Family law has long been intensely interested in certain adult intimate relationships, namely marriage and marriage-like relationships, and silent about other adult intimate relationships, namely friendship. This Article examines the effects of that focus, illustrating how it frustrates one of the goals embraced by most family law scholars over the past forty years: the achievement of gender equality, within the family and without. Part I examines the current scope of family law doctrine and scholarship, highlighting the ways in which the home is still the organizing structure for family.

Under prevailing tort law, an injurer who must choose between Course of Action A, which creates a risk of 500 (there is a probability of .1 that a harm of 5000 will result), and Course of Action B, which creates a risk of 400 (there is a probability of .1 that a harm of 4000 will result), and who negligently opts for the former will be held liable for the entire harm of 5000 that materializes. This full liability forces the injurer to pay damages that are five times higher than would be necessary to internalize the risk of 100 that his negligent choice actually creates. This Article argues that tort law should recognize the Offsetting Risks Principle, under which courts would take into account the risks decreased by the wrongdoing as a mitigating liability factor.

Most academics assume that suburbanites are “exiters” who have abandoned central cities. The exit story is a foundational one in the fields of land-use and local-government law: exiters’ historical, social, and economic connections with “their” center cities are frequently used to justify both growth controls and regional government. The exit story, however, no longer captures the American suburban experience. For a majority of Americans, suburbs have become points of entrance to, not exit from, urban life. Most suburbanites are “enterers”—people who were born in, or migrated directly to, suburbs and who have not spent time living in any central city. This Essay reexamines current debates about growth management and regional governance in light of the underappreciated suburbs-as-entrance story.

In eBay v. MercExchange, a unanimous Supreme Court announced that a new four-factor test should be employed by district courts in determining whether to award an injunction or damages to an aggrieved party whose intellectual property has been infringed. In the context of permanent injunctions in patent cases, district courts have distorted the four-factor test resulting in a “market competition requirement.” Under the new market competition requirement, success at obtaining an injunction is contingent upon a party demonstrating that it is a market competitor. After consistent application in the first twenty-five district court cases post-eBay, the market competition requirement is becoming an entrenched doctrine. However, the divergent legal standards used by district courts turning on market competition contravenes the Supreme Court’s holding that courts should not apply the four-factor test in a manner that makes the injunctive remedy unavailable based on broad classifications. 

Specific exclusion has become a controversial limitation on the doctrine of equivalents, which is itself an essential and controversial area of patent law. The doctrine of equivalents allows a patentee to successfully claim infringement against devices that are outside of the literal reach of the language used by the patentee in her patent to describe what she claims as her invention. The Supreme Court has prescribed some of the outer limits of the doctrine of equivalents and articulated the underlying policy concerns that inform its analysis—noting that courts should balance protection of the patentee’s intellectual property with the public’s reasonable expectations of the bounds of the patent—but has entrusted most of the doctrine’s development to the Federal Circuit.

A revocation-by-divorce statute essentially nullifies a devise in a divorced decedent’s will when the devise bequeaths property to the decedent’s ex-spouse and the will was executed during their marriage. Until recently, state revocation-by-divorce statutes unquestionably applied not only to wills but also to will substitutes, including ERISA-governed employee benefit plans. In 2001, the Supreme Court held in Egelhoff v. Egelhoff ex rel. Breiner that ERISA preempts traditional state revocation-by-divorce statutes as applied to ERISA-governed employee benefit plans. In the wake of the Egelhoff decision, plan administrators may automatically pay proceeds to the listed beneficiary, even an ex-spouse, regardless of the existence of a traditional state revocation-by-divorce statute. One solution to this preemption is the use of a constructive trust.