Family Law Commons^™

No Child Left To Heal Alone: Rethinking Restitution For Child Victims Of Sexual Abuse, Jessica Valiani

Advanced Issues in Criminal Law: Sex Offenses

This paper examines the long-term psychological, emotional, and financial harms suffered by child victims of sexual abuse and argues that existing restitution statutes in the United States fail to provide meaningful, sustained support for survivors. Drawing on developmental psychology research, criminal restitution frameworks, and comparative state statutes, the paper demonstrates how current laws often limit recovery to narrow categories of offenses or leave compensation largely discretionary. The paper further analyzes Kentucky’s “Melanie’s Law” as a model for imposing ongoing offender-funded obligations and proposes a new child-centered restitution statute requiring convicted offenders to fund therapy and treatment for survivors of child …

The United States Still Says “I Do” To Marital Rape: An Examination Of Modern Marital Rape Exemptions, Jaiden Herald

Advanced Issues in Criminal Law: Sex Offenses

This paper examines the persistence of marital rape exemptions in the United States despite the formal criminalization of spousal rape in all fifty states. Through historical analysis and statutory comparison, the paper traces the origins of marital rape exemptions to common law doctrines rooted in implied consent, coverture, and the treatment of women as property. It further analyzes modern exemptions that continue to shield perpetrators through loopholes involving cohabitation, incapacity, reporting requirements, or reduced penalties. By highlighting statutes from states such as South Carolina, Arkansas, and Iowa, the paper demonstrates how marital status continues to undermine equal protection for victims …

Void, Voidable, And The Limits Of Finality: Reconciling Equity And Public Policy In Illinois Child Support Orders, Julie M. Pirtle

Northern Illinois University Law Review

What happens when a 2012 agreed order, which dismisses a 2009 paternity finding, waives child support, and sets no parenting time, is challenged as void twelve years later and now Mother says Father has a $63,219.60 arrearage? My client, the Father and payor of support, was facing just that scenario. It is common knowledge that an out of court agreement to modify/terminate child support is not enforceable unless it is reduced to writing and approved by the courts. However, a party to a litigation should be allowed to rely on the orders the court enters. Father has every right to …

Law And The (Re)Production Of Class Hierarchies In Egypt, Ahmad Abdelnaby

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates how Egypt’s legal system, structurally tilted toward the elite and constitutive of inequality, has interacted with the country’s entrenched culture of class-based discrimination to produce a legal culture uniquely comfortable with hierarchy. It contends that class-based discrimination in Egypt has evolved from a social prejudice into a juridical condition, one in which the law does not merely mirror inequality but actively constructs and rationalizes it. By examining the intersection between legal structure and Egypt’s entrenched moral order of class-based discrimination, the study reveals a legal culture that no longer hides its hierarchies behind the veil of neutrality …

Re-Imagining Tomorrow: A Technology, Innovation Law, And Ethics Symposium On Addictive Technology And Children, Margaret Chon

Seattle University Law Review

In this Foreword, Professor Margaret Chon introduces Seattle University's Technology, Innovation Law, and Ethics (TILE) program, the 2024 TILE Symposium, and Dr. Gaia Bernstein’s Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies.

The Effectiveness Of The Hague Convention In Addressing International Child Abduction, Areej A. Dakelallah Althubiti

Theses and Dissertations

Parental child abduction is a growing concern fueled by immigration, cross-cultural marriages, evolving family dynamics, and gaps in the implementation and enforcement of developed international frameworks. This study examines the effectiveness of and challenges to the enforcement of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (HCCA), which was developed to address this problem. Specifically, the goal of this research is to assess the effect the HCCA has had on parental kidnapping, analyze its effectiveness in resolving international custody disputes, and identify the legal and practical obstacles that inhibit implementation. While the prevalence of parental kidnapping continues …

Panel Discussion 4: Best Practices In Representing Children In Court, Timothy Irwin, Carlton Lewis, Dwight Stokes

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Same Crime, Different Time: Sentencing Disparities In The Deep South & A Path Forward Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Hailey M. Donovan

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The American obsession with crime and punishment can be tracked over the last half-century, as the nation’s incarceration rate has risen astronomically. Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over 2.3 million, outpacing both crime and population growth considerably. While the rise itself is undoubtedly bleak, a more troubling truth lies just below the surface. Not all states contribute equally to American mass incarceration. Rather, states have vastly different incarceration rates. Unlike at the federal level, …

Religious Freedom And Diversity Missions: Insights From Jesuit Law Deans, Anthony E. Varona, Michèle Alexandre, Michael J. Kaufman, Madeleine M. Landrieu

Seattle University Law Review

This Article is a transcript of a panel moderated by Anthony E. Varona, Dean of Seattle University School of Law. During the panel, Jesuit and religious law school deans discussed what law schools with religious missions have to add to the conversation around SFFA and the continuing role of affirmative action in higher education.

How To Interpret The Securities Laws?, Zachary J. Gubler

Seattle University Law Review

In discussions of the federal securities laws, the SEC usually gets most of the attention. This makes some sense. After all, it is the agency charged with administrating the securities laws and regulating the industry as a whole. It makes the majority of the laws; it engages in enforcement actions; it reacts to crises; and it, or sometimes even its individual commissioners, intervene publicly in policy debates. Often overlooked in such discussion, however, is the role of the Supreme Court in shaping securities law, and a new book by Adam Pritchard and Robert Thompson demonstrates why this is an oversight. …

Going Forward: The Role Of Affirmative Action, Race, And Diversity In University Admissions And The Broader Construction Of Society, Steven W. Bender

Seattle University Law Review

The third annual EPOCH symposium, a partnership between the Seattle University Law Review and the Black Law Student Association took place in late summer 2023 at the Seattle University School of Law. It was intended to uplift and amplify Black voices and ideas, and those of allies in the legal community. Prompted by the swell of public outcry surrounding ongoing police violence against the Black community, the EPOCH partnership marked a commitment to antiracism imperatives and effectuating change for the Black community. The published symposium in this volume encompasses some, but not all, the ideas and vision detailed in the …

Verses Turned To Verdicts: Ysl Rico Case Sets A High-Watermark For The Legal Pseudo-Censorship Of Rap Music, Nabil Yousfi

Seattle University Law Review

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap …

Memories Of An Affirmative Action Activist, Margaret E. Montoya

Seattle University Law Review

Some twenty-five years ago, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) led a march supporting Affirmative Action in legal education to counter the spate of litigation and other legal prohibitions that exploded during the 1990s, seeking to limit or abolish race-based measures. The march began at the San Francisco Hilton Hotel, where the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) was having its annual meeting, and proceeded to Union Square. We, the organizers of the march, did not expect the march to become an iconic event; one that would be remembered as a harbinger of a new era of activism by …

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 …

After Affirmative Action, Meera E. Deo

Seattle University Law Review

This is a time of crisis in legal education. In truth, we are in the midst of several crises. We are emerging from the COVID pandemic, a period of unprecedented upheaval where law students and law faculty alike struggled through physical challenges, mental health burdens, and decreased academic and professional success. The past few years also have seen a precipitous drop in applications to and enrollment in legal education. Simultaneously, students have been burdened with the skyrocketing costs of attending law school, taking on unmanageable levels of debt. And with the Supreme Court decision in SFFA v. Harvard, we are …

The Sffa V. Harvard Trojan Horse Admissions Lawsuit, Kimberly West-Faulcon

Seattle University Law Review

Affirmative-action-hostile admissions lawsuits are modern Trojan horses. The SFFA v. Harvard/UNC case—Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, et. al., decided jointly—is the most effective Trojan horse admissions lawsuit to date. Constructed to have the distractingly appealing exterior façade of a lawsuit seeking greater fairness in college admissions, the SFFA v. Harvard/UNC case is best understood as a deception-driven battle tactic used by forces waging a multi-decade war against the major legislative victories of America’s Civil Rights Movement, specifically Title VI and Title VII …

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 …

Auc Community Only Lecture: Gender-Based Violence (Gbv), Women & The Law In Egypt, The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar

Performances, Events, and Presentations

This special guest lecture was part of the course “Exploring Feminist Perspectives in Egypt and the US” taught by CASAR Adjunct Faculty Yasmeen El-Ghazaly. The lecture was given in Arabic by Counselor Mohamed Samir, who is a senior member of the judicial authority in Egypt, responsible for the accountability of civil servants’ crimes and misconduct. He is also a lecturer in Political Science and Gender Based Violence Crimes. Samir has over 25 years of experience in his career, and was invited to discuss “challenges and legal obstacles women face when discussing gender based violence in Egypt.” In his insightful lecture, …

Sanksi Hukuman Mati Bagi Penyalahguna Narkotika Dalam Perspektif Ham Berdasarkan Konstitusi, Dharma Rozali Azhar D

"Dharmasisya” Jurnal Program Magister Hukum FHUI

The death penalty is a legal act that is legitimized by the state. In the context of the constitution, the death penalty has created a contradiction in the norms in Article 28 I paragraph (1) and Article 28 J paragraph (1) and paragraph (2) which specifically focus on the right to life as a fundamental right that is very fundamental and divine in nature and the right to life of people. others who also may not be removed by anyone on purpose for any reason. The death penalty in the context of narcotics does not aim to repay crime for …

The New Orleans Transformation: Foster Care As A Rare, Time-Limited Intervention, Josh Gupta-Kagan, Christopher Church, Melissa Carter, Vivek Sankaran, Andrew Barclay

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Article offers an initial evaluation of one reformed child protection system—New Orleans, Louisiana—and describes how a system that dramatically reduces the number of children in foster care might look. This system shows how a major metropolitan area can shrink its daily population of children in foster care to the low double digits, which would correspond to a reduction of the national daily foster care population by about 360,000. This reduction was mostly due to sending children home—usually to the homes from which they were removed—within days or weeks of removal, raising questions about the necessity of the original removal. …

A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella

Seattle University Law Review

The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …

Nonconsensual Family Obligations, Emily Stolzenberg

Faculty Publications

Even as the pandemic has both highlighted and compounded the challenges many U.S. families face in meeting their members’ basic needs, efforts to expand public subsidies for caretaking have gained little traction. Scholars have identified many historical and practical reasons for Americans’ entrenched skepticism toward the welfare state. Ideas matter, too, and this Article uncovers and critiques one that works to limit collective financial responsibility for families: the conviction that family support obligations must be legitimated through consent.

In family law, as in liberal political theory, consent works to reconcile state regulation with individual freedom. But because consent is a …

Politik Hukum Dalam Penegakan Hukum Di Indonesia, Anita Anita

"Dharmasisya” Jurnal Program Magister Hukum FHUI

Law is a guide and rules related to the concept of social life and will always be in accordance with the conditions of society. Law is a demand to be able to provide justice, meaning that the law is always faced with the question of whether the law can bring about justice. In relation to the legal concept, legal politics is defined as an activity that determines the patterns and methods of shaping law, supervises the operation of the law, and reforms the law for the purposes of the State. Therefore, law is a determinant of politics, and is also …

Achieving Equality Without A Constitution: Lessons From Israel For Queer Family Law, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

How might the United States reconcile conflicts between equality and religious freedom in the realm of family law? To answer this question, this chapter considers recent developments in family (personal status) law in Israel. While Israel may at first blush appear to be the last place that feminists and queer theorists should look for solutions to modern conflicts between democratic and religious values, this chapter argues that the Israeli experience has much to offer critical family scholars working to develop pluralistic legal approaches to family regulation. Israel is a country with a diverse population and unique political and legal context …

A Proposal For Paid Family Leave In Utah, Erin Wong

Student Works

When a woman gives birth, the arrival of that child will have a statistically significant negative impact on that woman’s employment, earning potential, health, and overall wellbeing. The arrival of a child has no statistically significant impact on men’s employment, earning potential, or overall health and wellbeing. The labor force experiences a drain of talent and productivity when mothers leave the market in large numbers after having a child. Many mothers who wish to remain the workforce after childbirth are faced with the impossible choice of their child’s health or their own job and earning potential. Many fathers or partners …

Miscarriage Of Justice: Early Pregnancy Loss And The Limits Of U.S. Employment Law, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores judicial responses to miscarriage under federal employment law in the United States. Miscarriage is an incredibly common experience. Of confirmed pregnancies, about fifteen percent will end in miscarriage; almost half of all women who have given birth have suffered a miscarriage. Yet this experience slips through the cracks of every major federal employment law in the United States.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, for example, defines sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 requires covered employers to provide employees with …

Restraint Of Polygamy In Jurisprudence And Law: A Comparative Study, Qais Abdul Wahab Issa

UAEU Law Journal

Polygamy is a subject addressed in Sharia that has been established by the Holy Quran and the Prophetic Sunnah. Islamic jurists have debated about this subject in terms of its obligation, permissibility and revocability. To enjoy this right, a man has to be obligated to the legal controls, such that he should be able to maintain more than a wife. Moreover, this person is to take into account social, economic, psychological and health-related aspects of his life and make sure that he is able to maintain justice between all his wives. Furthermore, the man must have no more than four …

Oral Interview: Contextualizing The Women's Rights Movement In Tunisia Through Family History, Walid Zarrad

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

In their path towards emancipation and equal rights, Tunisian women have gone through a number of phases that seem to be directly linked to legal changes and cultural factors. In fact, the Code of Personal Status (CPS) of 1956 seems to be a milestone in the women’s movement, and its following amendments continued on this path. However, it is a lot more complex than that. A piece of legislation officially passing is not a simple determinant of the state of Women’s Rights in a country.

Through Dorra Mahfoudh Draoui’s “Report on Gender and Marriage in Tunisian Society” and my interview …

Properties Of Intimacy, Emily J. Stolzenberg

Faculty Publications

Today, nearly nineteen million U.S. adults are cohabiting with an intimate partner. Yet family law continues to struggle with the question whether these unmarried partners should have relationship-based rights in one another’s property. Generally speaking, states answer “no.” Because cohabitants are not spouses, they’re treated like strangers. As a result, their property rights usually follow title, and richer partners tend to walk away with a large proportion of the property acquired during the relationship. This Article shows the “cohabitant problem” to be no anomaly, but rather the clearest manifestation of family law’s overarching structure. In marital property regimes as well …

The Creative Legal Histories Of Cervantes And Jurist Antonio De La Peña, Susan Byrne

Department of World Languages Faculty Research

In the Quijote’s intercalated novella titled El curioso impertinente, Miguel de Cervantes narrates the story of a husband inducing his best friend to seduce his wife. This study compares Cervantes’ use of juridical detail in that story with contemporaneous legal arguments and punishments for a husband who acts as procurer for his wife.