Family Law Commons^™

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. The …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Collateral Damage: Parental Incarceration As Family Punishment, Hatim M. Husainy

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

The United States stands alone among UN members in refusing to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That absence reflects a deeper failure: the American legal system continues to allow parental incarceration to inflict punishment on children who have committed no crime. This paper explores how the structure of U.S. mass incarceration—especially within Black and Native American communities—conflicts with both domestic legal ideals and international human rights standards. It calls for legal and policy reform that recognizes families as indivisible social units and restores justice to those most affected by incarceration’s collateral damage.

Incarcerated Youths In Canada And The United States: A Comparative Analysis, Grace A. Mastrangelo

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

Are children, who commit adult crimes, deserving of adult punishments? According to the United Nations, not if it harms their well-being. Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) adopted by the United Nations in November 1989, states that 1) the best interests of the child should be the primary consideration of all state actions involving children, 2) governments must allot children the protection and care necessary for their well-being, and 3) governmental institutions, services, and facilities that deal with children must uphold adequate standards for the safety, health, and supervision of children. The CRC is …

Under The Guardianship: Experiences Of Mothers In Egypt’S El Nayaba El Hesbaya, Hana Khayry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intersectional lived experience of El Nayaba El Hesbaya in Egypt. El Nayaba El Hesbaya, operating under Law 119/1952, is the administrative and judicial body responsible for overseeing the financial and legal affairs of minors whose father or mother had passed. Hundreds of thousands of mothers in Egypt have (had) children under the guardianship of El Nayaba El Hesbaya. This research delves into the experience of mothers whose children are or were under the guardianship of El Nayaba El Hesbaya, examining how it shape(s/d) their everyday life as women, mothers, widows or ex-wives, citizens, and legal subjects. …

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 …

Developing Legal Protections For Family Integrity, Elizabeth D. Katz

UF Law Faculty Publications

A commentary on Laura Savarese's article, The Origins of Family Rights and Regulations: A Dual Legal History, 78 Stan. L. Rev. 63 (2026).

The Poly Problem In Zoning: Redefining "Family" For A Changing Society, Aric K. Short, Tanya Pierce

Faculty Scholarship

Single-family zoning has long dictated not only where people may live but also with whom. Although extensively critiqued for perpetuating racial and economic exclusion, these laws also privilege relationships defined by blood, marriage, or adoption and marginalize nontraditional families. This Article focuses on a particularly overlooked group: polyamorous families who often face legal uncertainty, social exclusion, and housing discrimination due to restrictive zoning definitions of “family.”

As polyamory gains cultural visibility and increasing legal recognition—through West 49th Street, LLC v. O’Neill and municipal reforms in cities like Somerville and Cambridge—now is the time to examine zoningÊs role in reinforcing outdated …

Legal Reform And Cultural Resistance: Examining The Role Of Law And Custom In Ending Fgm In Egypt, Souhaila Hafez Abo Seada

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the persistent gap between legal reform and social practice in efforts to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Egypt. Although FGM has been criminalized since 2008, with stronger penalties introduced in 2016 and 2021, the practice continues, revealing the limits of law when it operates alongside powerful social, religious, familial, and medical norms. Using a qualitative case-based approach grounded in legal pluralism and Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, the study draws on 11 semi-structured interviews with participants from civil society, religious institutions, the legal profession, the medical sector, and communities where FGM persists, alongside legislative, demographic, and documentary …

Keeping Children Safe: Bring Kayden's Law To Ohio, Christina Woods-Tsiperson

Akron Law Review

After decades of punishing murder-suicide headlines, a growing body of evidence now corroborates what female domestic violence survivors have said for years: that family courts deciding child custody cases disproportionately reject mothers’ allegations of domestic violence and paternal child abuse. From prominent legal scholars to local family law attorneys (and increasingly, investigative reporters), many modern voices contend that mothers specifically face a litany of obstacles in court, including heightened judicial suspicion that they are “parental alienators,” a widespread minimization of coercive control, and state legal standards that  emphasize shared parenting over child safety.

Following the widely publicized murder of seven-year-old …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Children's Rights Scholars And Advocates In Support Of Appellants' Opening Brief: Lighthiser V. Trump, Abigail L. Fleming, Douglas A. Ruley, Catherine Smith

Scholarly Articles

For decades, constitutional doctrine has recognized that children possess enforceable constitutional rights and that their developmental, physical, and social differences from adults are important considerations in constitutional analysis. Courts may not impute adult capacities, privileges, or political agency to children when determining whether their rights may be vindicated, leaving them no democratic mechanism to alleviate their injuries.

The district court’s dismissal of the youth plaintiffs’ claims rests on precisely that error. Although the court recognized that the children alleged concrete, severe, and escalating harms caused by the challenged executive actions, it concluded that relief must come from the political branches …

N.D., G.D., M.D., And Clark County Department Of Family Services V. Kevin John D., 142 Nev. Adv. Op. 2 (Jan. 08, 2026), Natalie D'Ambrosio

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

N.D., G.D., M.D., and Clark County DFS v. Kevin John D. held that dismissal of a NRS 432B petition is a final, appealable judgment under NRAP 3A(b)(1); NRAP 3A(b)(7) does not bar such appeals, and In re A.B. is partially overruled.

Civil And Criminal Justice Remedies For Intimate Partner Violence, Demetrice M. Lopez, Anika Ramos

Hunter Center Publications

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a persistent public health problem that impacts the physical and mental health of millions of people each year. The United States has historically relied on the legal system as the primary means of addressing IPV as a criminal or civil infraction. This chapter begins with a review of the history of IPV in the context of the legal system. It then considers the dynamics of IPV and its influence on the legal response. The chapter then looks at the broader impact of IPV and remedies for survivors in the justice system. Finally, it considers the …

Corporate Childrearing, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

With children influencing a trillion dollars in spending annually, corporations actively seek to shape children's identities in support of consumer culture and profit. Yet there are no scholarly treatments or theories of the legal relationship between children and corporations. Instead, scholars address individual industries such as food, social media, cosmetics, tobacco, or fashion, missing the structural role corporations play in children's identity formation. Family law evaluates child wellbeing interventions using a triangle to map the legal dynamics among child, parent, and state. This article adds corporations as fourth actors, reconceptualizing that triangle as a square. This square provides the first …

Situating Stillbirth Within A Reproductive Justice Methodology Amidst Perilous Politics, Jamie Abrams

Book Reviews

Stillbirth and the Law, published in 2025 by the University of California Press, offers both a deeply personal and rigorously insightful examination of how law, medicine, and policy intersect around stillbirth. Jill Lens brings her full self to this work in ways that reflect deep feminist roots cultivated over years of Lens’s impressive scholarly production. Lens channels her lived experience of stillbirth into a comprehensive analysis that combines data, theory, law, narrative, policy, and pragmatic solutions.

The reader leaves the book equally feeling Lens’s deep love and longing for her son, Caleb, and equipped with a lengthy list of tools, …

“No One Can Hear You Scream”: Intimate Partner Violence And Family Justice Centers In Rural America, Jordan Stevenson

Legal Writing Competition Winners

In rural Kentucky, where cars are a necessity to traverse the rugged Appalachian Mountains and sparsely populated farmlands, “Barbara’s” abusive husband couldn’t let her get away—so he set her car aflame. Although census-defined rural areas contain only 20% of the United States population, some studies have found that intimate partner violence is more common and severe in rural areas than urban or suburban regions. 

People, especially women, in rural areas experience intimate partner violence in unique ways tied to their geographic and cultural context. Consequently, organizations, courts, and law enforcement struggle to meet the needs of affected populations in rural …

Kidfluencer Protection: Illinois’ Attempt At Expanding Its Version Of The Coogan Law., Genevieve Sloan

American University Business Law Review

On July 1, 2024, Illinois enacted pioneering legislation, which expanded its child labor laws to “[m]inors featured in vlogs.” This legislation marks the first successful attempt at protecting the finances of children in the business of social media influencing. Over the past several years, society has started recognizing the dangers of the otherwise lucrative child influencer industry, notably children’s lack of legal entitlement to their earnings.

Accordingly, the Illinois legislation began inspiring similar child labor laws in other states. This Comment analyzes whether Section 95 and Section 100 of Illinois’ Child Labor Law of 2024 maintain parental autonomy and adequately …

Deconstructing Parenthood: A Critical Queer Analysis Of Gender, Law, And Bionormativity In India, Jwalika Balaji

National Law School of India Review

Parenthood (the legal connection to one’s child) is often assumed to be a biologically determined and natural status, but in reality, it is a legal and social construct shaped by historical, cultural, and political contexts. This paper critically examines the legal framework of parenthood in India, highlighting how it privileges a bionormative, dyadic, heterosexual parental unit, while marginalising LGBTQ+ individuals, unmarried couples, and alternative family structures. Through a critical queer method, the paper deconstructs the bio-essentialist juxtaposition of gender, conjugality, and reproduction that underpins Indian family law. It explores how the legal framework selectively acknowledges the constructed nature of parenthood …

Family Law Agreement And The New Gender Bargains, June Carbone, Brian H. Bix

Articles

The great family law divide is said to be marriage, as marriage has emerged as a marker correlated with race and socioeconomic status. This article argues that the real family law divide, inside and outside of marriage, is agreement. Family law, and the family court system that implements it, produce agreement when legal rules, societal norms, and family court procedures operate together to encourage shared understandings expressed through statuses such as marriage or parenthood, and legally enforceable agreements. In an increasingly unequal society, the family understandings of the college-educated middle class have moved apart from those much less privileged in …

An International Framework For Marriage Promotion, Jessica Tueller

Faculty Articles

Governments across the globe lately have been raising the alarm about declining marriage rates and adopting a wide variety of measures to increase these rates. This article presents a framework, distilled from human rights law, for assessing whether such measures are in keeping with States’ international obligations to eliminate all forms of coercion and discrimination in their policies and practices concerning diverse family structure and composition. The framework draws clear boundaries between measures that are permissible under human rights law and measures that are prohibited by human rights law. It also provides a tool for evaluating marriage-promotion measures that, although …

Bad Parenting On Trial: How Gender, Race, And Class Shape Parental Responsibility Prosecutions And Laws For School Shootings, Makayla R. Foust

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In 2021, James and Jennifer Crumbley became the first parents in the United States to be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in connection with their son’s school shooting that killed four people and injured multiple others. As school shootings continue to devastate communities across the country, prosecutors are increasingly holding parents criminally liable for their children’s actions. This development raises fundamental questions about justice, accountability, and the limits of criminal liability. While these laws aim to curb gun violence by enforcing parental accountability, they will disproportionately affect marginalized communities, particularly along gender, racial, and socioeconomic lines. As legal precedent expands, …

Chevron Deference, Prospective Gay Parents, And The Need For A Centralized Child Welfare System, Mantas Grigorovicius

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

For over four decades, Chevron deference allowed federal agencies to exercise considerable discretion in interpreting laws, enabling them to implement broad regulatory agendas. This deference was pivotal for administrative agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in shaping public policy. However, in 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to overturn this precedent, shifting power from agencies to courts and potentially reshaping the regulatory landscape. This Article examines the implications of this change within the context of child welfare, focusing on HHS’s role in foster care. As states often rely on taxpayer-funded private child-placing agencies to …

Fundamental Rights And Fair Fights: Holding Out For Legal Patent Recognition Under State Multiparent Recognition Statutes, Heather Kolinsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article considers the impact of the behavioral proxy of holding out to establish legal parenthood, and how that proxy functions in new statutory frameworks designed to recognize more than two legal parents for a child. Holding out was originally conceived as a mechanism to allow unmarried biological fathers to seek legal parent status. Holding out has been extended to intended and intentional parents in surrogacy and assisted reproductive technology as well as to married and unmarried same sex partners. In these iterations, holding out has facilitated legal parent recognition as the modern family form has evolved to include more …

Beyond Sharenting, Stacey B. Steinberg

UF Law Faculty Publications

Sharenting—the practice of parents sharing information about their children online—has become mainstream in American society. While most forms of sharenting may be considered benign or even beneficial, some parents harm or exploit their children when sharing online. For example, “mom-influencers” often violate their children’s privacy in their attempts to attract followers to their social media accounts. While traditional forms of parental sharing raise privacy concerns, we are only beginning to understand the dangers and impacts of widespread exposure of children on social media.

This Article is the first to propose a welfare model of child protection to address exploitative and …

In Re N.O., 336 A.3d 29 (R.I. 2025)., Salvamarie Alifonso

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.