Scott Altman

Scott Altman is an expert in jurisprudence, property and family law. In his role as professor at USC Gould School of Law, he teaches Family Law, Property, Jurisprudence and Community Property. He joined the USC Gould faculty in 1988, served as associate dean from 1995 to 2006 and as vice dean from 2007 to 2016.

Altman’s recent research focuses on child custody and divorce issues. He has published articles on judicial candor, commodification, coercion, blackmail, threats to litigate child custody, and equality norms applied to child custody. His publications include “A Theory of Child Support” (International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, 2003); “Divorcing Threats and Offers” (Law & Philosophy, 1996); and “Beyond Candor” (Michigan Law Review, 1990).

Altman earned his BA’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he served as developments chair for the Harvard Law Review. He was a clerk to Judge Dorothy Nelson of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from 1987 to 1988, and he joined the USC Law faculty as assistant professor in 1988. He was named the Virginia S. and Fred H. Bice Professor of Law in 1997.

See Altman’s working papers on the Social Science Research Network http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=17336

Articles and Book Chapters

• "Taking Precautions when Shaping a Child's Future," 87 UMKC Law Review 245 (2019). - (SSRN) - (Hein)
• "Reinterpreting the Right to an Open Future: From Autonomy to Authenticity," 37 Law and Philosophy 415 (2018). - (SSRN) - (www)
• "Parental Control Rights," in Philosophical Foundations of Children’s and Family Law, Lucinda Fergusun & Elizabeth Brake, eds, (Oxford University Press, 2018).
    - (SSRN)
• "The Pursuit of Intimacy and Parental Rights," in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law (Andrei Marmor, ed., Routledge, 2012). - (PDF)
• "A Theory of Child Support," 17 Int’l J.L. Pol’y & Fam. 173 (2003). - (Hein)
• "Grateful Victims" (draft)
• "Should Child Custody Rules be Fair?," 35 U. Louisville Journal Family Law 325 (1996). - (Hein)
• "Divorcing Threats and Offers," 15 Law & Phil. 209 (1997).
• "Lurking in the Shadow," 68 Southern California Law Review 493 (1995). - (Hein)
• "A Patchwork Theory of Blackmail," 141 U. Pennsylvania Law Review 1639 (1993). - (Hein)
• "(Com)Modifying Experience," 65 Southern California Law Review 293 (1991). - (Hein)
• "Beyond Candor," 89 Michigan Law Review 296 (1990). - (Hein)
• "Case Comment, Posadas v. Tourism Co.," 100 Harvard Law Review 172 (1987). - (Hein)
• "Note, The Inalienable Rights of Surrogate Mothers," 99 Harvard Law Review 1936 (1986). - (Hein)

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Background Briefing
May 22, 2019
Re: Edward McCaffery

Edward McCaffery was interviewed about President Trump's tax troubles. "I think we can see, after the devastating blow of the Mueller non-report report, lots of us, progressives were waiting for a smoking gun," McCaffery explained. "They didn’t get the smoking gun and they got depressed, but a day like today shows that maybe there’s wisdom behind Pelosi’s strategy, but we might be seeing death by a thousand pellet guns."

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Thomas D. Lyon
March, 2019

"Order of Encoding Predicts Young Children's Emergent Sequencing Abilities and Biases," Experimental Methods in Legal Scholarship Conference, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

Daniel Klerman
March, 2019

“Legal Origin from Outer Space,” Keynote Speaker, QuantLaw Conference, University of Arizona Law School, Tucson, AZ.

Nomi Stolzenberg
March, 2019

“Invisible Hands and Dirty Hands: Accommodating Complicity in Early Modern Economic Thought,” USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, Martens Economic History Forum, Natural Law and Economic Thought, San Marino, CA.