Vol. 9 No. 8 (September 1999) pp. 377-378
FAMILY LAW IN THE UNITED STATES: CHANGING PERSPECTIVES by Patricia McGee Crotty. New York: Peter Lang. 1999.
165 pp. Paper
$24.95.
Reviewed by Kate Greene, Department of Political Science, University of Southern Mississippi.
FAMILY LAW IN THE UNITED STATES is part of the Teaching Texts in Law and Politics series that consists of undergraduate
texts that explore multidimensional and multidisciplinary areas of law and politics. This book is short, only
165 pages with notes, though not inexpensive. This text would not serve as a good introduction to the many issues
of family law since it is intentionally limited in its scope, but it would make an excellent supplement to a
course, or even a section of a course, on these issues.
According to Patricia Crotty, this text/study has four purposes: (1) explaining the gender bias in three areas
of family law (marriage, property and reproduction), (2) reviewing feminist suggestions on how these laws should
be revised to eliminate this bias, (3) discussing the changes that have occurred in state family law codes since
the mid 1980s and (4) evaluating whether these changes have improved women's position in both the private and
public spheres. She begins this study with a chapter which introduces the student to liberal theory, common law
on the family, equality, feminist theory (the many schools of feminism), the sameness/difference dilemma, the
history of women's legal status, rights language, equal protection doctrine, due process (substantive and procedural),
privacy doctrine, and disparate
impact analysis. This ambitious chapter is followed by a chapter on federalism, that is, the effect of Congressional
legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and the Violence Against
Women Act, and federal case law on state family law.
The next three chapters each address one of the three areas of family law Crotty has chosen to study: marriage,
property and reproduction. In each chapter, Crotty further narrows her discussion. Under marriage she examines
common law marriages, palimony agreements, interspousal immunity in court and domestic violence. Regarding property,
Crotty explores community property, palimony, credit, and insurance. The chapter on reproduction examines abortion
rights, marital rape, and
surrogacy. These chapters provide a concise summary of the status of women regarding these issues in terms of
state laws and discuss the types of law or policies supported by different types of feminists (sameness/liberal,
difference/gender, and power/radical). These chapters are probably the most valuable aspect of this text.
The final substantive chapter of the text is an empirical study. Crotty creates an index which quantitatively
measures the gender bias of family law in each state in the mid 1980s and the mid 1990s. The index is a composite
of scores for state laws dealing with the areas discussed above. If the state law is gender neutral it is scored
as a zero, if it favors or protects men it is scored as -1,
Page 378 begins here
and if it favors or protects women it is scored as +1. The index for each state allows for comparisons with an
ideal, among states, and over time. Among other things, Crotty finds that most states have changed their family
law between 1987 and 1997 and that most of these changes were to women's advantage. Not
surprisingly, Crotty found that in 1987 the states with the most gender bias were the Southern states. On the
other hand, by 1997, the gender bias of most of these southern states was greatly reduced, a fact she contributes
to federal statutes affecting family law. She concludes by analyzing state scores on the family law index with
economic and political indicators dealing with women's status.
FAMILY LAW IN THE UNITED STATES has a clear destination and Crotty's methodology puts her on the right track, but
the conciseness of the text limits the power of her engine. That is, unless the student has (or is given) a background
in feminist theory, constitutional law and family law, they will struggle with the vast amount of wonderful information
found in this text. Her opening chapters try to set the stage, but it is difficult in only fifty pages to introduce
the student to liberal theory, common law on the family, equality, feminist theory (the many schools of feminism),
the sameness/difference dilemma, the history of women's legal status, rights language, equal protection doctrine,
due process (substantive and procedural), privacy doctrine, disparate impact analysis and federalism. On the other
hand, she does as good a job of introducing the students to these topics in a limited space as I imagine can be
done.
The most valuable parts of this text are thechapters on marriage, property, and reproduction. In these chapters,
Crotty does a good job of summarizing the status of
women and analyzing the various state policies/laws from the perspective of liberal, gender and radical feminists.
Crotty limits her analysis to policies dealing with married or cohabiting couples (rather than single persons
or same sex couples), but this is clearly necessary because of the space limitations of the text. Her chapter
on reproduction is the most interesting and well-written. The presentation of the empirical analysis may be a
bit over the head of the average undergraduate, but Crotty summarizes her findings well and the point of the analysis
is served.
This text includes questions for the students throughout the chapters. These are excellent and sometimes difficult
questions that, if answered, will guarantee that the student has read and learned this material. They also are
designed to encourage critical thinking, and they serve that purpose well. They will also assist the instructor
in stimulating class discussion. On the other hand, the topical material and the feminist analysis of it will
stimulate discussion on its own.
This book will be valuable as a supplemental text in law related courses as well as in policy courses in a variety
of social science disciplines. Perhaps Crotty could write a second book on family law for this series as it relates
to single persons and same sex couples. Although this would be a very different analysis than what she engages
in for this text, it is an aspect of family law that deserves some attention in the social sciences.