Marital, personal, and family relationships are an area where policy makers and officials often have to make controversial ethical and legal decisions. Should we allow consenting adults to engage in sexual or marital relationships with whomever they choose? What limits should the government place on these relationships? Whose interests are paramount in family relationships, those of the child or those of the parents and grandparents? What limits should the government place on procreation, contraception, and abortion?
Completing this unit should take you approximately 2 hours.
Over the past several decades the Supreme Court has worked to expand the definition of legal marriage in the United States. The following section provides resources that describe some of the cornerstone cases in this effort.
Read this overview of family law in the United States. It provides defintions for several aspects of this legal discipline whose ethical ramifications we explore in more detail below.
Read Justice Warren's opinion of the Loving v. Virginia case about granting marriages based on racial classifications. This is the historic supreme court case that protected interracial marriage in the United States. It would later be cited as a precedent for the protection of same sex marriage.
Read this article which discusses Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark civil rights case where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantee the fundamental right to marry to same-sex couples. The author examines how public attitudes have changed on this sensitive issue over the years.
Parent/child relationships are governed mostly by state policy and agencies. For example, rules about appropriate care, education, and well-being of children are decided at the state level, though there are some common standards across the states.
Watch this video which discusses the ethical standards physicians should follow when reporting instances of child abuse. Notice the speaker recommends giving careful consideration to the rights of parents, the rights of minors to live a healthy and productive life, societal rights and values, and the legal rights to confidentiality.
Read this article which examines the ethics of requiring some level of vaccines for school children, even if their parents object. The author is attempting to weigh individual liberty with the common good of public health.
Abortion and contraception have been the subject of Supreme Court cases dating back nearly 100 years. In Griswold v. Connecticut the court established a "right to privacy" that they said provided a legal basis to contraception being allowed. Later cases would come to enshrine this right, along with abortion rights, into federal law.
Read this summary of the U.S. Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the legal right to contraception and would later be cited as part of the right to privacy that the court argued ensured the right to legal abortions in the United States.