Full Description
This volume brings together new essays in law and philosophy on a broad range of topics in children's and family law. It is the first volume to bring together essays by legal scholars and philosophers for an integrated, critical analysis of key issues in this area, marking the 'coming of age' of a comparatively new field of family law.
Debates in children's and family law are at once theoretical and empirical in nature. Not only does children's and family law have significant consequences for individuals' intimate lives, the field's impact on lived experience highlights the socially constructed nature of law. Approaching this area of law often involves exploring a legal concept familiar from daily life, such as the very notion of 'marriage' or 'family', and examining it within its social, economic, and historical context. The normative basis for law regulating intimate personal and family life extends beyond any narrow legal philosophy or social context to its broader foundations in theories of morality or justice.
The chapters included bring together a representative and broad range of pieces that engage with long-standing and contemporary debates. A wide range of perspectives is represented on topics such as same-sex marriage, polygamy and polyamory, alimony, unmarried cohabitation, gestational surrogacy and assisted reproductive technologies, child support, parental rights and responsibilities, children's rights, family immigration, religious freedom, and the rights of paid caregivers. There is also philosophical discussion of concepts such as care, intimacy, and the nature of family and family law itself.
Contents
Elizabeth Brake and Lucinda Ferguson: Introduction: The Importance of Theory to Children's and Family Law
Part One: Definitions
1: John Eekelaar: Family Law and Legal Theory
2: David Archard: Family and Family Law: Concepts and Norms
Part Two: Relationships
3: Elizabeth Brake: Paid and Unpaid Care: Marriage, Equality, and Domestic Workers
4: Ron Den Otter: A Perfectionist Argument for Legal Recognition of Polyamorous Relationships
5: Robert Leckey: Cohabitants, Choice, and the Public Interest
6: Charlotte Bendall and Rosie Harding: Heteronormativity in Dissolution Proceedings: Exploring the Impact of Recourse to Legal Advice in Same Sex Relationship Breakdown
7: Matt Lister: The Rights of Families and Children at the Border
Part Three: Rights and Obligations
8: Diane Jeske: Moral and Legal Obligations to Support 'Family'
9: Colin Macleod: Are Children's Rights Important?
10: Scott Altman: Parental Control Rights
11: Lucinda Ferguson: An Argument for Treating Children as a 'Special Case'
Part Four: Regulation and Intervention
12: Brian Bix: Private Ordering in Family Law
13: James G Dwyer: Regulating Child Rearing in a Culturally Diverse Society
14: Mary Lyndon Shanley: Reconceptualizing Family Relationships in an Age of Reproductive Technologies
