Erez Aloni

Erez Aloni’s primary research interests lie in the legal regulation of adult relationships and complex family structures. His work stages the family as an institution affected by a broad range of laws, norms, and economic structures; he is particularly interested in the distributional results of legal regulation of the household and in the intersection of private law with family law.

Aloni’s projects have focused on the challenges of regulating informal (unmarried) relationships and on proposing models and a menu of options for their legal recognition. He has also contributed to scholarship that exposes the potential economic detriments of the legal recognition of relationships—especially for people with disabilities, households with lower incomes, people who rely on government assistance, and couples who depart from traditional gender roles. Another line of his work has uncovered how regulation of marriage can contribute to wealth inequality. Finally, he is recognized for his scholarship on the critique of incrementalism on the path to same-sex marriage, and the politics of same-sex marriage movements.

Aloni’s work has appeared in leading publications across the world, and he is a frequent speaker at diverse forums. He has presented at Harvard Law School, Chicago Law School, Columbia Law School, and the UCLA School of Law, among other forums. In 2017 he gave the keynote address at a symposium on the “sharing economy” organized by the University of Hawaiʻi Law Review, and presented at the annual conference of the University of Pennsylvania's Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism. In October 2019 he presented at “Beyond 748: Same-sex Marriage and Family,” a conference held at Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He has also published in outlets such as the LA Times, the Guardian, and the Globe and Mail.

At Allard Law, Aloni teaches contracts, family law, and law and sexuality. In 2021 he won the George Curtis Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence, and in 2022 he was awarded a Killam Faculty Research Fellowship. Between August 2013 and June 2017, he served as an assistant professor at Whittier Law School. Previously, Aloni was a fellow at the Center for Reproductive Rights and Columbia Law School. He received his LL.M. and S.J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he also taught a course on law and sexuality. He has been a visiting professor at the Radzyner Law School at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and the Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

• Contracts
• Family Law
• Law and sexuality

Books

House Rules, Changing Families, Evolving Norms, and the Role of the Law, UBC Press, 2022 (Erez Aloni & Régine Tremblay Eds.)

Articles

Rich Dad, Gay Dad: The Wealth Traps of Gay Parenthood, 101 North Carolina L. Rev. _ (2023)

Compulsory Conjugality, 53 Connecticut Law Review (2021)

First Comes Marriage, Then Comes Baby, Then Comes What Exactly?, 15 National Taiwan University L. Rev 49 (2020)

Introduction to Special Issue: Shifting Normativities, 32 Canadian J. of Family Law 229 (2019) (with Régine Tremblay)

The Marital Wealth Gap, 93 Wash. L. Rev. 1 (2018)
    Reviewed in Jotwell, The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), June 4, 2018, available at: https://trustest.jotwell.com/is-marriage-a-proxy-for-wealth/

Capturing Excess in the On-Demand Economy, 39 U. Haw. L. Rev. 315 (2017) (invited symposium contribution)

Pluralizing the “Sharing” Economy, 91 Wash. L. Rev. 1397 (2016)

The Puzzle of Family Law Pluralism, 39 Harv. J. L & Gender 101 (2016)

Deprivative Recognition, 61 UCLA L. Rev. 1276 (2014)
    Reviewed in Jotwell, The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), July 25, 2014, available at: http://family.jotwell.com/recognition-without-consent/

Registering Relationships, 87 Tul. L. Rev. 573 (2013)
    Reprinted in 26 Minnesota Fam. L. J. 121 (2013)

Cloning and the LGBTI Family – Cautious Optimism, 35 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 1 (2011)

Incrementalism, Civil Unions and the Possibility of Predicting Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage, 18 Duke J. Gender L. & Pol’y 105 (2010)

Book Chapters

Queer Inequality: The COVID-19 Spotlight, in Routledge Companion to Gender and COVID-19 (Linda McClain & Aziza Ahmed Eds., 2023)

'WAR' and Other Reasons People Move in Together: Analyzing Cohabitating Relationship Progressions in BC, in House Rules (Aloni & Tremblay Eds., 2022)

A Trinity of Inequality: Wealth, Marriage, and Masculinity, in Citizenship on the Edge—Sex/ Gender/ Race (Nancy Hirschmann & Deborah Thomas eds., UPenn Press, 2022)

Legal and Policy Battles over Same-Sex Relationships in The Oxford Encyclopedia of LGBT Politics and Policy (Don Haider-Markel, Ed., University of Oxford Press., 2019) 

 Incrementalism in Same-sex Marriage Litigation, in Same-Sex Relationships, Law And Social Change (Frances Hamilton & Guido Noto La Diega, Eds., Routledge Glasshouse, 2019)

Pluralism and Regulatory Responses, in Cambridge Handbook of the Law of the Sharing Economy 143-155 (N. Davidson, M. Finck, J. Infranca, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Commentary on Obergefell v. Hodges, in Feminist Judgements: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court (K. Stanchi, L. Berger, B. Crawford, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2016)

Jotwell Reviews

Calling Off Classification, review of Transitions in Sex Reclassification Law by Ido Katri (Nov. 2022)

Judging Gender, review of Exploring Identity, by Marie-Amélie George & Respecting and Protecting Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Children in Family Courts, by Claire Houston, (Sept. 2021)

Free’ Market Too Costly for US Families, review of The Free-Market Family, by Maxine Eichner (Sept. 2020)

Publications listed on the Law Library Faculty Research Publications Database