Gender and Nonfinancial Matters in the ALI Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution

The question for this issue is gender issues in the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution. Overall, the Principles are an impressive effort to create clarity and coherence, given the disorganized and evolving state of family law. This commentary raises a few questions about the Principles’ treatment of nonfinancial issues, and suggests that this treatment should raise concerns about women’s interests upon divorce. First, I will briefly review the ALI’s position on nonfinancial matters. Second, I will discuss why the limitation to financial losses should matter to women; that is, I will investigate the costs of excluding nonfinancial losses. Finally, I will consider the two reasons given for this limitation in the Principles’ section on compensatory losses, where the issue is most directly addressed. Those reasons are incommensurability (or the problem of valuation), and avoiding fault determinations. Neither is sufficient to sustain the exclusion of nonfinancial matters, once their importance is understood

Sprawl, Family Rhythms, and the Four-Day Work Week Symposium: Redefining Work: Implications of the Four-Day Work Week - Redefining Work: Possibilities and Perils

We evaluate the four-day work week against the background of other institutional and social practices and constraints. But we fix these other variables when considering the value of this work reform. For example, workers enjoy the commute time and expense savings associated with a four-day week. These savings would mean little if the commutes in question were negligible. Therefore, the value of the four-day work week depends in part on the social history that gave us increasingly substantial commutes. This Article seeks to highlight some of the institutional practices that influence the adoption of a four-day work week, particularly those associated with sprawl. It compares the reform to school districts that operate a four-day school week as a cost-saving measure. School systems choose a four-day week because they are rural and long distances create particularly serious time and transportation costs. This comparison helps to reveal the role sprawl and its impact on commutes plays in the four-day work week reform. In addition, the four-day work week depends on being different from other workplaces for its benefits. The odd hours for commutes are needed to relieve pressure on the roads. The irregular hours for the opening of government offices are effective because they coincide with non-work hours for private sector employees. While new distances may necessitate a four-day work week, irregular, unsynchronized hours come with a cost. Synchronized non-work hours allow communities to share common civic time and allow families to develop social rhythms of non-work time together. The four-day work week reform, which derives its benefit from irregularity, undermines common community and family rhythms

Deliverable Male

Williams pays particular attention to the way men negotiate a masculine self-image that sits uneasily with the reality of family care. How should this tension be managed? Williams favors some form of preserving masculine self-image by reframing the subject to one of worker empowerment rather than family care. This strategy aims at political efficacy and coalition building. Asking men to imitate women’s successes, it might be argued, is interesting but too threatening to be attractive. This Essay nonetheless leans in that direction. This Essay will first look at the evidence for the decline in men’s status. Williams investigates the evidence in the workforce, and I’ll highlight some particularly interesting evidence from recent years. I will add to that evidence from elementary, secondary, and higher education, and elaborate a bit on the evidence from men’s role in families. From this section emerges the “end of men” hypothesis that begs the important question: What can be done to reverse the trend? Williams recognizes the challenge of the task and sees the difficulty in the choice to either support traditional masculine performance or to transform it. This same tension is visible in the greater literature about masculine anxieties. I will argue that, as painful as it may be, Williams is right that the economic success of men depends on the transformation of masculinity to incorporate a desire for the skills currently gendered female in the workforce, family life, and educational institutions. In places, Williams seems to embrace a “covering” strategy for men that might sit between traditional masculinities and reformation, one that seeks to accommodate the affront to men’s dignity implied in transforming their masculine performance. I incline more toward ripping off the Band-Aid, but I embrace Williams’s general emphasis and will explicate some of the implications for extending her agenda into the debates within education in particular

Is the Work-Family Conflict Pathological or Normal Under the FMLA? The Potential of the FMLA to Cover Ordinary Work-Family Conflicts

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides relief to workers, helping them in their struggle to meet the sometimes competing demands of work and family. There have been numerous attempts to expand legislation to cover more occasions where work and family obligations are in tension. This Essay will address one way that the courts may be expanding the Act’s application. It will investigate whether this modest interpretive expansion can be explained partially by society’s deeper understanding of the challenges of work-family balance over the ten years since the FMLA’s passage. Have we changed our general understanding of conflicts between employment and family work from occasional and extraordinary events to frequent and ordinary ones? Consequently, is the paradigmatic work-family conflict pathological or normal under the FMLA

Proliferation

In the spirit of intellectual inquiry, the editors have chosen to hold a symposium asking how the unique mission of the journal is to be justified. Self-assessment is a courageous undertaking. Here we see exemplified one of the great benefits of journals with a well-defined perspective: student editors take the mission of the journal seriously. They are not self-satisfied. They have chosen this perspective, not fallen into it, and they are willing to investigate whether it is worth their commitment. From this comes the simple answer-as long as there are students dedicated to the mission of feminist law journals, authors who seek to publish their work in feminist law journals, and individuals who are interested in reading that work, feminist law journals have a rightful place in the range of institutions that deepen learning. Let me consider two of the objections to women’s law journals, one from feminists, and one more broadly suggested. The first, and most common amongst feminists,’ is a concern about drawing scholarly work away from the mainstream. By separating scholarship from the mainstream we lose the chance to influence and reform it; we do not reach the people who need our perspective the most

Testing As Commodification

In this Essay, the author addresses criticism of the testing movement by education experts such as Jonathan Kozol. She explores the similarities in the discourses of philosophical discussions of commodification and behavioural economic discussions of intrinsic motivations. One conclusion that the author draws is that the comparison between the testing movement and commodification literature is not perfect, but they have both been counted, compared and measured, and flattened or thinned out of values

Aging Policy Design: Building from Anne Alstott

In her intriguing lecture, Professor Anne Alstott reminds us that legal scholarship enjoys a unique niche between justice and policy. Political scientists and philosophers evaluate justice, while legal scholars ask where and how justice can be achieved pragmatically. Alstott calls this our comparative advantage, the merging of justice and practicality. This introduction perfectly frames the work Alstott does in evaluating S ocial Security and other income and savings support programs for the aging and retire d population, such as tax benefits given in support of private pensions

Proliferation

In the spirit of intellectual inquiry, the editors have chosen to hold a symposium asking how the unique mission of the journal is to be justified. Self-assessment is a courageous undertaking. Here we see exemplified one of the great benefits of journals with a well-defined perspective: student editors take the mission of the journal seriously. They are not self-satisfied. They have chosen this perspective, not fallen into it, and they are willing to investigate whether it is worth their commitment. From this comes the simple answer-as long as there are students dedicated to the mission of feminist law journals, authors who seek to publish their work in feminist law journals, and individuals who are interested in reading that work, feminist law journals have a rightful place in the range of institutions that deepen learning