Throwback Thursday: Gretchen Craft Rubin & Jamie G. Heller's "Restatement of Love (Tentative Draft)"

The "law and norms" movement has seen increasing interest in recent years, with excellent papers on extra-legal social norms surrounding phenomena like "joke stealing" among comedians, roller derby nicknames, and the ownership of tattoo designs, among other things. And I hope to contribute to the literature a study of dispute resolution procedures among pre-war American hobos. So, I thought I would recognize the excellent and very amusing law review article that got me thinking about law and social norms, Gretchen Craft Rubin & Jamie G. Heller's "Restatement of Love (Tentative Draft)," 104 Yale L.J. 707 (1994). The article purports to provide a description of the social norms governing romantic relationships, in the form of a restatement, with tongue planted firmly in cheek. But on the serious side, it got me thinking about the relationship between laws and social norms, and how the analytic tools provided by the law can help illuminate other areas of social action. Unsurprisingly, the Restatement of Love has been cited several times in other law review articles (14, according to Westlaw), but I'm proud to claim (partial) responsibility for its only citation in a judicial opinion, Pierce Cnty. v. State, 159 Wash. 2d 16, 64, 148 P.3d 1002, 1028 (2006) (Sanders, J., dissenting).