Good Dad @washingtonpost

Sonia Rao discusses the emergence of the caring, sensitive father in popular culture, here, for the Washington Post (subscription may be required). 

Papke On Pop Culture Divorce Lawyers

David Ray Papke, Marquette University Law School, has published Comedic Critique: The Pop Cultural Divorce Lawyer. Here is the abstract.

This essay discusses pop cultural divorce lawyers, focusing in particular on the lawyer Arnie Becker in L.A. Law (NBC, 1986-94) and on divorce lawyers in such Hollywood films as War of the Roses (1996), Liar Liar (1997), and Intolerable Cruelty (2003). The portrayals are largely comedic, but the comedy has a sharp bite. Pop cultural divorce lawyers emerge as manipulative, conniving, materialistic, self-interested, lusty, and narcissistic. The prototypical portrayal, the culture industry assumes in an unreflective, unsystematic way, will resonate with viewers and, in particular, their attitudes about divorce lawyers. Commercial success, after all, is always the industry’s first goal.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Another section of the PCBA (Popular Culture Bar Association) identified.

The Court of Chancery, Inheritance, and Policy in the Eighteenth Century

Adam S. Hofri-Winogradow, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Faculty of Law, has published Parents, Children and Property in the Late Eighteenth Century Chancery in volume 32 of the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (2012). Here is the abstract.

The late eighteenth century court of Chancery established a balance between the respective interests of parents and their children in the family’s property. The court required parents, especially fathers, to themselves provide for the maintenance and education of their minor children, even where money was made available for these purposes from a non-parental source. It prevented parents from intercepting gifts given to their children by third parties. It permitted parents, however, to make their children's entitlements to marriage portions conditional, for children marrying before majority, on the children's choice of spouse being consented to by a parent or parental surrogate. Chancery’s overall intergenerational policy was notably anti-dynastic: it made sure that younger generations, specifically those just reaching adulthood, marriage and parenthood, were endowed with sufficient property to give them at least a measure of independence from their elders, and some power over their own children.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.