Family Law in a Changing America - 2nd Edition - Douglas NeJaime

Family Law in a Changing America, Second Edition offers a thoroughly modern approach to family law, addressing the realities of American families today rather than reflecting outdated norms. This innovative casebook focuses on how shifting family patterns intersect with legal structures, especially in a society marked by both growing equality and deepening inequality.

While the law now provides greater formal autonomy and equality than ever before, dramatic economic disparities have reshaped family life—marriage and marital child-rearing have increasingly become markers of socioeconomic privilege. Factors such as mass incarceration, the privatization of caregiving, and reproductive technologies have further entrenched racial, gender, and class-based inequities. This casebook acknowledges the law’s continuing prioritization of marriage but gives equal attention to nonmarital families. Instead of centering the traditional heterosexual marital family, the book is organized around two foundational legal relationships: adult relationships and parent-child relationships.

New to the Second Edition:

• Expanded and updated analysis of reproductive justice and abortion access

• Broader coverage of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and its implications

• Updated exploration of the child welfare system, including current debates about its potential abolition

Features that Benefit Professors and Students:

• Thorough discussion of contemporary family trends: declining marriage rates, rising nonmarital cohabitation and parenting, and the persistent gendered division of labor despite women's increasing economic independence

• A structure that decenters marriage and focuses on adult and parent-child relationships, reflecting how families are lived today

• Broad coverage of family law’s scope, including often overlooked areas such as child welfare, state intervention, and caregiving systems

• Emphasis on multiple sources of law—common law, statutory, constitutional—and diverse legal actors including judges, legislators, social workers, and advocates

• Problem-based learning that surfaces doctrinal gaps and practical dilemmas, often with real-world outcomes or legislative resolutions included

• Extensive discussion of emerging and contested areas such as rights of unmarried partners, assisted reproduction, intentional and functional parenthood, multi-parent families, open and transracial adoption, and systemic critiques of the child welfare system

This casebook provides an inclusive, rigorous, and up-to-date foundation for teaching family law in a world where families—and the laws that govern them—are rapidly evolving.