Efforts to decriminalize sex work have gained momentum recently. After years of abolitionist rhetoric inflaming the public by conflating consensual sex work with human trafficking, sex workers and their allies are making themselves heard. The debate about whether exchanging sex for money should be legal is drawing attention. Sex worker advocates have gathered data to support their assertions that sex workers are harmed by efforts to eliminate an activity that has existed for as long as people have lived in communities.
This article reviews the short history of the criminalization of prostitution, providing a glimpse into the reasons it was criminalized in the first place. Like many efforts to legitimize personal decisions about intimate behaviors, discussions of sex work initially focused on whether fundamental rights to liberty and privacy mandated decriminalization. The article explains those positions and why decriminalization arguments based solely on privacy and liberty interests have not made progress. Ultimately, the article incorporates data about sex workers’ experiences and the work of sex workers and their close allies to provide documented reasons that continued criminalization is harmful and full decriminalization of sex work will reduce that harm

Since 1978, when the first “test-tube baby” was born in England, the use of technology to assist with the process of conception has evolved quickly. Today, advances in technology allow the various steps in the process of conception and gestation to be carried out in multiple locations, with multiple contributors to the process, and over an extended period of time. These technological advances call into question many of the assumptions about parenthood and procreation that were indisputable prior to the use of assisted reproductive technology. Courts have attempted to apply the old meanings to questions about the use of new technology, especially with regard to cryopreserved embryos, but admit that they are venturing into uncharted territory. When doing so, they often fall back on language that is familiar, but too imprecise to be helpful. Words like “parent” and “procreate” imply important rights and responsibilities, yet these words never needed defining in the past. Today they do, so this article attempts to re-define these terms by looking at their historical use, new legislation and cases that have tried to clarify them, and the policies behind their regularly-accepted meanings.

Though some forms of assisted reproduction (ART) have been available for a long time, more recent scientific advances in reproductive technology created opportunities for more people to build families, but consequently caused confusion about who should be considered a parent. In addition, changing family relationships have caused questions about who should be considered a parent.

This article attempts to compare the way various courts identify the legal parents of a child born through assisted reproductive technology. After updating existing discussions about the way parentage decisions are made in ART situations the article provides additional support for creating a predictable and consistent approach to situations that scientific advances force courts and legislatures to address.

With little statutory guidance and constrained by individual and varying state law and public policy, courts have attempted to fashion results while generally trying to avoid usurping legislative powers. This article suggests that until legislatures establish clear guidelines for identifying parents, intent to create a child to raise as one’s own should determine parentage when any form of ART is utilized. In fact, as legislatures tackle this complicated issue, intent can provide a reasonable determining factor of a legal parent.

This article discusses the potentially unseen effects of the different ways states recognize children of same-sex partners. It considers how states can allow or ban civil unions or same-sex marriages without causing uncertainty regarding parental rights and responsibilities. The article proposes changes to the Uniform Parentage Act and state statutes that would cause them to focus on the parent-child relationship rather than on the relationship of the parents.

This article explores aspects of adult learning theory that can be easily applied to law school teaching. It briefly addresses the landscape of legal education today: the traits of law students, pressures to change legal education, and the need to make legal education more effective. After describing several specific principles of adult education, the article offers concrete suggestions for incorporating these ideas by making small changes in the law school classroom that specifically address some of the current concerns about legal education.