This panel will address the interest of democratic constitutional orders in the family, and particularly in enforcing and disrupting gender roles. Marriage and the family have been given constitutional status either explicitly or through judicial interpretation in many jurisdictions throughout the world, largely premised on the interest of the state in social reproduction and the...
Feminism and Family Leave
This Essay explores the dynamics between parental leave policies and the enforcement of legal equality in the United States and other jurisdictions. In so doing, it clarifies and redefines a feminist jurisprudence of family leave. A feminist approach to family leave should advance a substantive vision of gender equality, ‘a more egalitarian relationship at home...
Gay Visibility and the Family
The question of family formation has emerged as the core of the struggle for gay rights, as evidenced by recent cases on same-sex marriage around the world. Long before the marriage debate, however, courts were already engaging with the relationship between homosexuality and family. This paper draws on theories of gay visibility to re-examine the...
Poly-parenting
A handful of jurisdictions (California and Canada) have recently passed laws that allow a child to have three or four legal parents; other jurisdiction have reached similar results through judicial decisions. This paper considers legal and philosophical arguments for and against “poly-parenting“ and suggests that these recent laws make good public policy sense for various...