LAW 301 - Law & Intimate Associations

A in-depth study of the state’s role in creating legal family relationships and in encouraging or discouraging particular social relationships, with a primary focus on the parent-child relationship. The course will take a multi-disciplinary and comparative approach, drawing materials from the social sciences (e.g., sociology, psychology, political science) and the humanities (e.g., philosophy, history, literature) as well as from law, and examining the laws and social circumstances relating to intimate associations in other countries as well as in the U.S. The course will also have a law reform orientation; we will study the topic with an eye to determining whether and how state legislatures should rewrite the laws that dictate who a child’s first legal parents will be. Students will also attend a conference on this topic to be held at the law school, where academics from various disciplines will present papers.