Category Archives: Family Law
Jill Elaine Hasday, ‘Introduction: Intimate Lies and the Law’
ABSTRACT Intimacy and deception are often entangled. People deceive to lure someone into a relationship or to keep her there, to drain an intimate’s bank account or to use her to acquire government benefits, to control an intimate or to resist domination, or to capture myriad other advantages. No subject is immune from deception in […]
Malinda Seymore, ‘Adopting Civil Damages: Wrongful Family Separation in Adoption’
ABSTRACT The Trump Administration’s new immigration policy of family separation at the US/Mexico border rocked the summer of 2018. Yet family separation is the prerequisite to every legal adoption. The circumstances are different, of course. In legal adoption, the biological parents are provided with all the constitutional protections required in involuntary termination of parental rights, […]
Ellen Gordon-Bouvier, ‘Crossing the boundaries of the home: a chronotopical analysis of the legal status of women’s domestic work’
ABSTRACT Women’s domestic work is largely deemed to be a ‘labour of love’ and lacking any value outside the private family. This reflects an ‘ideology of domesticity’, whereby women’s natural place is deemed to be in an imagined private sphere. In this paper, I examine the status of housework in the context of asserting property […]
Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, ‘Challenging the “Born Alive” Threshold: Fetal Surgery, Artificial Wombs, and the English Approach to Legal Personhood’
ABSTRACT English law is unambiguous that legal personality, and with it all legal rights and protections, is assigned at birth. This rule is regarded as a bright line that is easily and consistently applied. The time has come, however, for the rule to be revisited. This article demonstrates that advances in fetal surgery and (anticipated) […]
‘Fatal Accidents Act – MoJ moves to rectify the eligibility of cohabitants for bereavement damages’
“This proposal from the Ministry of Justice last week looks to rectify the Fatal Accidents Act 1976 following the Court of Appeal’s 2017 decision in Smith v Lancashire. It seems to have been released in a slightly low-key manner by the MoJ, perhaps because at the heart of it is a need to amend English […]
Wilfried Rault, ‘Is the Civil Solidarity Pact the Future of Marriage? The Several Meanings of the French Civil Union’
ABSTRACT The French Civil Union, known as PACS (civil solidarity pact) was created in 1999. At this time it was mainly viewed as a registered partnership for same-sex couples. But it has been progressively adopted by different-sex couples; PACS is now widespread among the French population. In 2016, 190,000 PACS were registered versus approximately 235,000 […]
Ben-Asher and Pollans, ‘The Right Family’
ABSTRACT The family plays a starring role in American law. Families, the law tells us, are special. They merit, among others, tax deductions, testimonial privileges, untaxed inheritance, parental presumptions, and, over the course of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court has expanded individual rights stemming from familial relationships. In this Article, we argue that family […]
‘“Renegotiated Families” and Donative Intent’
Naomi R Cahn, Revisiting Revocation Upon Divorce?, 103 Iowa Law Review 1879 (2018). Last year I reviewed Adam J Hirsch, ‘Inheritance on the Fringes of Marriage’, which explored whether donors would want their fiancé, ex-fiancé, separated spouse, or divorcing spouse to take a share of their estate. Following this theme of donor intent vis-à-vis a […]
‘Righting Wrongful Birth’
Sofia Yakren, ‘Wrongful Birth’ Claims and the Paradox of Parenting a Child with a Disability, 87 Fordham Law Review 593 (2018). Discussions of limits on women’s reproductive choice these days most often focus on legislative efforts to curtail that choice by narrowly limiting abortion access. Sofia Yakren’s new article reminds us that medical malfeasance in […]
Jessica Roberts, ‘Genetic Conversion’
ABSTRACT Traditionally, courts and legal scholars alike have rejected conversion claims related to DNA. Justifications for dismissing these causes of action include fears that they could hinder scientific research or commodify the human body. Judges and academics reason that – even absent actionable claims for genetic conversion – plaintiffs have access to adequate legal protections […]