Family Law Commons^™

The Need For A National Civil Justice Survey Of Incidence And Claiming Behavior, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Civil justice issues play a prominent role in society. Family law issues such as divorce and child custody, consumer victimization issues raised by questionable trade practices, and tort issues raised by surprisingly high estimated rates of medical malpractice, questionable prescription drug practices, and other behaviors are part of the fabric of daily life. Policymakers and interest groups regularly debate and assess whether civil problems are best resolved by legislative action, agency action, litigation, alternative dispute resolution, other methods, or some combination of actions. Yet we lack systematic quantitative knowledge about the primary events in daily life that generate civil justice …

Emotional Abuse And Controlling Behaviors In Heterosexual Relationships: The Role Of Employment And Alcohol Use For Women And Their Partners, Egbert Zavala, Ryan Spohn

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of economic resources, status compatibility, and alcohol consumption on forms of nonphysical abuse, such as controlling and emotional abuse. Specifically, we focus on the connections between women’s employment, the employment of their partners, alcohol use, and women’s risk of abuse in intimate relationships. We hypothesize that women in intimate relationships with men will experience more emotional abuse to the extent that they are economically vulnerable. Moreover, abuse should increase if their employment status, in relation to that of their partner, challenges the man’s marital power. Moreover, alcohol use by women …

Private Relationships And Public Problems: Applying Principles Of Relational Contract Theory To Domestic Violence, Tamara L. Kuennen

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This Article maps out a new theoretical critique of no-drop prosecution policies, the criminal justice system’s predominant approach to domestic violence. No-drop rules compel prosecutors to make decisions about whether to pursue charges against a batterer without regard to the victim’s wishes. When the law mandates this approach, it not only enforces the criminal law, but also effectively terminates the relationship between the victim and her partner. This blunt response to what is often a complex situation indiscriminately dispenses with the many reasons a victim may want or need to preserve her intimate relationship. While numerous scholars have grappled with …

Marriage And Parenthood As Status And Rights: The Growing, Problematic And Possibly Constitutional Trend To Disaggregate Family Status From Family Rights, Katharine K. Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

In upholding Proposition 8 one year after finding that same sex couples had a constitutional right to marry, the California Supreme Court followed a growing trend in family law to sever family rights from family status. The Court found that same sex couples were constitutionally entitled to the legal incidents of marriage, but not marriage itself. In the last 30 years, courts and legislatures have increasingly recognized a variety of different family forms by granting people in them the legal incidents of family relationship (Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships for couples, Visitation and De Facto Parenthood for caretakers) without granting …

Chalimony: Seeking Equity Between Parents Of Children With Disabilities And Chronic Illnesses, Karen Czapanskiy

Faculty Scholarship

Many thousands of children experience serious disabling conditions such as autism and debilitating chronic illnesses such as asthma. Caring for these children is often so demanding that caregiving parents cannot remain employed outside the home. Parental resources available to these children are also limited because an unusually high percentage of them live with only one parent. Nonetheless, surprisingly few cases involving families with a disabled or chronically ill child appear in the family law case law or scholarly literature. Even where child support and alimony are concerned, these families are seen only at the margins.

In my recent article, I …

Protecting And Promoting The Human Right To Respect For Family Life: Treaty-Based Reform And Domestic Advocacy, Ryan Mrazik, Andrew I. Schoenholtz

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

This article examines the right to respect for family life in international law, focusing on its underlying principles and explicit protections. The article identifies these legal norms so that drafters of international treaties, specifically the International Migrants Bill of Rights, and United States legal practitioners representing immigrant children can incorporate the right to respect for family life into their drafting and advocacy, thereby protecting and promoting this critical human right.

To encourage both high-level, international treaty-based reform and the grassroots domestic advocacy necessary to comprehensively protect and promote this right, this article provides specific ideas for incorporating the right to …

Privatizing Family Law In The Name Of Religion, Robin Fretwell Wilson

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Let My Love Open The Door: The Case For Extending Marital Privileges To Unmarried Cohabitants, Julia Cardozo

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Reproductive Health As A Human Right, Lance Gable

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The State Of The American Child: Securing Our Children’S Future: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On Children & Families Of The S. Comm On Health, Educ., Labor & Pensions, 111th Cong., Nov. 18, 2010 (Statement Of Professor Peter B. Edelman, Geo. U. L. Center), Peter B. Edelman

Testimony Before Congress

You have asked me to reflect on the achievements and disappointments of recent decades with regard to child poverty in our country, on lessons learned, and on what we need to do going forward.

It is impossible to understand child poverty trends without placing them in a context of what has happened to the American economy and to the distribution of income and wealth. Except for the last half of the 1990s, the economic history of the past four decades has been one of near‐stagnation for people with jobs that pay below the median wage in the country ‐‐ the …

Trusting Mothers: A Critique Of The American Law Institute's Treatment Of De Facto Parents, Robin Fretwell Wilson

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Insubstantial Burdens: The Case For Government Employee Exemptions To Same-Sex Marriage Laws, Robin Fretwell Wilson

Scholarly Articles

The case for accommodating religious objectors to same-sex marriage has met significant resistance on a number of fronts. Some believe that religious exemptions permit objectors to dodge legal duties to serve same-sex couples that would otherwise apply. Critics charge that, if extended to public employees, such exemptions would burden the ability of same-sex couples to marry. Others argue that exemptions coddle wrong-headed people who really do not have a legitimate reason for objecting and who, therefore, should not be legally excused. A review of the nearly half-dozen new same-sex marriage laws enacted in the past year suggests that the least …

Specialization Has The Potential To Lead To Uneven Justice: Domestic Violence Cases In The Juvenile And Domestic Violence Courts, Allison Cleveland

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Legislative Updates, Cheryl Chado

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Gps Monitoring May Cause Orwell To Turn In His Grave, But Will It Escape Constitutional Challenges? A Look At Gps Monitoring Of Domestic Violence Offenders In Illinois, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 845 (2010), Mary Ann Scholl

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

International Commercial Surrogacy And Its Parties, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1009 (2010), Margaret Ryznar

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Towards A New Lens Of Analysis: The History And Future Of Religious Exemptions To Child Neglect Statutes, Gregory Engle

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

In order to analyze the religious exemptions, this paper will begin with their history. Part II looks at the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (CAPTA) the statute that precipitated their spread, as well as the justifications that it was bolstered upon: Free Exercise of religion and parental rights. The Equal Protection critique follows as Part III, followed by Part IV that discusses the traditional critique, grounded in the Establishment Clause. In Part V, the article will finish with an explanation of why the Equal Protection critique is a much stronger criticism.

All In The Family, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi

Faculty Scholarship

Your essay “Pregnant Man?” highlights many significant issues concerning the intersection of law, gender, sexuality, race, class, and family. In an earlier article A House Divided: The Invisibility of the Multiracial Family, we explored many of these issues as they relate to multiracial families, including our own. Specifically, we, a black female-white male married couple, analyzed the language in housing discrimination statutes to demonstrate how law and society function together to frame the normative ideal of family as heterosexual and monoracial. Our article examined the daily social privileges of monoracial, heterosexual couples as a means of revealing the invisibility of …

Significant Statistics: The Unwitting Policy Making Of Mathematically Ignorant Judges, Michael I. Meyerson, William Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article will explore several areas in which judges, hampered by their mathematical ignorance, have permitted numerical analysis to subvert the goals of our legal system. In Part II, I will examine the perversion of the presumption of innocence in paternity cases, where courts make the counter-factual assumption that regardless of the evidence, prior to DNA testing, a suspect has a 50/50 chance of being the father. In Part III, I will explore the unnecessary injection of race into trials involving the statistics of DNA matching, even when race is entirely irrelevant to the particular case. Next, in Part IV, …

Indian Law: Dangerous Gamble: Child Support, Casino Dividends, And The Fate Of The Indian Family, Marcia A. Yablon-Zug

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.