Stephanie Coontz Quotes

I researched children's rights, divorce law, and parental kidnapping. Millions of children and parents are touched by the inadequacy of the legal system to deal with the human heart.

Unilateral divorce has decreased the bargaining power of the person who wants the marriage to last and has not engaged in behavior that meets the legal definition of fault. On the other hand, it has increased the bargaining power of the person who is willing to leave.

The only grounds for divorce in California are marriage.

When I started law school I was shocked to learn that our legal system traditionally had the man as the head and master of the family. As late as the '70s and '80s when we were fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, states like Louisiana still had a head and master law.

Instead, I think over the years we have cut the strength of marriage and relationships by the law and weakened the institution. We have tried to deal with relationships with no-fault divorce, with child custody, with so many other avenues; and it has not helped.

One thing I know from personal experience, judges hate it when parties talk publicly about their cases. There are a lot of things about our criminal legal system that need to be changed, and this is just one of them. Prosecutors know how to play the press. Most defendants don't.

Lying under oath, and encouraging lies under oath, does go to the very heart and soul of what courts do. If we say we don't care, let's forget about courts, and we'll just have other ways of figuring out how to handle disputes.

Men and women were declared equal one morning and everybody could divorce each other by postcard.

Any judge who allows an adulterer with a live-in girlfriend to terminate the life of his wife should be impeached.

The courtroom oath—to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth—is applicable only to witnesses... because the American justice system is built on a foundation of not telling the whole entire truth.

Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.

We do not sit like a kadi under a tree dispensing justice according to considerations of individual expediency

The justice system is confused in trying to understand it, but frankly, if it paid attention to the really blatant cases and did a good job with that, we would be light years ahead of where we are now.

Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union.

Marriage has always been a state and local issue.

Work for legal reform takes place only within the framework of the social form created by the last revolution.

When you file an amicus brief, and you represent a state, the court reads your brief. It is a powerful position to make the legal assault from.

There was never a time you could get the majority of people in Alabama or Mississippi, or even southern Delaware, to vote to end segregation. What changed things was the rule of law, the courts. Brown v. Board of Education was ushered in by a movement, but it was a legal decision.

O.J. Simpson never lied to me.

When officers' actions violate their duty, justice should be served in accordance with our legal system.

Judges cannot - nor should they try to - align our legal system with the Church's moral teaching whenever the two diverge. They should, however, conform their own behavior to the Church's standard.

I would never impose my own personal convictions upon the law.

I had been very impressed with the courts we visited to see my father. The judges wearing wigs, the lawyers, the legal arguments - it was all exciting stuff for a kid.

I think with 'Silk' there's something there for everyone: it's a legal drama, but it's human as well - you get to dip into the lives of the barristers and clerks.

Judges should decide legal disputes. Judges should not make law.