A Need Not Being Met: Providing Paid Family and Medical Leave for All Americans

Many parents in the United States face the quandary of whether to take time off from work to care for themselves, their children, or other family member, understanding that their jobs may not be there upon return and they will receive no income during their leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act has not lifted this burden; it only provides for unpaid leave. Four states and several cities have implemented paid family and medical leave statutes with both employees and employers benefiting. This Note proposes a uniform paid family and medical leave statute based on other countries’ statutes; proposed federal legislation; and statutes in New York, California, and San Francisco.     

Dodging the Donor Daddy Drama: Creating a Model Statute for Determining Parental Status of Known Sperm Donors

Despite recent innovations in alternative reproduction technology and the increased use of artificial insemination procedures, courts and legislatures have been unable to develop a clear and consistent test to establish the parental rights and obligations of sperm donors. As a result, there are mixed outcomes in cases where intended parents seek child support from an unsuspecting donor or when donors petition the court for visitation with their biological children. This Note seeks to resolve the ambiguity in determining sperm donors’ parental status by proposing a model state statute that makes nonpaternity the default rule. Under the statute, sperm donors would not be subject to any of the parental rights or obligations of a traditional biological father. However, the presumption of nonpaternity could be overcome if the parties agree, in writing, prior to the insemination. Further, the model statute provides an exception to the default rule if the donor has played an active role in the child's life. Adopting this model statute will not only facilitate a market for sperm donation but also make donor rights and obligations clear from the onset.

Key Points for the Family Court Community
• Today, infants born using artificial reproduction technology (ART) represent more than one percent of children born in the United States annually.
• When a donor is anonymous, the law is clear: the donor is not a legal parent. However, the law regarding known donors is less straightforward. Depending on the state and the particular circumstances, the parental status of a known donor is questionable.
• The ambiguity in the law creates confusion and disagreement among the parties in a donor agreement. By comparing factually similar cases, in which courts interpreted donor statutes with identical language, in completely opposite ways, it is easy to see the unpredictability in ART cases.
• The proposed model statute provides unambiguous legislation that sets out a clear standard to be used in determining the parental status of known donors. If adopted by state legislatures, courts across the country would finally have a consistent rule to apply, leading to less confusion and contradictory rulings.
• The key issue is honoring intentional parentage and the proactive choice to use ART to have a child on one's own terms.

     

Ensuring Insurance for Foster Care: Requiring Foster Parents to Obtain Liability Insurance to Cover Harm Done to Foster Children in their Care

This Note proposes that all states should require that foster parents have liability insurance before children are placed in their care. This Note also proposes that the liability insurance needs to cover not just harm to third parties but also harm to the foster children through the negligent acts of the foster parents. This legislation will allow foster children to have standing to bring claims against their foster parents and insurance companies and give them a greater opportunity for recovery. Currently, the policies and statutes governing the policies in place do not cover all types of harm that can occur during the foster parent–child relationship. Certain policies leave children who are harmed by their foster parents’ negligence unable to recover any damages from the people who have harmed them. Because foster parents can be left to defend the actions themselves, they often become judgment proof due to their low income, leaving the children who are harmed with little chance of recovery.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
• States need to require foster parents to obtain liability insurance, which covers harm done by the foster children to third parties, harm to the home, and any harm done to the child by the foster parents.

     

The reform of academic tenure in the United Kingdom

In this paper, we examine the reform of academic tenure in the United Kingdom (UK) after the 1988 Education Reform Act.¹ We test the hypothesis that softening tenure encourages incumbent academics to consolidate their hold on academic life [ Carmichael (1988)]. We also assess the economic significance of the English and American case law on tenure, because an understanding of the legal aspects of tenure is required to identify the possible effects of tenure reform. The years after passage of the Act provide an interesting natural experiment, as the broad effect of the legislation was to soften, though not to remove, tenure in British universities. ² We can find support for the Carmichael hypothesis prereform but do not believe that the Act caused incumbent academics to consolidate their hold on senior posts after the reform.Tenure implies that the holder of a post cannot be removed from it except for good cause, usually based on gross moral turpitude or gross incompetence. Such removal is historically characterized by a costly procedure governed by organizational statutes, as shown in Hines v. Birkbeck College.³ In the United Kingdom, academic tenure has been associated with open-ended contracts of employment and often had a particularly hard form before 1988. In the United States, where it has often been possible to dismiss academics for financial reasons by abolishing whole departments, tenure has taken a softer form (although often harder to obtain) and can still be held to exist even when an employment contract is of a fixed term as long as it is renewable. ⁴ The details of universities’ tenure statutes have always varied between institutions, in both the United Kingdom and United States, which is often overlooked.

Abstract

“Before 1988, could your university make academics redundant by giving notice and paying statutory redundancy pay, or was it extremely hard to sack academics—having to buy them out or use arguments based on gross moral turpitude or incompetence?”     

Public Attitudes About Property Distribution at Death and Intestate Succession Laws in the United States

Intestate succession statutes should reflect the distributive preferences of intestate decedents. To date, these distributive preferences could only be inferred from distributive patterns found in wills. This telephone survey of 750 persons living in Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Texas supplements prior will studies and provides new insights concerning public attitudes about property distribution at death. The distributive preferences of the respondents revealed few significant differences that could be attributed to age, education, income, wealth, or occupational status. Two other important findings of this study suggest that a modern intestacy statute should provide that (1) the surviving spouse inherit the entire estate in preference to the decedent's issue or family of orientation and (2) issue who are in the same generation share equally in the estate.     

Why Requiring Parents to Pay for Postsecondary Education is Unconstituional and Bad Policy

For divorced parents, the question of who should pay for their child's college tuition is very difficult, especially when the issue was never addressed in their separation agreement. Consequently, some states allow judges the discretion to extend child support duties for noncustodial parents after considering certain factors. Such factors may lead to the requirement of parental contributions to their child's postsecondary education. While many states have amended their statutes to encompass extended child support, Pennsylvania is the only state to have found their statute unconstitutional. Based on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in Curtis v. Kline, this Note argues that, in order to diminish inequalities between divorced and nondivorced parents, as well as between children of divorced and nondivorced parents, all states should amend their child support statutes to declare that no parent is obligated to pay for his/her child's postsecondary education, unless voluntarily agreed to, in writing, prior to the child entering college.     

Ten Ways to Reduce Detention Population

“Juvenile detention is regularly overlooked, maligned, and misunderstood. Its embattled condition is best described as severely abused and neglected. It is underfunded, understaffed, crowded and largely ignored.”¹ “Detention caseloads increased 38 percent between 1987 and 1996. The increase in the number of delinquency cases handled by the courts has driven the growth in the number of juveniles in the detention system. In 1987, 1.2 million delinquency cases were disposed of in juvenile courts. By 1996, this number had risen 49 percent, to almost 1.8 million. This increase in the volume of juveniles in the justice system resulted in a 38 percent increase in the number of delinquency cases that involved the use of detention. The number of juvenile delinquency cases detained in 1996 was 89,000 more than in 1987. This has resulted in increased demand for juvenile detention bed space across the country.”² “Changes in statutes allowing more detainable offenses have significantly increased the number of youths admitted to regional detention centers.”³ “Although minority youth constituted about 32 percent of the youth population in the country in 1995, they represented 68 percent of the juvenile population in secure detention…⁴     

WHO'S YOUR DADDY?: THE INHERENT UNFAIRNESS OF THE MARITAL PRESUMPTION FOR CHILDREN OF UNMARRIED PARENTS*

Many states have marital presumptions of legitimacy, which provide children born to married parents with protection against paternity lawsuits questioning their legitimacy. However, most states do not have legitimacy presumption statutes for unmarried couples. This lack of equality between married and unmarried couples makes it so that children born to unmarried parents, who have developed a psychological bond with a man they have always thought to be their father, are not afforded the same protection as other children in similar situations, simply because their parents were not married at the time of their birth. Therefore, this Note advocates for states to amend their paternity statutes to provide protection against nonpaternity lawsuits to psychological fathers and their psychological children. State statutes should provide a psychological father with the right to be declared the legal parent of his psychological child in cases where the child's legal father has been substantially absent from the child's life.     

Let's Make a Brand New Start of it in Old New York: Using Mediation to Resolve Open Adoption Disputes

There is no general consensus of how to handle disputes arising from open adoption agreements. Some states have statutes mandating mediation, but New York does not. This Note proposes that New York enact a statute that mandates adoptive and birth parents use mediation for disputes arising from open adoption agreements. The proposed statute provides a comprehensive approach to mediation by setting forth when mediation is appropriate and when it is not. The statute will also provide when the child's preference can be taken into consideration, and who will pay for mediation.     

Variation in decomposition stages and carrion insect succession in a dry tropical climate and its effect on estimating postmortem interval

Insects have an important role in minimum postmortem interval (PMI_min) estimation. An accurate PMI_min estimation relies on a comprehensive study of the development and succession of local carrion insects. No published research on carrion insect succession exists for tropical north Queensland. To address this, we aimed to obtain preliminary observational data concerning the rate of decomposition and insect succession on pig carcasses in Townsville and compare these with other regions of Australia and overseas. Adult insects were collected daily from three pig carcasses for 30 d during summer and identified to family level. Observations of decomposition rate were made each day and progression through the stages of decomposition were recorded. Adult insects were identified to family and their presence/absence used as a proxy for arrival at/departure from the remains, respectively. These preliminary data highlight several interesting trends that may be informative for forensic PMI_min estimation. Decomposition was rapid: all carcasses were at the dry/remains stage by Day 5, which was substantially quicker than all other regions in the comparison. Differences were also observed in the presence/absence of insect families and their arrival and departure times. Given the rapid progression through early decomposition, we argue that later-arriving coleopteran taxa may be more forensically informative in tropical Australia, in contrast with temperate regions where Diptera appear most useful. This research contributes preliminary observational data to understanding insect succession patterns in tropical Australia and demonstrates the critical need for comprehensive local succession data for each climatic region of Australia to enable accurate PMI_min estimation. These data will inform future research targeted at gaining a more comprehensive understanding of insect succession in the Australian tropics.

Key points:

• We obtained preliminary observational data concerning the rate of decomposition and insect succession on pig carcasses in tropical Australia.
• Decomposition was rapid: all carcasses were at the dry/remains stage by Day 5.
• Coleopteran taxa may be more forensically informative in tropical Australia than dipterans.

     

Technology and the legal discourse of fetal autonomy

The relationship between society, medicine, and the law is multi-faceted and complex. This Article examines the process of, and the influences on, the construction of fetal personhood in the legal discourses in American and Commonwealth case law and statutes. It demonstrates how the physical and visual separation of the fetus, as made possible by medical advances, has influenced the development of legal doctrine relating to the rights of the fetus.     

Best Interest of the Child and Parental Alienation: A Survey of State Statutes

State statutes regarding the best interests of the child (BIC) in deciding disputed custody were reviewed and independently coded with respect to three issues (i) the child's preference and any limits (ii) parental alienation and (iii) psychological maltreatment. Results revealed that many states allowed for the child's preferences to be considered and none qualified that preference when undue influence has occurred; parental alienation as a term was not found in any state statutes but 70% of the states included at least one BIC factor relevant to its core construct of the parent supporting the child's relationship to the other parent; and many states included a history of domestic violence or child abuse but only three states explicitly mentioned psychological maltreatment. These findings highlight yet another way in which the BICS factors lack specificity in ways that could negatively impact children caught in their parents’ conflict.     

Comparative Analysis of Insect Succession Data from Victoria (Australia) Using Summary Statistics versus Preceding Mean Ambient Temperature Models

Minimum postmortem interval (mPMI) can be estimated with preceding mean ambient temperature models that predict carrion taxon pre‐appearance interval. But accuracy has not been compared with using summary statistics (mean ± SD of taxon arrival/departure day, range, 95% CI). This study collected succession data from ten experimental and five control (infrequently sampled) pig carcasses over two summers (n = 2 experimental, n = 1 control per placement date). Linear and exponential preceding mean ambient temperature models for appearance and departure times were constructed for 17 taxa/developmental stages. There was minimal difference in linear or exponential model success, although arrival models were more often significant: 65% of linear arrival (r² = 0.09–0.79) and exponential arrival models (r² = 0.05–81.0) were significant, and 35% of linear departure (r² = 0.0–0.71) and exponential departure models (r² = 0.0–0.72) were significant. Performance of models and summary statistics for estimating mPMI was compared in two forensic cases. Only summary statistics produced accurate mPMI estimates.     

Privative clauses in special education legislative schemes: are they constitutional under the Canadian Charter?

This paper suggests that privative clauses in the enabling statutes (Education Acts) governing provincially appointed special education appeal tribunals (SET) are unconstitutional under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is suggested that ‘final and binding’ SET decisions about children's designation as special needs and their educational placement infringe upon the Charter rights of both parent and exceptional child. The standard for judicial review of SET decisions, given a privative clause, is whether the decision is ‘patently unreasonable’ while ‘correctness’, according to case law, is the appropriate standard when finally determining fundamental rights. Parents of exceptional children in practice have recourse to the courts regarding only procedural rather than substantive issues regarding SET decisions due to the high deference the courts afford any administrat ive tribunal protected by a privative clause. The very high judicial review standard of ‘patently unreasonable’ rather than ‘correctness’ is not consistent, furthermore, with the child's ‘best interests’ or in meeting international obligations to disabled children under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.     

Influences of Childhood Abuse on Parenting Perspectives of Pregnant Cohabitors

Using thematic analysis, we examine the effects of childhood abuse regarding parenthood for pregnant cohabitors from qualitative interviews. Participants (N?=?18; 10 women and 8 men) recalled childhood abuse during the Adult Attachment Interview. Three themes emerged: (1) “Learning what not to do,” whereby abuse is discussed as something not to continue, and harmful toward children; (2) “Use but modify parents’ discipline,” whereby individuals state that they will employ methods of their parents, but in ways different for their children; and (3) “Ambiguous,” whereby discussions are unclear and confused about how the abuse will affect their parenting. These results suggest that even when pregnant cohabitors want to parent differently than their own parents, they may not have relevant models or skills. For practitioners, we suggest interventions aimed at providing alternative models for how to parent, and effective and appropriate disciplining methods, as ways to deter intergenerational abuse.     

归责何以可能:人工智能时代的自由意志与法律责任

自由意志是归责的基础,以基因编辑技术为代表的基因工程、医疗性人工装置和人工智能构成了对自由意志的根本挑战,对法律责任的认定影响甚大。这些挑战是根本性的,而不是工具意义上的。它们在法哲学上可以分为两个方面:一是现实的挑战,即以基因工程和弱人工智能为代表的新兴科技引发了人类在自由意志方面的争议;二是未来的终极挑战,即强人工智能体被认为具有和人一样的自由意志,能够成为法律主体,从而承担完全的法律责任。现实的挑战构成了责任承担的新的"宽恕"条件;而未来的挑战也值得认真对待,因为自由意志不仅关乎责任,也关乎人性尊严。     

What Did the Janitor Do? Suggestive Interviewing and the Accuracy of Children's Accounts

Examined the influence of suggestive interviews on 5- to 6-year-old children's reports and recollections of an adult's behavior. Children (29 girls, 27 boys) witnessed a confederate, acting as a janitor, either clean or play with toys. An hour later they were interviewed in succession by the janitor's boss, by an experimenter, and by their own parent. Parents interviewed their child again 1 week later. The boss and experimenter interviewed the child in one of three ways: neutral (nonleading), incriminating (suggesting the janitor was bad and playing on the job), or exculpating (suggesting the janitor was good and doing his job of cleaning). When these interviews were neutral, children consistently gave accurate accounts of the janitor's behavior. When these interviews were suggestive, children's accounts shifted strongly in the direction of suggestion as the interviews progressed. By the end of the suggestive interviews, children's accounts uniformly corresponded to the interviewers' suggestions, even when the suggestions were inconsistent with what actually happened. These effects of suggestion persisted during the two nonleading parent interviews.     

The genetics of secrecy in adoption, artificial insemination, and in vitro fertilization

In light of the significant role that heredity plays in many disease processes, statutes requiring strict secrecy with regard to medical records in cases of adoption, artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization should be reassessed. In adoption cases, attitudes concerning the adoptee's ancestry have progressed over the century, but adoptees still are unable to access their records. The problem of inaccessibility is also apparent in medical genetics clinics where valuable genetic information, necessary for an accurate diagnosis, is unavailable to the clinic, the adoptive parents, and the birth parents. A uniform law which responds to these interests and problems should be promulgated. This Note discusses the need for better access to and availability of medical records. The Note proposes a Uniform Act and suggests that, at a minimum, it include a scheme for regulating the donation of genetic material, strong record-keeping requirements with respect to family histories and pedigrees, and finally, an open access provision for certain information for both children and parents.     

Paths to Market for Supply Push Technology Transfer

The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology Transfer (T²RERC) advances the methods of technology transfer through research, transforms technologies into products through development, and facilitates the commercialization of new and improved assistive technology devices. This paper reviews the T²RERC's process and the three primary Paths to Market employed by the T²RERC for new products proceeding through its Supply Push program (Lane, 1999) in a case study format.