Do Friends Need the Law? Examining Why Friendship Matters and What Governments Can Do for This Important, Though Often Overlooked, Relationship

This Note will analyze whether the law should do more for the institution of friendship. Throughout Part II of this Note, I will provide an overview of different works of classical philosophy to help familiarize the reader and to understand their relevance to a present-day analysis of friendship.  Part II.A will analyze the problem of defining what a friend is. Part II.B will consider the personal nature of friendship and its significance for the greater community.  Part II.C will describe recent trends toward extending legal recognition to different kinds of relationships that the law had previously overlooked.  Part III.A will demonstrate the weaknesses of some of the existing proposals for attaching legal significance to friendship. In the last section of this Note, I will narrow my focus to one political community—the Commonwealth of Massachusetts—and, by drawing upon themes contained in the landmark decision of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, I will argue that the Commonwealth would be a logical place for moving forward with this friendship agenda by making limited, public-policy changes that would create protections and incentives that would make it easier for friends to help one another during times of difficulty. . .