Private Law Theory

Martha M Ertman, Marital Contracting in a Post-Windsor World, 42 Florida State Law Review 479 (2015). Henry Maine famously claimed that societies tend to move from status to contract. Martha Ertman has been one of a number of prominent family law scholars who have chronicled, and at appropriate occasions critiqued, the way that family law has increasingly allowed enforceable agreements to modify or supplement the status relations of marriage and parenthood. In Marital Contracting in a Post-Windsor World (and also in her wonderful recent book, Love’s Promises (Beacon Press, 2015)), Ertman shows the intricacies of family law agreements: how they include not only status rules, and some default rules subject to variation by express agreement, but also certain agreements and exchanges that are not enforceable through the courts – but may be supported by social conventions and expectations … (more)

[Brian Bix, JOTWELL, 2 December]

First posted 2015-12-02 16:02:19