Family Law Commons^™

A Child's Journey Through The Child Welfare System, Ann M. Haralambie, Donald N. Duquette

Book Chapters

Once a child is known to the government child welfare agency, the child and his or her family become subject to a series of decisions made by judges, caseworkers, legal representatives, and others - all of whom have an important role to play. A child may encounter dozens of other new adults, including foster parents, counselors, and doctors. Most children enter foster care when removed from their homes by a child protective agency because of abuse or neglect, or both. Others enter care because of the absence of their parents, resulting from illness, death, disability, or other problems. Some children …

Representing Children And Youth, Donald N. Duquette, Ann M. Haralambie

Book Chapters

The role of the child's attorney is unique in American jurisprudence and not yet clearly defined by law or tradition. There is an emerging consensus, however, that children in dependency cases should have lawyers and those lawyers should be as active and as involved in their cases as are lawyers for any other party in any other litigation. Although state law and policy makers differ as to what voice the child should have in determining the direction and goals of the litigation, that is, whether the child's lawyer should represent the best interests of the child as determined by the …

Family Law–Providing For Those Who Cannot Provide For Themselves: A Proposal For The Arkansas General Assembly To Follow In The Footsteps Of An Already Expansive Guardianship Law And Grant Guardians The Right To File For Divorce On Behalf Of A Ward, Matthew L. Brunson

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Practical Challenges, One Crucial Skill: Knowing How, When, And Why To Go Into Caucus, Kelly Browe Olson

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Trauma-Informed Co-Parenting: How A Shift In Compulsory Divorce Education To Reflect New Brain Development Research Can Promote Both Parents' And Childrens' Best Interests, Nat Stern, Karen Oehme, Anthony J. Ferraro, Lisa S. Panisch, Mallory Lucier-Greer

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Comparing Supreme Court Jurisprudence In Obergefell V. Hodges And Town Of Castle Rock V. Gonzales: A Watershed Moment For Due Process Liberty, Jill C. Engle

Faculty Scholarship

“The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning. When new insight reveals discord between the Constitution’s central protections and a received legal stricture, a claim to liberty must be addressed.” -- Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, …

For Richer, Not Poorer: Premarital Waivers Of Spousal Support In California, J. Nicholas Marfori

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

California law is fairly straightforward with respect to premarital agreements that seek to alter community property rights in the event of a divorce. But it is unclear and unsettled with respect to those agreements that seek to limit or waive spousal support. Although California prohibits courts from enforcing premarital waivers of spousal support if it would be unconscionable to do so at the time of enforcements, courts have not articulated a clear standard for what that means. California made its first attempt to do so in In re Marriage of Facter. This Article considers that decision in illustrating how current …

A Test To Identify And Remedy Anti-Gay Bias In Child Custody Decisions After Obergefell, Nat Stern, Karen Oehme, Mark Joseph Stern

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Improving The Medical Services System's Response To Domestic Violence, Nat Stern, Karen Oehme, Elizabeth Donnelly, Rebecca Melvin

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Lgbt Law Notes, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Multicultural Adr And Family Law: A Brief Introduction To The Complexities Of Religious Arbitration, Michael J. Broyde

Faculty Articles

Recent polls indicate that the U.S. population is getting less religious and more secular. This seems to mirror the nation’s— and its laws’—movement away from reflecting certain traditional values. While these movements have left some members of the religious population in a precarious situation, surrounded by a society whose values are changing before their eyes, it has also caused the religious to cling tighter to their respective faiths and become more entrenched in the values they assert.

As the government has, slowly but surely, aligned itself with the popular shift away from traditional religious values, the pleas of the religious …

Resolving Divisive Social Issues: A Case Study Of The Minnesota Child Custody Dialogue, Mariah Levison

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is Gay The New Asian?: Marriage Equality And The Dawn Of A New Model Minority, Stewart Chang

Scholarly Works

In this Article, Professor Chang analyzes the historic role of family in the politics of exclusion in the United States, evaluates the ways in which the stereotyping of Asian Americans as a model minority has perpetuated these politics, and warns against the possibility of a similar fate for gay and lesbian Americans. As a model minority, Asian Americans have been set as a standard against which other minority groups, particularly African Americans, are measured. Around the same time Asians were being extolled for their hard work and family values, Congress released the Moynihan report on the problem of broken families …

From Victims To Litigants, Elizabeth L. Macdowell

Scholarly Works

This Article reports findings from an ethnographic study of self-help programs in two western states. The study investigated how self-help assistance provided by partnerships between courts and nongovernmental organizations implicates advocacy and access to justice for domestic violence survivors. The primary finding is that self-help programs may inadvertently work to curtail, rather than expand, advocacy resources. Furthermore, problems identified with self-help service delivery and negative impacts on advocacy systems may be explained by the structure of work within self-help programs and the nature of partnerships to provide self-help services. The Author uncovers previously unseen impacts of self-help programs on survivors …

Subsidized Egg Freezing In Employment: Autonomy, Coercion, Or Discrimination?, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

In 2014, Apple and Facebook announced that they would provide up to $20,000 for female employees to freeze their eggs as an employment benefit. These announcements raised mixed reviews. Some applauded the decision because they believe that egg freezing may offer to women more control over their reproductive choices. Others argued that the new benefit sends the wrong message to women and that encouraging good parenting by giving better parental leave and child care policies would be more beneficial to families. Others were concerned that this “benefit” applies only to professional or managerial-class women, but may not be helpful to …

Meyer, Pierce, And The History Of The Entire Human Race: Barbarism, Social Progress, And (The Fall And Rise Of) Parental Rights, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Long before the Supreme Court’s seminal parenting cases took a due process Lochnerian turn, American courts had been working to fashion family law doctrine on the premise that parents are only entrusted with custody of the child, and then only as long as they meet their fiduciary duty to take proper care of the child. With its progressive, anti-patriarchal orientation, this jurisprudence was in part a creature of its time, reflecting the evolutionary biases of the emerging fields of sociology, anthropology, and legal ethnohistory. In short, the courts embraced the new, “scientific” view that social “progress” entails the decline and, …

Easy Come, Easy Go: The Plight Of Children Who Spend Less Than 30 Days In Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church

Articles

This article explores the plight of “short stayers” and argues that juvenile courts are failing to use two tools—the federal reasonable efforts requirement and the early appointment of parents’ counsel—to prevent the unnecessary entry of children into foster care. The article also argues that states should give parents and children the right to an expedited appeal of removal decisions to ensure removal standards are properly applied. Finally, this article argues that the federal government must acknowledge the problem of short stayers by utilizing data related to children who may unnecessarily enter foster care in the Child and Family Services Review, …

Decriminalizing Polygamy, Casey E. Faucon

Utah Law Review

Polygamous families are our national outlaws. Despite the expansion of sexual rights and marriage equality in the U.S., polygamy remains a crime. Challenging that stigma is the Brown family, who star in the reality TV show “Sister Wives” and who practice polygamous marriageas a tenet of their religion. The Browns filed suit against multiple Utah state actors in federal district court, challenging Utah’s polygamy statute as unconstitutional in violation of their Free Exercise of Religion, substantive Due Process, and Equal Protection rights. The district court agreed and decriminalized informal polygamy in Utah. On appeal, the Tenth Circuit reversed the district …

Forward-Looking Family Law, Meredith J. Harbach

Law Faculty Publications

Reviewing June Carbone & Naomi Cahn, Marriage Markets: How Inequality is Remaking the American Family (Oxford University Press 2014), and Clare Huntington, Failure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships (Oxford University Press 2014).

This essay reviews both books, describing their core arguments and innovative re- form proposals. Having surveyed their work, I agree with Carbone, Cahn, and Hunting- ton that the most urgent and politically-tenable reforms to family law involve enhancing investments for structural supports benefitting children. Both books shore up the instrumental and normative cases for such investment, and they also show how a renewed focus on children …

Education & Practice (Newsletter Of The Section On Education Of Lawyer, Virginia State Bar) - V. 25, No. 1 (Fall 2016), Dale Margolin Cecka

Law Faculty Publications

What You Do and Do Not Learn in Law School: A Family Law Associate’s Perspective

Hiring and Supervising New Lawyers: A Family Law Partner’s Perspective

Chair’s Column

Law Faculty News and News and Events Around the Commonwealth

Call for Nomination: William R. Rakes Leadership in Education Award

2016-2017 Board of Governors