Family Law Commons^™

What Do You Do When They Don't Say "I Do"? Cross-Border Regulation For Alternative Spousal Relationships, Sharon Shakargy

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Marriage is a local arrangement with international effects. Throughout the Western world, a marriage recognized as valid by the parties' home country is usually considered valid and binding in any other country. This recognition carries substantial benefits. In sharp contrast, unwed couples and some married couples, namely same-sex couples, are denied these benefits due to lack of (sufficient) inter-state and international recognition of their relationships, making their relationships unstable at best. This Article discusses the cross-border recognition of such relationships--or lack thereof--and its effects, and it suggests a way to better the situation using private law tools, thus avoiding much …

Social Media: Children’S Lawyer’S Friend And Foe, Jennifer Baum, Sarah N. Fox

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Social media is taking over the globe. The Pew Research Internet Project states that in the United States, 95 percent of 12- to 17-year-old children are online. Teenagers are also sharing more and more information online: 91 percent of teenagers post a photo of themselves, 92 percent post their real name, and 71 percent post the city or town where they live. “Teens Fact Sheet,” Pew Res. Internet Project (Sept. 2012). This information, in the wrong hands, can be harmful to a child. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, designed to safeguard children’s information and access online, is a …

“Throwing The Baby Out With The Bathwater”: Parenting Coordination And Pennsylvania’S Decisions To Eliminate Its Use, Sophie B. Mashburn

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Parenting coordination is a relatively new ADR practice utilized by courts to assist in resolving high conflict divorce cases. Though considered controversial by some, it can also serve as an effective tool for divorced parents who struggle with regular co-parenting decisions. Parenting coordination is defined as: A child-focused alternative dispute resolution process in which a mental health or legal professional with mediation training and experience assists high conflict parents to implement their parenting plan by facilitating the resolution of their disputes in a timely manner, educating parents about children’s needs, and with prior approval of the parties and/or court, making …

Religion And Marriage Equality Statutes, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

To date, every state statute that has extended marriage equality to gay and lesbian couples has included accommodations for actors who oppose such marriages on religious grounds. Debate over those accommodations has occurred mostly between, on the one hand, people who urge broader religion protections and, on the other hand, those who support the types of accommodations that typically have appeared in existing statutes. This article argues that the debate should be widened to include arguments that the existing accommodations are normatively and constitutionally problematic. Even states that presumptively are most friendly to LGBT citizens, as measured by their demonstrated …

Same-Sex Cynicism And The Self-Defeating Pursuit Of Social Acceptance Through Litigation, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Family Law's Loose Canon Book Review, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

High Society: Washington State’S Recreational Cannabis Law And Its Effects On Child Custody And Visitation Rights, Dana Petersen

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

For Men Only: A Gap In The Rules Allows Sex Discrimination To Avoid Ethical Challenge, Michelle N. Struffolino

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

The billboard states: “Divorce: Men Only.” The reaction is one of confusion. Something just does not seem right. Isn’t this discrimination? Is the system willing to allow this message because the need to protect men’s rights in divorce outweighs the systemic and societal harms associated with the message?

Although this article focuses on the ethical issues associated with firms that exclude women from the pool of potential divorce clients, the existence of women only law firms is acknowledged. The analysis of the ethical issues raised by these gender specific firms is somewhat the same regardless of what gender is excluded. …

The Political Economy And Legal Regulation Of Transnational Commercial Surrogate, Cyra Akila Choudhury

Faculty Publications

This Article breaks new ground by closely reading the emerging ethnographic accounts of surrogacy to establish that current feminist frames are incomplete. It incorporates the political economy of surrogacy, the economic relationship of surrogacy to the Indian state, and the political economy of surrogates’ families, which have all been missing from the current dialogue. The Article concludes that the benefits of surrogate labor outweigh its disadvantages and develops a new framework — of surrogacy as labor — that will, for the first time, protect the surrogate as worker.Surrogacy, as a fairly open regulatory field, provides feminists with a unique opportunity …

Sans Foi, Ni Loi. Appearances Of Conjugality And Lawless Love, Régine Tremblay

All Faculty Publications

This chapter deals with paradigm shifts in the legal regulation of adult intimate relationships. It includes the shifts from a unique conjugality to the multiplication of conjugalities, from marriage until death do us part to multiple subsequent unions, and from mimicking marriage by necessity to mimicking marriage by choice. Such changes open the floor for questions about the relevance of regulating adult intimate relationships today, or at the very least, about the compulsion to conceive of this kind of relationship as the cornerstone of Canadian family law. As such, it questions shifts in latent elements of the regulation of conjugality …

The New Permanency, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

Permanency is a pillar of child welfare law; children generally do better with legally permanent caretakers than in temporary foster care. Historically, when foster children cannot reunify with their parents, states have sought to terminate parental rights and find adoptive families. But recent legal reforms have created a continuum of permanency options, many of which permit ongoing legal relationships with biological parents and do not require termination of biological parents’ rights. Research has demonstrated that such options are as lasting as adoption, and can help more children leave foster care to legally permanent caretakers. This continuum promises to empower families …

The Indian Child Welfare Act's Waning Power After Adoptive Couple V. Baby Girl, Kathleena Kruck

Northwestern University Law Review

In the 1970s, state authorities began removing Indian children from their homes by the thousands and placing them into foster care, institutional housing, and with white families. To counteract this forced assimilation, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) in 1978. The ICWA conferred many powers previously held by the states to tribal courts and created a preference for Indian children to be placed with their extended family, other members of their tribe, or other Indian families. Despite congressional efforts, the practice of removing Indian children from their homes still persists. Many states resist the ICWA through judicially created …

Civil Protection Orders: Increased Access And Narrowed Enforcement, Courtney Cross

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

From Contract To Status: Collaboration And The Evolution Of Novel Family Relationships, Elizabeth S. Scott, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The past decade has witnessed dramatic changes in public atti- tudes about and legal status for same-sex couples who wish to marry. These changes demonstrate that the legal conception of the family is no longer limited to traditional marriage. They also raise the possibility that other relationships – cohabiting couples and their children, voluntary kin groups, multigenerational groups, and polygamists – might gain legal recognition as families. This Article probes the challenges faced by aspiring families and the means by which they could attain their goal. It builds on the premise that the state remains committed to social-welfare criteria for …

Concord With Which Other Families: Marriage Equality, Family Demographics, And Race, Nancy Polikoff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Discussing Advocacy Skills In Traditional Doctrinal Courses, Stephen A. Newman

Articles & Chapters

Can teaching students in doctrinal courses, using traditional case-oriented materials, convey some of the skills lawyers need to practice law effectively? While the recent interest in and debate over training practice-ready lawyers makes this a timely question, my thinking about this harks back to the mid-1990s, when Harry Wellington, then dean of New York Law School, suggested that faculty members consider teaching law from the lawyer’s perspective rather than from the perspective of either the judge or the legal scholar.

In traditional doctrinal courses in law school, like my own in family law, coverage is broad and time is short. …

How Law Shapes Experiences Of Parenthood For Same-Sex Couples, Nicholas K. Park, Emily Kazyak, Kathleen S. Slauson-Blevins

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) parents are increasingly common and visible, but they face a number of social and legal barriers in the United States. Using legal consciousness as a theoretical framework, we draw on data from 51 interviews with GLB parents in California and Nebraska to explore how laws impact experiences of parenthood. Specifically, we address how the legal context influences three domains: the methods used to become parents, decisions about where to live, and experiences of family recognition. Law and perception of the law make some pathways to parenthood difficult or unattainable depending on state of residence. Parents …

Confronting Legal And Technological Incongruity: Remote Testimony For Child Witnesses, Elizabeth A. Mulkey

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Child victims are often the only eyewitnesses in cases against their abusers. A child's testimony may be necessary for a prosecutor to secure a conviction. However, the child must often face his or her abuser and relive the traumatic experience while giving this testimony. Any accommodations or protection of a child witness at trial must be balanced against the defendant's rights under the Confrontation Clause. The Supreme Court's decision in Maryland v. Craig allows child victims to testify via one-way, closed-circuit television in some circumstances, but the Court has not addressed two-way, closed-circuit testimony or remote testimony. In the absence …

The Civil Rights Of Sexually Exploited Youth In Foster Care, Dale Margolin Cecka

Law Faculty Publications

This paper examines the civil rights of youth who are missing or discharged from foster care and become victims of sexual exploitation. It also addresses future implications of this epidemic, given demographic patterns of the United States, if we do not address this issue now. Section II describes the demographics of adolescents in foster care. Next, Section III addresses the sexual exploitation of this population. Section IV describes the legal framework of the foster care system and legislation pertaining to sexually exploited youth. Section V analyzes the constitutional rights of foster youth who become victims of sexual exploitation and draws …

Robotic Marriage And The Law, Mark Goldfeder, Yosef Razin

Scholarly Works

The United States, and the world at large, is in the midst of a family law revolution that will fundamentally change our very conception of family. Ethical challenges to age-old ideas have prompted people to ask foundational questions, such as how and why our most important personal relationships evolved. In a world where same-sex marriage has been legalized, it is only natural to wonder who marriage may include in the future. This essay explores the question of whether a human and a robot could ever legally marry in the United States. Through a thought experiment, it examines the legal and …