smith

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In this article, Smith will attempt to demonstrate that welfare policy has become a prominent site of sexual regulation; that the rights of poor single mothers are at stake in this respect; and that given the precise structure of contemporary American welfare reform, we must pay especially close attention to the laws and regulations adopted at the state level. First, Smith will place contemporary sexual regulation-oriented welfare law in an historical context by considering its precedents in English and American public policy traditions (Part I). Using original qualitative analyses of the states' statutory codes and administrative regulations, Smith will then …

Marriage And Belonging, Ann Laquer Estin

Michigan Law Review

Marriage is a quintessentially private institution. Justice Douglas put the point this way in 1965, writing for the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut: "We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights - older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association …

"A Lawyer Class": Views On Marriage And "Sexual Orientation" In The Legal Profession, William C. Duncan

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

The G.I.F.T. Of Two Biological And Legal Mothers, Ryiah Lilith

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

The Children Of Homosexual Parents: The Voices The Courts Have Yet To Hear. , Eileen P. Huff

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

For The Best Of Friends And For Lovers Of All Sorts, A Status Other Than Marriage (Symposium: Unmarried Partners And The Legacy Of Marvin V. Marvin)" , David L. Chambers

Articles

American governments have recently begun to experiment with new familial statuses for gay male and lesbian couples, who have demanded the right to marry but have been appeased with more modest forms of recognition.4 What I propose here is quite different. It is a status for people who have close bonds but do not want to be married to each other. I call this status "designated friends." Once registered, "designated friends" would obtain a limited number of privileges and undertake a limited number of responsibilities relating to the care for the other when ill or incapacitated or upon death, but …

Divorce, Children's Welfare, And The Culture Wars, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Are children harmed when their parents divorce? If so, should parents' freedom to end marriage be restricted? These questions have generated uncertainty and controversy in the decades since legal restraints on divorce have been lifted. During the 1970s and 80s, the traditional conviction that parents should stay together "for the sake of the children" was supplanted by a view that children are usually better off if their unhappy parents divorce. By this account, divorcing parents should simply try to accomplish the change in status with as little disruption to their children's lives as possible. This stance has been challenged sharply …

A Family Affair: Constitutional And Prudential Interests Implicated When Homosexuals Seek To Preserve Or Create Parent-Child Relationships, Kif Skidmore

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Internet Sexual Predators: Protecting Children In The Global Community, Madeleine M. Plasencia

Articles

The Internet, serving as the largest network of computers in the world, has provided the horizontal parallax over which all can participate in communication and transaction, education and entertainment4 It also serves a community of participants and beneficiaries whose goals are not always shared or legal. The rise of this advanced technology has led to a new "red light district."

Unlike the physical spaces available for the distribution of pornography and sexual favors for money, the Internet, with its lack of structure, has led to an unimaginable amount of pornography available for any on-line spectator.' Information necessary for consummation of …

Couples: Marriage, Civil Union, And Domestic Partnership, David L. Chambers

Book Chapters

In this country, during the last decades of the twentieth century, thousands of lesbians married other women and thousands of gay men married other men. Many of these couples recited traditional vows in churches and synagogues. Others have pledged to each other in their own backyards in words that they wrote themselves. But not one of these thousands of solemn occasions was recognized as creating a legally valid marriage. In the United States, each state has its own statute defining who can marry, and as far as the states were concerned, these couples were playing dress up. One state has …

Social Norms And The Legal Regulation Of Marriage, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Americans have interesting and somewhat puzzling attitudes about the state's role in defining and enforcing family obligations. Most people view lasting marriage as an important part of their life plans and take the commitment of marriage very seriously. Yet any legal initiative designed to reinforce that commitment generates controversy and is viewed with suspicion in many quarters. For example, covenant marriage statutes, which offer couples entering marriage the option of undertaking a modest marital commitment, are seen by many observers as coercive and regressive measures rather than ameliorating reforms.

The law tends to reflect – and perhaps contributes to – …

The Baker [Baker V. State, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt. 1999)] Case, Civil Unions, And The Recognition Of Our Common Humanity: An Introduction And A Speculation, David L. Chambers

Articles

Every. Vermonter seems to know about two recent decisions of the Vermont Supreme Court. In the first, the court struck down the system of local financing of public schools. Like similar decisions in many other states, the school financing case led to a struggle in the legislature and difficulties for legislators at election time. In the second and even more controversial decision, the court reached an outcome that no other state supreme court had ever reached: it held unconstitutional the state's marriage law on the ground that it inappropriately denied the legal benefits of marriage to same-sex couples. This decision, …

Second-Parent Adoption, Patricia J. Falk

Cleveland State Law Review

My topic for today's presentation is second-parent adoption. I hope to accomplish four things in my discussion. First, I will define second-parent adoption and give some reasons that it is desirable for both parents and children. Second, I will summarize the state of the law in terms of legislative enactments and case law in the United States. Third, I will discuss the role of social science in second-parent adoption cases. Finally, I will discuss some of the implications of recognizing these adoptions.

Second-Parent Adoption By Same-Sex Couples In Ohio: Unsettled And Unsettling Law, Susan J. Becker

Cleveland State Law Review

In addition to the need for homes for children without any legally recognized parent, the need for a child who already has one legal parent to be adopted by the parent's gay or lesbian partner who is already serving as a de facto parent is very important to the child's emotional stability and material well being. This type of adoption, frequently referred to as a "second-parent" adoption,' is the focal point of this article. However, the matters discussed herein also apply directly and by analogy to situations where gay and lesbian couples and heterosexual unmarried couples desire to jointly adopt …

When Fathers' Rights Are Mothers' Duties: The Failure Of Equal Protection In Miller V. Albright, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

The history of coverture and the transmission of American citizenship brings an elementary point into focus: The allocation of parental rights is always correlated with the allocation of parental responsibility. This basic legal truism, and its numerous implications for citizenship law, suggests that the principal gender injustice caused by § 1409 is not its truncation of fathers' rights, but its creation and perpetuation of a legal regime in which mothers assume full responsibility for foreign-born nonmarital children. Once we recognize this gendered operation of § 1409, broader failures of equal protection analysis come into relief. First, while the jurisprudential understanding …

Why Lesbians And Gay Men Should Read Martha Fineman, Nancy Polikoff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Planning For The Future: Using Child Support Trusts To Prepare Both Father And Child For Life After Professional Sports, Thomas C. Quinlen

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The issue of professional athletes siring children out of wedlock was first thrust into the national conscience in an article in Sports Illustrated in May 1998. The SI piece was followed by several newspaper articles in various cities around the country, but like most hot news topics, it was quickly forgotten as the nation moved on to more pressing issues. This Note aims to revisit this issue with an eye towards practical and legal resolution of this pervasive problem, suggesting ways that lawyers and agents can establish child support trusts to represent their clients' interests and provide the best result …

Suffer The Little Children: Justifying Same-Sex Marriage From The Perspective Of A Child Of The Union, Lewis A. Silverman

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

De Facto Parents And The Unfulfilled Promise Of The New Ali Principles, Julie Shapiro

Faculty Articles

Alternative families - those that do not fit the classic nuclear family model - have been the focus of legal reform over the last twenty years. The American Law Institute has produced model legislation recognizing de facto parents as holders of some limited rights. To some this is a more flexible regime that would benefit non-nuclear families, in particular lesbian families. This article critiques the ALI draft, demonstrating that its promise is largely illusory.

A Lesbian-Centered Critique Of Second-Parent Adoptions, Julie Shapiro

Faculty Articles

When lesbian couples start families, one woman often begins with all the legal entitlements of parenthood, either by giving birth or by virtue of adopting a child, while the other woman has no legal rights. She is a non-legal parent. Absent legal rights she suffers many critical disadvantages. Second-parent adoptions have been developed to allow lesbians to create families with two-legal parents. They have been widely hailed as a solution to the problem of the non-legal parent. This article argues, however, that for many women they may actually make matters worse. Because some women can use second-parent adoptions, women who …

Family Law And Gay And Lesbian Family Issues In The Twentieth Century, David L. Chambers, Nancy D. Polikoff

Articles

Over these thirty years, lesbians and gay men have increasingly challenged conventional definitions of marriage and the family. In this brief article, we tell the story of gay people and family law in the United States across this period. We divide our discussion into two sections: issues regarding the recognition of the same-sex couple relationship and issues regarding gay men and lesbians as parents. These issues overlap, of course, but since family law discussions commonly treat adult-adult issues of all sorts separately from parent-child issues, we believe it convenient and helpful to do so as well.

Reviving The Public/Private Distinction In Feminist Theorizing Symposium On Unfinished Feminist Business, Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

The public/private distinction has been a target of thoroughgoing feminist critique for quite some time now. Indeed, attacking the public/private line has been one of the primary concerns (if not the primary concern) of feminist legal theorizing for over two decades. If Carole Pateman is correct, one would think that this particular problem might be assigned to the category of "finished business" by this time. In this Essay, I do argue that the critique is, in certain ways, finished business in that it is no longer particularly useful in its most common forms. More importantly, however, I suggest several ways …

Family Law And Gay And Lesbian Family Issues In The Twentieth Century, Nancy Polikoff, David Chambers

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Over the past thirty years, lesbians and gay men have increasingly challenged conventional definitions of marriage and the family. In this brief article, the authors tell the story of gay people and family law in the United States across this period. They divide their discussion into two sections: issues regarding the recognition of the same-sex couple relationship and issues regarding gay men and lesbians as parents. These issues overlap, of course, but since family law discussions commonly treat adult-adult issues of all sorts separately from parent-child issues, the authors believe it convenient and helpful to do so as well.

Intercountry Adoption Under The Hague Convention: Still An Attractive Option For Homosexuals Seeking To Adopt?, Lisa Hillis

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

Reproducing A Fit Citizenry: Dependency, Eugenics, And The Law Of Marriage In The United States, Matthew Lindsay

All Faculty Scholarship

Between the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, American state legislatures enacted a series of new laws that delineated a class of citizens who were deemed ineligible to participate in the institution of marriage. Scholars have characterized this development as evidence that lawmakers had lost faith in a laissez-faire approach to nuptial governance, and thus transformed marriage into an object of public regulation. This essay argues that behind the ostensible nuptial privatism of the mid-nineteenth century lay a self-conscious policy. of judicial governance. Judges invoked the language of nuptial privacy and the common law of contract strategically to advance their …

Sex And Sodomy And Apples And Oranges - Does The Constitution Require States To Grant A Right To Do The Impossible, Jay Alan Sekulow, John Tuskey

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Playing The Loving Card: Same-Sex Marriage And The Politics Of Analogy, David Orgon Coolidge

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

From Loving To Romer: Homosexual Marriage And Moral Discernment, Richard F. Duncan

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Will New York Recognize Same-Sex Marriage?: An Analysis Of The Conflict-Of-Laws' Public Policy Exception, Todd C. Hilbig

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Lesbian Divorce: A Commentary On The Legal Issues, David L. Chambers

Articles

Lesbian couples who break up will find themselves in an awkward position under the law for two separable but related reasons. The first is that, because they were unmarried, they are subjected by the law to much the same uneven and ambivalent treatment to which unmarried heterosexual couples are subjected. The second, of course, is that they are gay or lesbian and thus regarded with special disfavor even in some states that have become more tolerant of unmarried heterosexual relationships. As a law teacher who is gay and who writes about family law issues relating to gay men and lesbians, …