Love and Contracts in \u3cem\u3eDon Quixote\u3c/em\u3e

Viewing love as a contract seems, initially, like mistaking windmills for giants, or a peasant girl for a grand lady. This chapter seeks, like Don Quixote, to convince readers to suspend their practiced views of everyday relationships in order to see them in a new light. What seems crazy at first glance may come to look as good, and sometimes better, than the more conventional view. As a law professor, I usually write about love and contracts by focusing on legal opinions and statutes, and recently I have added real-life stories from books and newspapers, as well as my friends, family, colleagues, and students. But if I am right that love and contracts often complement instead of oppose each other, then my argument that contracts shape the beginning, middle, and demise of love relationships ought to hold true in fiction as well, especially for the jump-off-the-page characters and situations in Don Quixote. Applying this analysis to Don Quixote invites new readings, and may even bring yet more readers to this brilliant text

The Legacy of Jane Larson: The Politics of Practicality and Surprise

Jane Larson\u27s work and life enriched my own and others. Her intellectual framework - applying legal economic ideas of consent to feminist theory, backed up by legal history - suggest surprising practical solutions to problems ranging from the injuries of adultery and prostitution to housing in border towns

The Social Life of Blood, Milk and Sperm

Reviewing Kara W. Swanson, Baking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk and Sperm in Modern America (Harvard University Press 2014

Changing the Meaning of Motherhood

Ertman responds to McClain\u27s suggestion that we should alter our understandings of care for children to see it as a public value rather than a private responsibility. Ertman both echoes McClain\u27s focus on the importance of finding theoretical and doctrinal grounds for remunerating the work that many primary homemakers do for their families and sounds a note of caution about the majoritarian morality that often accompanies public law solutions. In light of the downside of a public law focus, Ertman explores how private law mechanisms, or public-private hybrids, might serve as alternative means to get financial support to those who need it most: poor women