Family Law in the Twentieth Century

Family Law in the Twentieth Century PDF

Author: Stephen Michael Cretney

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 984

ISBN-13: 9780198268994

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The law governing family relationships has changed dramatically in the course of the 20th century and this book - drawing extensively on both published and archival material and on legal as well as other sources - gives an account of the processes and problems of reform.

Inside the Castle

Inside the Castle PDF

Author: Joanna L. Grossman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-07-18

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 1400839777

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A comprehensive social history of families and family law in twentieth-century America Inside the Castle is a comprehensive social history of twentieth-century family law in the United States. Joanna Grossman and Lawrence Friedman show how vast, oceanic changes in society have reshaped and reconstituted the American family. Women and children have gained rights and powers, and novel forms of family life have emerged. The family has more or less dissolved into a collection of independent individuals with their own wants, desires, and goals. Modern family law, as always, reflects the brute social and cultural facts of family life. The story of family law in the twentieth century is complex. This was the century that said goodbye to common-law marriage and breach-of-promise lawsuits. This was the century, too, of the sexual revolution and women's liberation, of gay rights and cohabitation. Marriage lost its powerful monopoly over legitimate sexual behavior. Couples who lived together without marriage now had certain rights. Gay marriage became legal in a handful of jurisdictions. By the end of the century, no state still prohibited same-sex behavior. Children in many states could legally have two mothers or two fathers. No-fault divorce became cheap and easy. And illegitimacy lost most of its social and legal stigma. These changes were not smooth or linear—all met with resistance and provoked a certain amount of backlash. Families took many forms, some of them new and different, and though buffeted by the winds of change, the family persisted as a central institution in society. Inside the Castle tells the story of that institution, exploring the ways in which law tried to penetrate and control this most mysterious realm of personal life.

American Law in the Twentieth Century

American Law in the Twentieth Century PDF

Author: Lawrence Meir Friedman

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2004-01-01

Total Pages: 1468

ISBN-13: 0300102992

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American law in the twentieth century describes the explosion of law over the past century into almost every aspect of American life. Since 1900 the center of legal gravity in the United States has shifted from the state to the federal government, with the creation of agencies and programs ranging from Social Security to the Securities Exchange Commission to the Food and Drug Administration. Major demographic changes have spurred legal developments in such areas as family law and immigration law. Dramatic advances in technology have placed new demands on the legal system in fields ranging from automobile regulation to intellectual property. Throughout the book, Friedman focuses on the social context of American law. He explores the extent to which transformations in the legal order have resulted from the social upheavals of the twentieth century--including two world wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, and the sexual revolution. Friedman also discusses the international context of American law: what has the American legal system drawn from other countries? And in an age of global dominance, what impact has the American legal system had abroad? This engrossing book chronicles a century of revolutionary change within a legal system that has come to affect us all.

Family, Law, and Inheritance in America

Family, Law, and Inheritance in America PDF

Author: Yvonne Pitts

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-05-20

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1107035503

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Yvonne Pitts explores nineteenth-century inheritance practices by focusing on testamentary capacity trials in Kentucky in which disinherited family members challenged relatives' wills, claiming the testator lacked the capacity required to write a valid will. By anchoring the study in the history of local communities and the texts of elite jurists, Pitts demonstrates that "capacity" was a term laden with legal meaning and competing communal values.

Family Law in America

Family Law in America PDF

Author: Sanford N. Katz

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 0199759227

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This volume examines the state of family law in America. Among its themes is the tension between individual autonomy and governmental regulation in all aspects of family law. It examines both conventional and new definitions of formal and informal domestic relationships.

The Neutered Mother, The Sexual Family and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies

The Neutered Mother, The Sexual Family and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies PDF

Author: Martha Albertson Fineman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-04

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1136654836

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Calling for nothing less than a radical reform of family law and a reconception of intimacy, The Neutered Mother, The Sexual Family, and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies argues strongly against current legal and social policy discussions about the family because they do not have at their core the crucial concepts of caregiving and dependency, as well as the best interests of women and children. The Neutered Mother scrutinizes the definitions of family and mother throughout the volume while paying close attention to issues of race, class and sexuality. In addition, Fienman convincingly contests society's refusal to dignify, support and respond to the needs of caregivers and illustrates the burden they must bear due to this treatment. This book is a crucial step toward defining America's most pressing social policy problems having to do with women, motherhood and the family.

Governing the Hearth

Governing the Hearth PDF

Author: Michael Grossberg

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2004-01-21

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 080786336X

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Presenting a new framework for understanding the complex but vital relationship between legal history and the family, Michael Grossberg analyzes the formation of legal policies on such issues as common law marriage, adoption, and rights for illegitimate children. He shows how legal changes diminished male authority, increased women's and children's rights, and fixed more clearly the state's responsibilities in family affairs. Grossberg further illustrates why many basic principles of this distinctive and powerful new body of law--antiabortion and maternal biases in child custody--remained in effect well into the twentieth century.

Private Lives

Private Lives PDF

Author: Lawrence Meir Friedman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780674015623

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Drawing on many revealing and sometimes colorful court cases of the past two centuries, Private Lives offers a lively short history of the complexities of family law and family life--including the tensions between the laws on the books and contemporary arrangements for marriage, divorce, adoption, and child rearing.

Islamic Family Law in a Changing World

Islamic Family Law in a Changing World PDF

Author: ʻAbd Allāh Aḥmad Naʻīm

Publisher: Zed Books

Published: 2002-08

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9781842770931

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In "Islamic Family Law in a Changing World," Abdullahi A. An-Na'im explores the practice of the Shari'a, commonly known as Islamic Family Law. An-Na'im shows that the practical application of Shari'a principles is often modified by theological differences of interpretation, a country's particular customary practices, and state policy and law.

Reconstructing the Household

Reconstructing the Household PDF

Author: Peter W. Bardaglio

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2000-11-09

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 0807860212

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In Reconstructing the Household, Peter Bardaglio examines the connections between race, gender, sexuality, and the law in the nineteenth-century South. He focuses on miscegenation, rape, incest, child custody, and adoption laws to show how southerners struggled with the conflicts and stresses that surfaced within their own households and in the larger society during the Civil War era. Based on literary as well as legal sources, Bardaglio's analysis reveals how legal contests involving African Americans, women, children, and the poor led to a rethinking of families, sexuality, and the social order. Before the Civil War, a distinctive variation of republicanism, based primarily on hierarchy and dependence, characterized southern domestic relations. This organic ideal of the household and its power structure differed significantly from domestic law in the North, which tended to emphasize individual rights and contractual obligations. The defeat of the Confederacy, emancipation, and economic change transformed family law and the governance of sexuality in the South and allowed an unprecedented intrusion of the state into private life. But Bardaglio argues that despite these profound social changes, a preoccupation with traditional notions of gender and race continued to shape southern legal attitudes.