Family Law Commons^™

The Ontological Expansiveness Of “Parental Rights” Rhetoric In K–12 Public Schools, Sacha M. Coupet, Kai Scott

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Child Welfare, Reasonable Efforts, And Covid-19, Anita Weinberg, Lilia Valdez

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) requires governments to protect children from all forms of violence, including violence in the home. At the same time, Articles 3 and 5 obligate states to respect the rights and duties of parents to care for and make decisions on behalf of their children. Although the United States is not a signatory to the CRC, federal law also seeks to strike a balance between protecting children from harm by family members and recognizing the constitutional rights of parents to direct the care, control, and upbringing of …

Fast Track To The Civil Death Penalty: Involuntary Termination Of Parental Rights And An Analysis Of The Minnesota Supreme Court's Decision In R.D.L., Ryan E. Boevers

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sign Here: How Parental Waivers Exceed The Bounds Of Parents' Fundamental Rights, Carissa Hansen

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Spousal Maintenance And Cohabitation: Minnesota Should Shack Up With A Need-Based Approach, Alexis M. Zimmer

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Letting The Kids Run Wild: Free-Range Parenting And The (De)Regulation Of Child Protective Services, Fenja R. Schick-Malone

Washington and Lee Law Review

Families in the United States suffer from a removal epidemic. The child welfare framework allows unnecessary and harmful intervention into family and parenting matters, traditionally left to the discretion of the parent. Many states allow Child Protective Services (“CPS”) to investigate, intervene, and permanently separate a child from their parents for innocuous activities such as letting the child play outside unattended. This especially affects low-income and minority families.

To prevent CPS from unnecessarily intervening in a family’s decision to let their children engage in independent, unsupervised activities, Utah passed a “free-range” parenting act (“Act”) in 2018. The Act explicitly excludes …

Comment: Protecting Childhood Independence And The Families Who Embrace It, David Pimentel

Washington and Lee Law Review

The legal problem of how to give parents flexibility and how to give children independence cuts to the core of some of our most sacred values: (1) how we raise our kids in this society, (2) the degree to which parents are free to raise their children as they see fit, and (3) the extent to which the state gets to substitute its own judgment for that of parents. Incursions into the family, and disruptions of family security and integrity, should be the exception rather than the rule. Schick-Malone joins a small group of legal scholars who are not content …

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

Adultery Provisions In Matrimonial Agreements, Elizabeth R. Carter

American University Law Review

Can a contract discourage your spouse from cheating or compensate you for a broken heart? Adultery penalties in marriage contracts seek to do exactly that. An adultery penalty is a financial penalty in a marriage contract triggered by a spouse’s infidelity. While many practitioners advise clients against adultery provisions in marriage contracts, some clients demand them. However, are adultery provisions enforceable? Should they be? This Article considers the sociolegal history of adultery and provides new insight into the enforceability and wisdom of adultery penalties. This Article also provides novel arguments that adultery provisions should not be enforced and calls upon …

Stopping The Cycle Of Abuse Before It Starts: An Evaluation Of Virginia's Domestic Violence Primary Prevention Model In Schools, Amanda Palini

Law Student Publications

In 1994 the United States was faced with a domestic violence epidemic that led Congress to pass the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The Act was passed to respond to the needs of victims, particularly women, who are at the highest risk of victimization in crimes such as domestic violence and sexual assault. While domestic violence has been recognized as an important public health problem, most services provided are focused on after-the-fact interventions rather than prevention.

Many states, including Virginia, have since created domestic violence prevention programs, added preventative requirements to their state code, and tasked their respective Departments of …

Capaldi V. Capaldi, 295 A.3d 822 (R.I. 2023)., Katherine S. Kazarian

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Gardner’S Zombie: Parental Alienation Syndrome, Parental Alienation, And The Threat Both Present To Rhode Island, Grant E. Mooney

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comment On Part 4 Essays: Goodwin And Dailey And Rosenbury, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Professors Michelle Goodwin and Anne Dailey and President Laura Rosenbury have written two compelling essays on Part 4 of the Restatement of Children and the Law, dealing with Children in Society. Goodwin’s essay, She’s So Exceptional: Rape and Incest Exceptions Post-Dobbs, focuses on § 19.02 of the Restatement, dealing with the right of minors to reproductive health treatments. This Section was approved by the American Law Institute before the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade. In her essay, Goodwin explores the harms that will follow if minors’ right of access …

The Harm Of "Nothing Burgers", Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

Child protective services (CPS) agencies subject a wide scope of families to investigation, and the vast majority do not lead to family separations or family court cases. A 2017 study, for instance, showing that 37% of all children and 53% of Black children are the subject of CPS investigations in their childhoods, has now been cited hundreds of times. Kelley Fong’s new book, Investigating Families, is based on the months she spent embedded with CPS investigators responding to allegations that parents abused or (more often) neglected their children, and the interviews she conducted with both investigators and the parents …

Domestic Supply (A Feminist Proposal), Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

No abstract provided.

Correcting Contradiction: Limiting License Suspension As A Child Support Enforcement Mechanism In Pennsylvania, Robin Platte

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In many communities across Pennsylvania, maintaining employment without a driver’s license is extremely difficult. Section 4355 of the Pennsylvania Domestic Relations Code authorizes license suspension as a means to encourage child support payments. Unfortunately, license suspensions rarely result in obligors making payments. Instead, suspensions often lead to loss of employment and financial insecurity. Under Section 4355, if an obligor falls three months behind in child support payments, their professional, recreational, and driver’s licenses may be suspended indefinitely. Coincidentally, the obligor’s actual ability to pay may not be considered in a pre-suspension hearing. Even those who fall far below the national …

Intentional Parenthood, Contingent Fetal Personhood, And The Right To Reproductive Self-Determination, Laura Hermer

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article argues that intent should govern legal parenthood, regardless of the method of conception, the person’s biological or genetic relationship to the resulting embryo/fetus, or the person’s gender. This proposition is not new. This Article adds to scholarly discourse by extending the concept: Intent should not just determine parenthood, but also fetal rights. When a pregnant person establishes their procreational intent (or lack thereof) prior to birth, then both the existence (or lack thereof) of legal protections for the embryo/fetus and the gestator’s rights and duties (or lack thereof) should flow from this intent. Non-gestating gamete contributors would do …

It's More Than Just A Family Issue: A Global Analysis Of Parentage Assumption Law In Relation To Surrogacy, Jordan Chrispell

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Consumer’S Choice To Boycott, Agnes Bresee

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of employees losing their jobs upon voicing their political opinions concerning Israel, Harvard and Columbia law students’ job offers being rescinded upon expressing support for Palestine, and the names and social media profiles of individuals who support Palestine being collected and listed on Canary Mission, such backlash may leave many Americans wondering what form of resistance to settler-colonialist apartheid is acceptable in the twenty-first century. Recently, the movement to collectively boycott brands like Starbucks, which sued its Worker’s Union for a tweet expressing support for Palestine; Disney, which donated money to Israel; and McDonald’s, where a location …

A Different Approach To Agency Theory And Implications For Esg, Jonathan Bonham, Amoray Riggs-Cragun

Seattle University Law Review

In conventional agency theory, the agent is modeled as exerting unobservable “effort” that influences the distribution over outcomes the principal cares about. Recent papers instead allow the agent to choose the entire distribution, an assumption that better describes the extensive and flexible control that CEOs have over firm outcomes. Under this assumption, the optimal contract rewards the agent directly for outcomes the principal cares about, rather than for what those outcomes reveal about the agent’s effort. This article briefly summarizes this new agency model and discusses its implications for contracting on ESG activities.

Overseeing The Administrative State, Jill E. Fisch

Seattle University Law Review

In a series of recent cases, the Supreme Court has reduced the regulatory power of the Administrative State. Pending cases offer vehicles for the Court to go still further. Although the Court’s skepticism of administrative agencies may be rooted in Constitutional principles or political expediency, this Article explores another possible explanation—a shift in the nature of agencies and their regulatory role. As Pritchard and Thompson detail in their important book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court was initially skeptical of agency power, jeopardizing Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)’s ambitious New Deal plan. The Court’s acceptance …

The Sec, The Supreme Court, And The Administrative State, Paul G. Mahoney

Seattle University Law Review

Pritchard and Thompson have given those of us who study the SEC and the securities laws much food for thought. Their methodological focus is on the internal dynamics of the Court’s deliberations, on which they have done detailed and valuable work. The Court did not, however, operate in a vacuum. Intellectual trends in economics and law over the past century can also help us understand the SEC’s fortunes in the federal courts and make predictions about its future.

A Hard Pill To Swallow: The Abysmal Mental Health Standards Of Detained Immigrant Children In The United States, Rama Bankesly

Seattle University Law Review

After setting foot into the U.S., unaccompanied children must learn to navigate academic and legal systems while receiving little support and carrying the heavy burden of effects of trauma on their mental health. They need access to mental health care from qualified professionals, but as this Comment will explain, they systematically fail to receive care, as can be seen in cases like Doe v. Shenandoah Valley Juv. Ctr. Comm’n. In Shenandoah, an unaccompanied child arrived in the U.S. and was placed in a facility that failed to provide remotely adequate mental health care and in fact was subjected …

Centering Students’ Rights In Our Democracy: A Case Study From Maryland’S Eastern Shore, Samantha C. Pownall

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

First Comes Love: Advocating For A Revival Of Pre-Obergefell Estate Planning Vigor For Lgbtq+ Couples And Families, Kimberly N. Furtado

University of Richmond Law Review

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Beyond the obvious devastation this opinion wreaked on abortion rights nationwide, it also unleashed a fear in communities that have gained substantive rights through the Court’s decisions based on similar reasoning. News organizations and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups quickly published stories discussing the fate of same-sex marriage in a post-Dobbs society. If the Supreme Court were to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, it would be a crushing loss to the LGBTQ+ community. Not only would it signal the lack of …

Using Education To Confidently Identify And Report Concerns Of Child Abuse And Neglect: A Qualitative Improvement Initiative Through Staff Development, Sarah E. Neilson

Master's Theses and Capstones

BACKGROUND: Pre-licensure education on child abuse and neglect is crucial for nurses in the healthcare field. It helps to equip them with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively identify, report, and intervene in cases of child abuse and neglect. Having this education available and understanding the signs and effects of child abuse and neglect, empowers nurses to take quick and decisive action in early intervention and prevention. Within the microsystem of a local Operating Room (OR), this quality improvement (QI) project will determine the muchneeded addition to the healthcare curriculum.

METHODS: The Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) framework was …

Gender Regrets: Banning Abortion And Gender-Affirming Care, Noa Ben-Asher, Margot J. Pollans

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the spring of 2023, the New York Times published a piece entitled “How a Few Stories of Regret Fuel the Push to Restrict Gender Transition Care.” It features Chloe Cole, who lived as a transgender boy for several years but now identifies as a cisgender woman. Cole has become a poster child for the idea that gender-affirming care (“GAC”) for minors may lead to later regret and should therefore be restricted by the state. Cole, who has been travelling the country as part of a conservative lawmaking effort to ban GAC, received a standing ovation after Florida Governor …

Students For Fair Admissions: Affirming Affirmative Action And Shapeshifting Towards Cognitive Diversity?, Steven A. Ramirez

Seattle University Law Review

The Roberts Court holds a well-earned reputation for overturning Supreme Court precedent regardless of the long-standing nature of the case. The Roberts Court knows how to overrule precedent. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), the Court’s majority opinion never intimates that it overrules Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court’s leading opinion permitting race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Instead, the Roberts Court applied Grutter as authoritative to hold certain affirmative action programs entailing racial preferences violative of the Constitution. These programs did not provide an end point, nor did they require assessment, review, periodic expiration, or revision for greater …

Applying Strict Scrutiny In Termination Of Parental Rights Proceedings: Why Alabama’S Jurisprudence Should Reshape Child Protection Practice, Christopher Church, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

“Our decision in [Pierce] holds that parents have a fundamental constitutional right to rear their children . . . . I would apply strict scrutiny to infringements of fundamental rights.” “[S]trict scrutiny leaves few survivors.” Termination of parental rights (TPR) stands as “a unique kind of deprivation” that results in the state irrevocably severing a parent’s fundamental right to care for their child. In The Ties that Bind Us, we scrutinized the child protection system’s overuse of TPR, employing clinical, empirical, and constitutional perspectives. This Article advocates for a constitutionally anchored framework aimed at enforcing strict scrutiny when considering TPR …