Property Rules Meet Feminist Needs: Respecting Autonomy by Valuing Connection

In this Article, Professor Baker analyzes how and why the law protects both horizontal (marital) and vertical (parent/child) relationships. In doing so, she suggests that, although the reasons to protect relationships are comparable in both the horizontal and vertical contexts, the law is much more willing to interfere with vertical relationships, at least when the parents are not married to each other. From the standpoint of women's needs, this inconsistent treatment of relationships is precisely backwards. Women benefit little from the law's deference to horizontal relationships, but they could benefit substantially if the law was more deferential to a single parent's relationship to her child. To help alleviate the harms caused by the law's willingness to interfere with vertical relationships, Baker suggests using paradigms from traditional property law as a means of reorienting the law's treatment of relationship. Although feminist scholarship often resists the sometimes arcane and rigid rules of property, Baker argues that property law's acceptance of hierarchy, reliance on investment, and respect for boundary will better protect women's interests than does contemporary family law doctrine.