This new title examines the diversity of perspectives and approaches in family law scholarship and drawing upon this work, provides an analysis of recent trends in family law from a socio-legal and feminist perspective. The book brings together the research findings of empirical studies on the behaviour of families and professionals involved with the law, and synthesizes the main theoretical approaches to understanding intimate connections, family laws and family law reform. It draws upon these works to explain and to question the nature of the 'nuclear' family which lies at the heart of...

The third edition of this work on family law provides not only an explication of legal principle, but also explores - primarily from a feminist perspective - some of the assumptions about gender, sexual orientation, class, and culture that underlie the law. The book examines the ideology of the family and, in particular, the role of the law in contributing to and reproducing that ideology. Structured around the themes of welfare, equality, and family privacy, Family Law, Gender and the State offers the benefits of a textbook while also giving students a wide-ranging set of materials for...

This volume represents key scholarship on the issue of parental rights and responsibilities, selected from a dense forest of literature. The collection offers an overview of the subject and covers topics such as: underlying rationales of who or what is a parent; legal concepts of a parenta and their linkage; the legal parent - accommodating complexity; the nature and scope of parental rights; shared parental responsibility; and parental rights and the state."

The interaction between individual rights, which are often seen in secular terms, and religion is becoming an important and complex topic not only for academic study but for practical policy. This volume collects a range of writings from journals, edited collections and individual books which deal with different aspects of the interaction within the context of family life, and which appear with their original pagination. These studies have been selected because they throw a sharp light on central elements of the role of religion in determining the structure of the rights of family members in...

This volume gathers influential and cutting-edge scholarship on the international and domestic rights attaching to married couples and other adult relationships. Addressing examples from the European Court of Human Rights, UK, USA, Canada, Australia and South Africa, it traces contentious debates about the content of marital rights and responsibilities and whether law should reach beyond marriage, and if so how. Twenty-four essays and a substantial introduction highlight the complexity and contradictions as marital law grapples with gender equality, the aftermath of recognizing gay and...