Copyright (c) 2010 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/sonia_green Recent documents in Sonia B Green en-us Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:30:44 PST 3600 http://works.bepress.com/sonia_green/2 http://works.bepress.com/sonia_green/2 Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:58:07 PST The battle for same-sex marriage is likely to be the civil rights issue of this decade. Developments all over the world over the last several years have caused celebration, public outcry and passionate debate. In the last year alone, the first Latin American same-sex wedding was performed, Sweden joined the nations who allow same-sex marriage, and the United States saw the "Proposition 8" debacle in California, and the new federal lawsuits that will inevitably propel the issues toward the Supreme Court. The legal debate in the United States has asked the crucial question: is there a legal right to marriage for each person, regardless of sexual orientation? This article examines the debate through the prism of international law and argues that there is. Scholars and courts have analyzed the constitutional, legal and moral implications of this debate. This article adds a new argument to the debate: same-sex marriage should be allowed in the United States because it is protected by customary international law, and U.S. courts do, and should, consider international custom in their jurisprudence.Part One of the article details the myriad of areas in which "marriage" is a legally significant designation. Part Two describes the legislation, judicial opinions and contours of the debate in the United States to date. Part Three presents arguments for how same-sex marriage is protected by customary international law: it is protected through codifications of custom, it is a trend in at least parts of the world, and most importantly, the justifications of the nations who allow same-sex marriage evidence a sense of legal obligation to allow it. Part Four examines how the United States courts have used customary international law in a variety of cases, and explains how courts could incorporate those norms to find that same-sex marriage should be legalized. The article concludes with two essential appendices that illustrate the current status of same-sex marriage: a state-by-state current summary of the issue in the United States and a large selected nation-by-nation compilation. Sonia B. Green Civil Rights Comparative Law Conflict of Laws General Law Human Rights Law International Law Law and Society Sexuality and the Law Women http://works.bepress.com/sonia_green/1 http://works.bepress.com/sonia_green/1 Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:12:18 PDT New technologies have always posed challenges to established legal norms. Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) in particular pose legal and ethical challenges to the law, and create never before seen legal problems. Although the ABA House of Representatives recently approved the Model Act Governing Assisted Reproductive Technology, differences in laws and rules will continue to exist. The legal issued involved are wide-ranging, including: liability issues arising from the failure of ART technology, parentage issues, disposition of embryos, and many others. As ART becomes more widely used, it is also used more in an interstate and international context. Thus, when a dispute arises, it often involves litigants from different states, and therefore creates the potential of conflicting laws.This article discusses how many ART procedures can be done, and often times are done, across state lines, and between individuals from different states. This creates challenging legal situations for the courts, both in deciding what the law is, or should be, and second in deciding which state's law to apply. Recent scholarship has addressed the first question but this article focuses on the second. It proposes solutions to complicated - and current - ART choice of law conundrums.The first section describes Assisted Reproductive Technologies, so that the reader understands the background to the potential problems that may arise. The second section discusses possible problems with ART and lawsuits that have arisen, some, within the last year. The third section describes current choice of law options, and how these might be applied, and have been applied, to ART lawsuits. The last section proposes solutions for resolving multi-state ART lawsuits, including the best choice of law approach for this area of the law, and how parties can protect themselves through more proactive choices of law in contract formation. Sonia B. Green Conflict of Laws Domestic Relations Law and Technology Women