Family Law Commons^™

Efficiency, Therapeutic Justice, Mediation, And Evaluation: Reflections On A Survey Of Unified Family Courts, Andrew Schepard, James W. Bozzomo

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

In cooperation with the American Bar Association's Coordinating Council on Unified Family Courts, faculty and students of Hofstra University's Center for Children, Families and the Courts conducted a survey of various courts in states we believed had made a commitment to implement a unified family court (UFC) model. Based on a questionnaire developed by the Center and the Coordinating Council, Hofstra Law School students interviewed court administrators, family court judges, or knowledgeable members of the family court bar in eighteen states. A detailed description of the survey, its methodology, and its findings is being published in the Family Court Review.' …

Family Law: Third Party Custody After Baby Girl L. And A.G.S.: Now Where Are We?, Robert G. Spector

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Protecting Transgender Families: Strategies For Advocates, Taylor Flynn

Media Presence

This Article discusses the difficulties involving divorce for married transgender women and men in the United States. For a transgender (trans) man or woman, what begins as the dissolution of a relationship may be transformed into a public nightmare in which the individual is forced to defend the authenticity of his or her gender in the face of relentless, brutal, and humiliating questions about the most intimate details of personal anatomy and sexual practices.

The Author suggest that the courts should point to the medical standards of care, which conclude that sex is determined by gender identity: the court then …

A Prescription For Gender: How Medical Professionals Can Help Secure Equality For Transgender People, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

Transgender people have made tremendous legal gains in the last several years. We live in a period of rapid social change, hopefully approaching a time when transgender individuals and our families enjoy the same legal rights and privileges afforded to other members of society. However, we are not there yet. This essay discusses the role medical professionals must play if transgender people are to achieve full humanity in light of legal developments in the areas of employment and family law. Medical professionals are at the heart of directing and implementing policies that have an enormous effect on the lives of …

Jon O. Newman And The Abortion Decisions: A Remarkable First Year, Andrew D. Hurwitz

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Strangers And Brothers: A Homily On Transracial Adoption, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

The common law speaks to us in parables. Ours is Drummond v. Fulton County Department of Family and Children's Services. Just before Christmas 1973, a boy named Timmy was born to a white mother and a black father. A month later, his mother was declared unfit, and the Department of Family and Children Services placed Timmy with white foster parents - Robert and Mildred Drummond. The Drummonds were "excellent" and "loving" parents, and Timmy grew into "an extremely bright, highly verbal, outgoing 15-month baby boy." Then the Drummonds asked to adopt Timmy. The Department's reviews of the Drummonds' devotion …

Marriage Law: Obsolete Or Cutting Edge?, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reforming Child Protection In Response To The Catholic Church Child Sexual Abuse Scandal, Susan Vivian Mangold

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

The Shackles Of Covenant Marriage: Who Holds The Keys To Wedlock, Chauncey E. Brummer

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Family Law—Putative Fathers And The Presumption Of Legitimacy—Adams And The Forbidden Fruit: Clashes Between The Presumption Of Legitimacy And The Rights Of Putative Fathers In Arkansas, Edward R. Armstrong

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Affairs Of The Heart, Michael T. Flannery

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Toward A Coherent Approach To Tort Immunity In Judicially Mandated Family Court Services, Nat Stern, Karen Oehme

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

For Ira Ellman: One More Reason 'Why Making Family Law Is Hard', David L. Chambers

Articles

Kate Bartlett and Ira worked together as reporters on the ALI project. I was merely one of nearly thirty advisors to the reporters. The advisors had no responsibility for drafting, no responsibility for coming up with original proposals. Our sole job was to come once a year to a meeting in Philadelphia and take potshots at the drafts that Ira, Kate, and Grace Blumberg sent to us. At the meetings, the reporters would sit on a platform and listen to our comments as we moved section by section through a draft. Ira became a master of reportership. He would nod …

Intimate Affiliation And Democracy: Beyond Marriage?, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This article takes up the question: Should family law and policy move beyond marriage? It assesses a spectrum of answers to that question. Rejecting proposals, on the one hand, to shore up traditional marriage, and, on the other, to abolish marriage, it argues that family law and policy should not move wholly beyond marriage, but should support marriage in a way that better fosters greater equality within and among families. The article is part of a symposium on "Marriage, Families, and Democracy," published in 32 Hofstra Law Review 23-421 (2003).

Feminist Inquiry And Action: Introduction To A Symposium On Confronting Domestic Violence And Achieving Gender Equality: Evaluating Battered Women & Feminist Lawmakingby Elizabeth Schneider, Ann Shalleck

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Engaging With The State: The Growing Reliance On Lawyers And Judges To Protect Battered Women, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

The passage of the federal Violence Against Women Act of 2000 (“VAWA II”) marked an important milestone in the evolution of the domestic violence movement. VAWA II created, among other things, a complex system for state and federal funding in all fifty states to provide civil legal assistance to battered women. Its passage completed a process that began in the early 1980s when domestic violence advocates shifted their focus from grass roots efforts to help battered women and their children leave abusive partners to building alliances with government and advocating for legal remedies to assist battered women. This paper looks …

A Unified Family Court, Barbara A. Babb

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Independence In Family Courts, Barbara A. Babb, Judith D. Moran

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Parental Ratification: Legal Manifestations Of Cultural Authenticity In Cross-Racial Adoption, Kevin Noble Maillard

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Placing The Adoptive Self, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

[A]doption law and practices are guided by enormous cultural changes in the composition and the meaning of family. As families become increasingly blended outside the context of adoption – with combinations of blood relatives, step-relatives, de facto relatives, and ex-relatives sitting down together for Thanksgiving dinner as a matter of course – birth families and adoptive families knowing one another may not seem so very strange or threatening at all. There will simply be an expectation across communities that ordinary families will be mixed and multiple. With that in mind, we should hesitate before establishing embeddedness as the source of …

Damage To Family Relationships As A Collateral Consequence Of Parental Incarceration, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

The most obvious and perhaps most serious collateral consequence of incarceration is family separation. Imprisonment undermines families and has a detrimental impact upon children, caretakers, and the communities in which they live. Unlike other collateral consequences, family separation has an irreversible impact upon both parents and children. The time apart is lost forever because a childhood can never be recovered.

This Essay will review the available statistical information about incarcerated parents and their children and discuss the detrimental effects of parental incarceration upon families. The Essay will conclude with some reflections about why the adverse consequences of incarceration for prisoners' …

Adult Guardianship In Georgia: Are The Rights Of Proposed Wards Being Protected? Can We Tell?, Eleanor Crosby Lanier

Scholarly Works

National scrutiny of guardianship policies and practice by scholars and legal, health, and social service practitioners followed. This resulted in a succession of forums, studies, and recommendations aimed at improving the guardianship system. One such forum was the Wingspread conference, convened by the American Bar Association (ABA) in 1988. Experts from a variety of fields met to produce a groundbreaking set of recommendations for reforming guardianship. Wingspan, a second national guardianship conference addressing reform issues in 2001, produced in a second series of recommendations. The recommendations from these two conferences proposed greater protection for the proposed ward's liberty interests and …

Promoting Children's Interest Through A Responsible Research Agenda, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

I deeply wish to see more good empirical work in family law. If our system had all of the money in the world, I would wish to spend it to guarantee happy, healthy children. But since resources are scarce, and children's issues must compete with other interests that range from national security to care for the elderly, I would suggest spending a relatively modest amount to determine what programs would likely prove successful.

Usually public policy follows from the wishes of adults. In family law, this occurs although virtually all the legislation dealing with families and children begins with a …