Category Archives: Family Law
Purnoor Tak, ‘Property Rights and Financial Access’
ABSTRACT This paper investigates the effect of property rights on financial inclusion and subsequent changes in labor market participation and human capital investment. Using hand-collected savings bank data linked to the English census, I exploit the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act, which granted married women ownership of their financial assets. A 10% increase in the […]
Jane Thomson, ‘“And Two Cows to my Wife … so Long as she Remains my Widow”: Public Policy and Testamentary Marriage Clauses in Canada’
ABSTRACT This article, part one of a two part project, provides a comprehensive review of the law surrounding marriage conditions in wills in Canada, including the civil law jurisdiction of Quebec, through a quantitative study of nearly every electronically reported Canadian decision involving a marriage clause in a will. It begins with an overview of […]
Rachel Leow, ‘Can Parents Sell Their Children’s Property? A Property Law Perspective’
ABSTRACT Christmas arrives. Nicki’s nine-year-old son receives a gaming console and many soft toys as Christmas gifts from his doting relatives, each of them delivering the gift right into her son’s hands. Nicki, however, is annoyed. Her son has far too many soft toys: his entire room is covered in them. Nor does her son […]
Steven Schaus, ‘Harms, Relationships, and the Contours of Liability for Emotional Distress’
ABSTRACT In Reasonableness and Risk, Greg Keating argues that the law of torts is ‘preoccupied’ with harm – with safeguarding conditions of effective agency. In this comment, I ask whether Keating’s picture can make sense of the tort claims, like loss of consortium, that provide some measure of protection to relationships – and to marriage-like […]
Pahul Gupta, ‘Private Wrongs, Public Impact: The Case for a Tort of Family Violence’
ABSTRACT This research paper investigates the adequacy of current civil actions available against a particular form of family violence: intimate partner violence (‘IPV’). The paper identifies the torts which are most commonly applicable in the IPV context and argues that they fail to capture the cumulative harm associated with such conduct. It identifies the shortcomings […]
Blecher-Prigat, Naaman and Zafran, ‘The Non-Marital Presumption’
ABSTRACT The question of how legal parenthood should be determined has long been the subject of extensive scholarship. The emergence and expansion of assisted reproductive technology alongside changes in family structures have prompted scholars and policymakers to shift their focus regarding the law surrounding parentage determination. Rather than relying solely on biology, they now also […]
Alyssa DiRusso, ‘A Critical Analysis of The Law of Death, Marriage, and Wealth’
ABSTRACT Although family law scholars have robustly criticized the law for its preferences for marriage (and sometimes non-marriage), a critical trusts and estates perspective can enhance this discussion. The following paper will demonstrate how the zone of overlap between trusts and estates and family law – as marriages near death – is particularly fraught and […]
Jackson Neagli, ‘Hayek Goes to Family Court’
ABSTRACT family law is full of hard decisions. One of the most difficult – and most fundamental – concerns whether courts should remain committed to generally applicable rules of law even when they lead to normatively ugly results. Applying Hayek’s theory of law and liberty to contemporary American family law, this Essay concludes that – […]
Yuchen Zhao, ‘Defending family justice: a new approach against enforcing premarital agreements’
ABSTRACT Premarital agreements have become enforceable in the USA over the past few decades. Traditionally unenforceable due to public policy concerns, these agreements gained acceptance amid the advancement of gender equality. Yet, critics argue that the enforcement of premarital agreements may actually perpetuate economic vulnerabilities among women. These gender injustice-based critiques, however, are not entirely […]
Piano and Piano, ‘The Medieval Origins of Spousal Consent’
ABSTRACT This paper examines the medieval origins of spousal consent, the norm requiring that marriages be contracted willingly and . Afree from pressure from third parties. We argue that this norm resulted from the Catholic Church’s consolidation of legal authority over marriage in the 11th-12th centuries. Committed doctrinally to the belief that marriages could not […]