Susan Frelich Appleton, the Lemma Barkeloo & Phoebe Couzins Professor of Law, participated in the Sixth Annual Roundtable on Nonmarriage and the Law. This year’s event took place at the University of Virginia School of Law on September 19-20, 2024, and gathered a distinguished group of scholars to discuss their research and analyses of family law beyond the marital norm.
Professor Appleton’s scholarship focuses on issues of family, sex, gender, reproduction, and feminist legal theory. At this year’s roundtable, she and co-author Albertina Antognini, the James E. Rogers Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, presented a work in progress entitled Abolitionist Family Law. Using the lens of family law, the project asks: What if, instead of reforming the family, we abolish it? Calls to abolish the family have emerged in disciplines other than law, but the family law literature has not comprehensively explored the question, even while criticizing the many ways that families continue to perpetuate hierarchies and limit autonomy across several different metrics, including race, gender, and age. Previously, Appleton and Antognini co-authored Sexual Agreements, 99 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1807 (2022).
Other presentations at this year’s roundtable examined issues of parenting, singlehood, nonconjugal relationships, inequalities, status, poverty, property, and relationship loss. “The roundtable provided a fantastic opportunity to learn about and comment on some of the latest work in family law and to receive valuable feedback on the early draft that my co-author and I shared,” said Professor Appleton.
