child custody cases and Heller

[Nelson Lund]

Perhaps there aren't any that should be relevant to the judicial 
determination. But I suppose one could imagine that growing up in a 
household that's the result of multiple out-of-wedlock births could 
encourage a child to follow its mother's example. Whether that would be 
a positive externality or a negative externality, I leave others to 
debate. My very narrow point was simply that there could be 
externalities from the living evidence of this particular kind of 
promiscuity that would not arise from promiscuity of which the child was 
unaware. I'm not making any claims beyond that narrow point.

Nelson


Volokh, Eugene wrote:

>     I appreciate Nelson's point that having sex with four different 
> men (something that likely at least half of all American women have 
> had) might be different from having children with four different men.  
> But I wonder what the externalities with respect to this particular 
> child would be.  Why is being raised in a household with three older 
> half-sisters, all daughters of different men, different for the young 
> child from being raised in a hypothetical household with three older 
> half-sisters who were children of the same man?  I suppose one could 
> speculate that there might be more tension in the household as a 
> result of visitation from the other girls' fathers (though I saw no 
> reference to that).  But one could equally speculate that he'd feel 
> less left out if everyone is a half-sibling rather than when there 
> were three full siblings plus him.  What externalities am I missing?
>  
>     Eugene
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu
>     [mailto:conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Nelson Lund
>     Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 3:24 PM
>     To: conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
>     Subject: Re: child custody cases and Heller
>
>     I'm not sure whether this is an important distinction or not, but
>     I thought the original question had to do with a woman who had
>     children by four different men. For child custody purposes, that
>     might be distinguishable from having sex with four different men
>     because there would be more externalities with respect to the
>     children in one case than in the other.
>
>     Nelson Lund
>     George Mason
>
>> 
>>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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