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Relational Rights and Responsibilities: Revisioning the Family in Liberal Political Theory and Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Martha Minow  and
Mary Lyndon Shanley
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Abstract

This article discusses three main orientations in recent works of legal and political theory about the family—contract-based, community-based, and rights-based—and argues that none of these takes adequate account of two paradoxical features of family life and of the family's relationship to the state. A coherent political and legal theory of the family in the contemporary United States requires recognition of the relational rights and responsibilities intrinsic to family life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 11 , Issue 1: Special Issue: The Family and Feminist Theory , Winter 1996 , pp. 4 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by Hypatia, Inc.

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