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Contemporary Family Law
This title is a part of our CasebookPlus™ offering as ISBN 9798887862101. Learn more at
Faculty-CasebookPlus.com.
This popular family law casebook engages students by presenting core family law doctrine while exploring significant transformations in American families and cutting-edge policy debates. It highlights the important role of constitutional law—and other areas of state and federal law—in shaping family law. The book invites students to consider questions of family definition and governmental regulation of families in light of family law’s purposes. It charts family law’s evolving approach to adult-adult and parent-child (and other caretaker-dependent) relationships, emphasizing that contemporary families take a variety of forms.
The Sixth Edition updates all chapters to reflect the latest family law developments, such as the legal treatment of nonmarital families (including plural relationships) and nonbiological parenting as well as recent Supreme Court decisions. It integrates material previously covered in separate chapters on ethical issues in family law practice and jurisdiction into the contexts in which they arise, such as divorce, child custody, and division of marital property. The Sixth Edition has new material highlighting the intersection of family law with race, gender, class, immigration, sexual orientation, and gender identity. As with previous editions, the casebook contains ample problems for students to apply doctrine to realistic factual contexts and highlights practical dynamics of family law practice.
The 6th edition:
- Thoroughly examines the impact of recent Supreme Court cases on family law, including Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (and provides teachers with shorter and longer versions of that case), and Golan v. Saada
- Includes attention to the role of race and racism in laws that shape and regulate the family, with case law addressing marriage, divorce, and inheritance rights of formerly enslaved persons and a post-Loving v. Virginia case challenging the continued requirement that couples disclose race on a marriage license
- Provides a restructured chapter on the legal consequences of marriage, spousal roles within marriage, and the gender revolution within family law and related fields
- Includes new developments on marriage requirements, including state minimum age laws and common-law marriage rules, and addresses First Amendment challenges, post-Masterpiece Cakeshop, to civil marriage equality and state antidiscrimination laws
- Includes new coverage of the intersection of immigration and family law
- Addresses changes in legal approaches to nonmarital families, including multi-adult domestic partnerships and the Uniform Cohabitants' Economic Remedies Act
- Provides updated treatment of custody and parenting time issues, including parenting gender-expansive children
- Provides a restructured chapter on intimate partner violence (IPV), including updates on various factors impacting IPV and shifting gun control statutes and caselaw affecting civil protection orders
- Provides new consideration of child support issues, including joint custody and subsequent families
- Provides revised problems in anticipation of the NextGen Bar Exam
A free July 2023 update memo is available, with edits of 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 600 U.S. __ (2023), and Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U.S. ___ (2023).
Finally, the comprehensive 765-page teacher’s manual presents explanations and pedagogical strategies, including sample exercises, to help new adopters design a rich course that meets their students’ needs and aspirations. For professors who have already used the book, the manual provides support on how to integrate new material into their existing lesson plans. The co-authors will share their PowerPoint slides with professors who adopt the book.
Imprint: West Academic Publishing
Series: American Casebook Series
Publication Date: 07/13/2023
Douglas E. Abrams, University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law
Naomi R. Cahn, University of Virginia School of Law
Linda C. McClain, Boston University School of Law
Catherine J. Ross, George Washington University Law School
Kaiponanea T. Matsumura, Loyola Law School - LA
Jessica Dixon Weaver, Southern Methodist University School of Law
CasebookPlus™
This title is available in our CasebookPlus format. CasebookPlus provides support beyond your classroom lectures and materials by offering additional digital resources to you and your students. Anchored by faculty-authored formative self-assessments keyed to our most popular casebooks, CasebookPlus allows students to test their understanding of core concepts as they are learning them in class – on their own, outside of the classroom, with no extra work on your part. CasebookPlus combines three important elements:
- A new print or digital casebook
- Access to a downloadable eBook with the ability to highlight and add notes
- 12-month access to a digital Learning Library complete with:
- Chapter questions keyed to the casebook
- Black Letter Law questions (available in select subjects)
- Subject area review questions for end of semester use
Leading digital study aids, an outline starter, and audio lectures in select subjects
Students can still utilize CasebookPlus digital resources if they’ve purchased a used book or are renting their text by purchasing the Learning Library at westacademic.com.
With CasebookPlus, you can customize your students’ learning experience and monitor their performance. The quiz editor allows you to create your own custom quiz set, suppress specific quiz questions or quiz sets, and time-release quiz questions. Additionally, the flexible, customized reporting capability helps you evaluate your students’ understanding of the material and can also help your school demonstrate compliance with the new ABA Assessment and Learning Outcomes standards.
This summer update includes summaries of relevant U.S. Supreme Court decisions and other actions from the 2023-2024 Term, including:
- Department of State v. Muñoz (2024), which held that the right to marry does not include the right to bring one’s noncitizen spouse to the United States.
- United States v. Rahimi (2024), which reversed the Fifth Circuit and held that federal law’s prohibition of an individual subject to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm survived Zacky Rahimi’s Second Amendment facial challenge.
- Moyle v. United States (2024), in which the Court—in a per curiam opinion—dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted in a case involving whether the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) overrides Idaho’s strict abortion ban.
- Food & Drug Admin. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (2024), which unanimously held that an anti-abortion group did not have standing to challenge the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in a medication abortion.
- An order granting the United States’s petition for certiorari in L.W. v. Skrmetti, 83 F.4th 460 (6th Cir. 2023), in which the Sixth Circuit upheld Kentucky and Tennessee’s statutes prohibiting health care providers from offering certain medical treatments to minors with gender dysphoria.
The 2024 Update also includes selected developments in state law concerning marriage, divorce, parentage, equitable distribution, and post-Dobbs state constitutional litigation and ballot initiatives.
Reminder: The 2023 Update (attached as an Appendix to the 2024 Update) includes edited versions of two U.S. Supreme Court decisions: (1) 303 Creative LLC et al. v. Elenis et al., 600 U.S. 570 (2023), and (2) Haaland v. Brackeen et al., 599 U.S. 255 (2023).
IRS Ruling on Same-Sex Marriage
Teacher's Manual (Word doc version)
6th Edition PowerPoint Slides (Adopter Access Only)
Includes slides used with permission of Caroline Rogus (The George Washington University Law School).
5th Edition PowerPoint Slides (Adopter Access Only)
Includes slides used with permission of Caroline Rogus (The George Washington University Law School).
McClain Slides (Chapters 7-16)
Includes slides used with permission of Caroline Rogus (The George Washington University Law School), Julie Dahlstrom (Boston University School of Law), and Marie-Amélie George (Wake Forest University School of Law).
The 6th edition:
- Thoroughly examines the impact of recent Supreme Court cases on family law, including Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (and provides teachers with shorter and longer versions of that case), and Golan v. Saada
- Includes attention to the role of race and racism in laws that shape and regulate the family, with case law addressing marriage, divorce, and inheritance rights of formerly enslaved persons and a post-Loving v. Virginia case challenging the continued requirement that couples disclose race on a marriage license
- Provides a restructured chapter on the legal consequences of marriage, spousal roles within marriage, and the gender revolution within family law and related fields
- Includes new developments on marriage requirements, including state minimum age laws and common-law marriage rules, and addresses First Amendment challenges, post-Masterpiece Cakeshop, to civil marriage equality and state antidiscrimination laws
- Includes new coverage of the intersection of immigration and family law
- Addresses changes in legal approaches to nonmarital families, including multi-adult domestic partnerships and the Uniform Cohabitants' Economic Remedies Act
- Provides updated treatment of custody and parenting time issues, including parenting gender-expansive children
- Provides a restructured chapter on intimate partner violence (IPV), including updates on various factors impacting IPV and shifting gun control statutes and caselaw affecting civil protection orders
- Provides new consideration of child support issues, including joint custody and subsequent families
- Provides revised problems in anticipation of the NextGen Bar Exam
Learn more about this series.
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Other Higher Education Faculty who wish to access digital review copies or teaching resources should contact their West Academic Account Manager at college@westacademic.com or 800-360-9378.
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Access Denied
Sign in or Create an Account to access this content. Faculty who have created an account can sign in after receiving email notification that registration has been approved. Contact us for assistance.
Law School Faculty: email accountmanager@westacademic.com or call 800-313-9378.
Other Higher Education Faculty: email college@westacademic.com or 800-360-9378.
Access Denied
Higher education faculty who wish to view this document should contact their West Academic Account Manager at college@westacademic.com or 800-360-9378.