This volume brings together essays on a range of issues in family law in the United States and England. It provides an unparalleled opportunity to examine how family law has reacted to a period of unprecedented change in family life. The legal analyses are set within critical accounts of wider social and family policy and against a fully explored demographic background.

Cross Currents: Family Law Policy in the United States and England

Katz, Sanford N.

MacLean, Mavis

Eekelaar, John

Administrative Law

Oxford University Press

Developments in the law, scholarship, and research since 2006 form a substantial part of the second edition of this book which sets the governance of personal relationships in the context of the exercise of social and personal power. Its central argument is that this power is counterbalanced by the presence of individual rights. This entails an analysis of the nature and deployment of rights, including human rights, and children's rights. Against that background, the book examines the values of friendship, truth, respect, and responsibility, and how the values of individualism co-exist with those of the community in an open society. It argues that central to these values is respecting the role of intimacy in personal relationships. In doing this, a variety of issues are examined, including the legal regulation of married and unmarried relationships, same-sex marriage, state supervision over the inception and exercise of parenthood (including surrogacy and assisted reproductive technology), the role of fault and responsibility in divorce law, children's rights and welfare, religion and family rights, the rights of separated partners regarding property and of separated parents regarding their children, and how states should respond to cultural diversity.

Family Law and Personal Life

Family Law

How should our most intimate personal relationships be governed in a liberal society? Should the state encourage a particular model of family life, or support individuals in their pursuit of personal happiness? To what extent do people have the right to shape the lives of their offspring? This book examines the questions at the heart of family law, rethinking the ideas that shape our understanding of the family as a social unit, its purpose, and the obligations and rights that belong to family members.  The book explores how the governance of personal relationships has depended on the exercise of power, from the traditional assumptions of patriarchy, where the male head of the family enjoyed full control over his dependents and descendents, to the ideology of welfarism, where state institutions protect the interests of the vulnerable at the expense of their close relations. Emerging from these conflicting ideologies comes today's rights-based culture, where traditional expectations for behavior within a family sit within a new emphasis on the ability of minorities and traditional dependents to determine the shape of their own lives.  Against this background of shifting power relations, the book explores the inter-relationship between the legal regulation of people's personal lives and the values of friendship, truth, respect and responsibility. In doing this, a variety of controversial issues are examined in the light of those values: including the legal regulation of gay and unmarried heterosexual relationships; freedom of procreation; state supervision over the exercise of parenthood; the role of fault in divorce law; the way parenthood is allocated; the rights and responsibilities of parents to control their children; the place of religion in the family; the rights of separated partners regarding property and of separated parents regarding their children.   Throughout, the book offers a new picture of the intimacy at the center of personal relationships and argues that only by understanding this intimacy, and its role in human happiness, can we arrive at a true framework for respecting, and governing, the personal lives of other people.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

How should our most intimate personal relationships be governed in a liberal society? Should the state encourage a particular model of family life, or support individuals in their pursuit of personal happiness? To what extent do people have the right to shape the lives of their offspring? This book examines the questions at the heart of family law, rethinking the ideas that shape our understanding of the family as a social unit, its purpose, and the obligations and rights that belong to family members. The book explores how the governance of personal relationships has depended on the exercise of power, from the traditional assumptions of patriarchy, where the male head of the family enjoyed full control over his dependents and descendents, to the ideology of welfarism, where state institutions protect the interests of the vulnerable at the expense of their close relations. Emerging from these conflicting ideologies comes today's rights-based culture, where traditional expectations for behavior within a family sit within a new emphasis on the ability of minorities and traditional dependents to determine the shape of their own lives. Against this background of shifting power relations, the book explores the interrelationship between the legal regulation of people's personal lives and the values of friendship, truth, respect and responsibility. In doing this, a variety of controversial issues are examined in the light of those values: including the legal regulation of gay and unmarried heterosexual relationships; freedom of procreation; state supervision over the exercise of parenthood; the role of fault in divorce law; the way parenthood is allocated; the rights and responsibilities of parents to control their children; the place of religion in the family; the rights of separated partners regarding property and of separated parents regarding their children. Throughout, the book offers a new picture of the intimacy at t

Legal Theory & Systems

Family Law and Social Policy

Fred B Rothman & Co

The Reform of Child Care Law: A Practical Guide to the Children Act 1989

Children Act 1989 introduced the most radical changes to child care law for a generation. Eekelaar and Dingwall provide a concise, practical guide to the legislation for all professionals practising in this area.

Dingwall, Robert

Routledge

This book is based on the most extensive investigation of child abuse and neglect ever carried out in Great Britain. The author followed the course of numerous cases from the first detection of ill-treatment to the resolution (or otherwise) of the problem.

The Protection of Children: State Intervention and Family Life

Murray, Topsy

Blackwell Pub.

Lawyers and Mediators: The Brave New World of Services for Separating Families

Do lawyers make matters worse, or do they provide information, advice and support which can help to prevent disputes arising or manage them when they do? Do mediators enable parties to communicate and reach agreements tailor made to their needs? Or working outside the legal framework, do they find it difficult to protect weaker parties and access expert advice? What happens when lawyers become mediators? This book will describe the structure of service provision and the day to day work of lawyers, mediators, and lawyer mediators, drawing on empirical work carried out 2013-15 immediately after the recent changes to the management of divorce and separation within the family justice system. The reduction in legal aided help in 2013 and the failure of mediation to fill the gap in 2014-15 have given rise to a difficult debate. This book aims to provide an account of some of the practical effects of these policies through a description of daily work of practitioners in the sector. It raises the question of whether we need to choose between traditional legal services and the new processes of private ordering or whether intermediate positions might be possible. [Subject: Family Law, Socio-Legal Studies]

Hart Publishing

After the Act: Access to Family Justice after LASPO

After the Act describes the aftermath of the recent removal under LASPO of public funding from legal services in family matters other than in defined cases such as child protection and domestic abuse. Through analysis of the policy context, interviews with key players, observation of services provided by lawyers, students, lay support workers and the advice sector, the authors outline the work being done and the skills being used in a range of settings. The book raises questions not only about access to family justice, but about the role of law in family matters in an increasingly post-legal society. Fragmentation of the market in the new services offering information, initial advice, online or alternative dispute resolution - but rarely ongoing casework - raises questions about where costs fall and how quality can be assured. Many of these services are forms of private ordering, where outcomes are hard to assess. Perhaps neither the state nor the individual can afford full legal services where the best interests of any child involved are of paramount importance, and lawyers negotiate to make best use of the resources available. Is it therefore time to consider using lawyers differently, with lay support, to solve problems before they become disputes?

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Eekelaar, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Eekelaar, John

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Eekelaar, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Cross Currents: Family Law Policy in the United States and England

Family Law and Personal Life

Family Law and Personal Life

Family Law and Personal Life

Family Law and Social Policy

The Reform of Child Care Law: A Practical Guide to the Children Act 1989

The Protection of Children: State Intervention and Family Life

The Reform of Child Care Law: A Practical Guide to the Children Act 1989

Lawyers and Mediators: The Brave New World of Services for Separating Families

After the Act: Access to Family Justice after LASPO