Before joining the faculty, Professor Spivack practiced civil litigation at Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft, a New York law firm. She received her BA from Princeton, her JD from New York University School of Law, and her PhD in English Literature from Boston College. She clerked for the Hon Robert G. Flanders, Jr. of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island. Professor Spivack’s scholarship focuses on gender issues in property and trusts and estates law, as well as comparative law. She writes about ways inheritance law can and should take account of realities like spousal and child abuse, and about how American inheritance law compares with that of civil law countries. Professor Spivack’s work is cited at length in various Trusts and Estates casebooks, and her article, “Let’s Get Serious: Spousal Abuse Should Bar Inheritance” was named one of ten “Must Read” Trusts and Estates articles of 2011 by TaxProf Blog, the leading estate planning and tax blog.
Articles
Let's Get Serious: Spousal Abuse Should Bar Inheritance, 90 Oregon Law Review 247-302 (2011)
Essentially, the thesis of the article is that a spouse or intimate partner who is...
Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection in a Comparative Law Context, 46 New England Law Review 7 (2011)
This article examines the Supreme Court's decision in Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida...
Disappearing Civil Liberties: The Case of Post-9/11 Fiction, 44 New England Law Review 869-884 (2010)
Contributions to Books
Awful Moony Light: The Visual Colonial Other in Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, Visions of the Industrial Age (2008)
Unpublished Papers
Killers Shouldn't Inherit From Their Victims . . . Or Should They?, ExpressO (2013)
The article offers a profound reassessment of so-called “Slayer Rules,” laws that, in all states,...
Killers Shouldn't Inherit From Their Victims . . . Or Should They?, ExpressO (2012)
The article offers a profound reassessment of so-called “Slayer Rules,” laws that, in most states,...
Killers Shouldn't Inherit From Their Victims . . . Or Should They?, ExpressO (2012)
The article offers a profound reassessment of so-called “Slayer Rules,” laws that, in most states,...