Kaiponanea Matsumura

Kaiponanea Matsumura, Professor of Law, William M. Rains Fellow

Professor of Law
William M. Rains Fellow

Education

JD, Order of the Coif, UCLA School of Law
BS, magna cum laude, Northwestern University

Background

Professor Kaiponanea Matsumura is an expert on the legal regulation of families. His scholarship, which has been published in the Iowa Law Review, Washington University Law Review, UCLA Law Review, William & Mary Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, and Fordham Law Review, among others, consists of two interrelated strands: one explores the promises and limits of private agreements between intimates, and the other focuses on the tailoring of status-based family law rules to nonmarital relationships. He is a co-author of the sixth edition of the popular casebook, Contemporary Family Law.

Matsumura is a co-founder and co-organizer of the Roundtable on Nonmarriage and the Law, which brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars interested in studying nonmarital relationships. He has also co-chaired the Family Law Scholars and Teachers Conference, and is the co-section editor of the Family Law section of JOTWELL. He is currently serving as co-lead of the CNM Families Initiative for the American Psychological Association Division 44 Committee on Consensual Non-Monogamy.

A passionate classroom teacher and mentor, Matsumura was twice voted Professor of the Year by the graduating class of Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

Matsumura received his B.S. magna cum laude from Northwestern University and his J.D. from UCLA School of Law, where he graduated Order of the Coif and was Chief Articles Editor of the UCLA Law Review. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable A. Wallace Tashima on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, California, before working as a litigator at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in its San Francisco office. He was then a Thomas C. Grey Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School, and a tenured Associate Professor of Law at Arizona State University.

Selected Publications

Unifying Status and Contract, 56 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 1571 (2023) (selected for peer review in JOTWELL)
The Marital Habitus, 99 WASH. U.L. REV. 2033 (2022)
Beyond Polygamy, 107 IOWA L. REV. 1903 (2022)
Breaking Down Status, 98 WASH. U.L. REV. 671 (2021) (selected twice for peer review in JOTWELL)
Beyond Property: The Other Legal Consequences of Informal Relationships, 51 ARIZ. ST. L.J. 1325 (2019)
The Integrity of Marriage, 61 WM. & MARY L. REV. 453 (2019)
Consent to Intimate Regulation, 96 N.C. L. REV. 1013 (2018)
Choosing Marriage, 50 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 1999 (2017) (reprinted in 32 MINN. FAM. L.J. 23 (LexisNexis, Jan./Feb. 2019))
A Right Not to Marry, 84 FORDHAM L. REV. 1509 (2016)
Binding Future Selves, 75 LA. L. REV. 71 (2014)
Public Policing of Intimate Agreements, 25 YALE J.L. & FEMINISM 159 (2013)

Shorter Works

Nothing, Nowhere, Not Right Now, JOTWELL, May 5, 2023 (reviewing JAY CASPIAN KANG, THE LONELIEST AMERICANS (2021))
Nonmarital Relationships: Introduction, 61 FAM. CT. REV. 69 (2023) (with Albertina Antognini, Susan Frelich Appleton, Naomi Cahn, and Amanda Miller)
Book Review, Cynthia Grant Bowman, Living Apart Together: Legal Protections for a New Form of Family, 56 LAW & SOC'Y REV. 320 (2022)
Judging in the Shadow of Gender, JOTWELL, Apr. 25, 2022 (reviewing Jeffrey J. Rachlinski & Andrew J. Wistrich, Benevolent Sexism in Judges, 58 SAN DIEGO L. REV. 101 (2021))
Restating the Law of Nonmarital Contracts, JOTWELL, Apr. 27, 2021 (reviewing Albertina Antognini, Nonmarital Contracts, 73 STAN. L. REV. 67 (2021))
Expanding Nonmarital Relationships, 58 FAM. CT. REV. 968 (2020) (with Albertina Antognini & Naomi R. Cahn)
Reproductive Exceptionalisms, JOTWELL, July 3, 2020 (reviewing DOV FOX, BIRTH RIGHTS AND WRONGS: HOW MEDICINE AND TECHNOLOGY ARE REMAKING REPRODUCTION AND THE LAW (2019))
Perspectives on Nonmarital Relationships, 58 FAM. CT. REV. 142 (2020) (with Albertina Antognini, Naomi R. Cahn, and Emily J. Stolzenberg)
Transcending Time and Place: Judge A. Wallace Tashima and the Liberation of LGBT Identity, 66 UCLA L. REV. 1910 (2019) (tribute essay)
Purchasing Race; Or, The Pursuit of White Sperm and Eggs, JOTWELL, Apr. 11, 2019 (reviewing Camille Gear Rich, Contracting Our Way to Inequality: Race, Reproductive Freedom, and the Quest for the Perfect Child, 104 MINN. L. REV. 2475 (2019))
Family Law's Democratic Foundations, JOTWELL, May 25, 2018 (reviewing Sean Hannon Williams, Divorce All the Way Down: Local Voice and Family Law's Democratic Deficit, 98 B.U. L. REV. 579 (2018))
Book Review, Henry T. Greely, The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction, 57 JURIMETRICS 433 (2017) (invited)
Reproducing Queer Kinship, JOTWELL, Sept. 26, 2017 (reviewing Michael Boucai, Is Assisted Procreation an LGBT Right?, 2016 WIS. L. REV. 1065 (2016))
Shades of Discrimination Brought to Light, JOTWELL, April 26, 2016 (reviewing Nancy Leong, Negative Identity, 88 S. CAL. L. REV. 1357 (2015))