Category Archives: Family Law
Kaiponanea Matsumura, ‘The Integrity of Marriage’
ABSTRACT While the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges resolved a dispute about access to legal marriage, it also exposed a rift between the Justices about what rights, obligations, and social meanings marriage should entail. The majority opinion described marriage as a ‘unified whole’ comprised of ‘essential attributes’, both legal and extralegal. The dissents, […]
Van Praagh and Campbell, ‘Women and (Their) Children: Wrongs, Rights and Relationships’
ABSTRACT As of the turn of the twenty-first century, a pregnant woman appears to be excluded from the Canadian private law of civil wrongs when it comes to any wrongfully inflicted harm on her own foetus. This article revisits and examines the images of pregnancy and maternity represented in the judgments in Dobson v Dobson, […]
Hanson and Peleg, ‘Waiting for Children’s Rights Theory’
ABSTRACT In this article we argue that what is missing in children’s rights studies is not so much the presence of theories, but rather reflections and discussions about the normative relevance, analytical qualities and explanatory powers of the mobilized theories. We consider theorizations in children’s rights, first, on the normative level, where there is a […]
Gilbar and Ram-Tiktin, ‘It Takes a Village to Raise a Child: Solidarity in the Courts – Judicial Justification for Posthumous Use of Sperm by Bereaved Parents’
ABSTRACT The practice of posthumous use of sperm raises social, ethical, and legal questions. We examine the issue of who should be allowed to use the sperm – only the deceased’s spouse or the deceased’s parents as well – from the perspective of solidarity and relational autonomy. Following a theoretical discussion of various accounts of […]
Andrea Mulligan, ‘A vindicatory approach to tortious liability for mistakes in assisted human reproduction’
ABSTRACT Mistakes in assisted human reproduction procedures such as IVF, egg, sperm and embryo donation are surprisingly common, but tortious liability for such mistakes has not been addressed in the courts of England and Wales, or Ireland. This paper presents an argument in favour of a vindicatory approach to tortious claims arising from mistakes, where […]
Albertina Antognini, ‘Nonmarital Coverture’
ABSTRACT How and why do courts distribute property between unmarried couples when they separate? This Article offers an answer: they follow the rules laid out by coverture. Coverture is a regime, long considered defunct, that defined the appropriate roles husbands and wives occupied in marriage. Among other consequences, it prevented the wife from accessing property […]
‘“Mother” defined in common law’
“Our coverage of transgender issues tends to focus on the human rights aspects, as considered in MB v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2018] Case C‑451/16, here, or the approach of the Church of England to gender transition, as in our post Bishops’ guidance on use of Affirmation of Baptismal Faith in the […]
Courtney Joslin, ‘Autonomy in the Family’
ABSTRACT Scholars largely support the concept of choice in family form. But while scholars largely agree on this abstract goal, they do not agree on which legal rules best further that end. Take the issue of economic rights for nonmarital partners. The conventional doctrine treats nonmarital partners as legal strangers. No rights arise out of […]
Michael Higdon, ‘While They Waited: Pre-Obergefell Lives and the Law of Nonmarriage’
ABSTRACT In the wake of Obergefell, the United States now has a large class of married, same-sex couples whose relationships began at a time when marriage was unavailable to them. The law must therefore wrestle with the question whether any portion of a pre-Obergefell relationship should count toward the length of the ensuing marriage – […]
Brenda Hale, ‘What is a 21st Century Family?’
INTRODUCTION “Way back in the mists of time when I first studied Family Law, we thought we knew what a family was. It was a group of people linked together by consanguinity or affinity or a mixture of both. Only those gave rise to legal consequences – property, succession, obligations of cohabitation and support. Even […]