This study examines the legal discrimination suffered in the United States by children born out of wedlock. The authors analyze the Supreme Court's equal protection birth status decisions from 1968 to 1992 and, in a case-by-case analysis, trace the development of the Court's rulings, examine the pattern of equal protection tests utilized, and evaluate the consistency of the Court's position. In addition, the work examines the related discrimination suffered by the families of non-marital children, especially single parents and alternative family units, and concludes that it is impossible to gain full equality for children born out of wedlock unless equality is also gained for their family unit. Toward these ends, the authors suggest a feminist jurisprudence as a methodology for addressing the underlying issue at the crux of birth status distinctions.

This book argues that insufficient recognition of new families is a legal problem that needs fixing in light of recent evolutions in family patterns and normative conceptions of 'family'. People increasingly invest in relationships falling outside the model of the marital family, such as non-conjugal unions of friends or relatives, polyamorous relationships and various religious-based families. Despite this, Western jurisdictions retain the marital family as the relevant basis for allocating family law benefits, rights and obligations. Part I of the book illustrates recent evolutions in family patterns and norms, and explores how law can accommodate multiple family grids without legal recognition involving normalisation. Part II focuses on courtroom litigation on the basis that courts nowadays are central avenues of social change. It takes non-conjugal families as a case study and provides an analysis of the most compelling argumentative strategies that non-conjugal families can mobilise to pursue legal recognition in Canada and the United States, and within the systems of the European Convention of Human Rights and the European Union. Through its comparative, interdisciplinary and critical legal method, the book provides scholars, activists and policymakers with conceptual tools to tackle the current invisibility of new families. Further, by advancing legal arguments to enhance the protection of non-conjugal families in courtrooms, the book illuminates the different approaches jurisdictions are likely to take and the hindrances thereof to overcome and debunk stereotypes associated with proper familyhood.

China after Mao has undergone vast transformations, including massive rural-to-urban migration, rising divorce rates, and the steady expansion of the country's legal system. Today, divorce may appear a private concern, when in fact it is a profoundly political matter-especially in a national context where marriage was and has continued to be a key vehicle for nation-state building. Marriage Unbound focuses on the politics of divorce cases in contemporary China, following a group of women seeking judicial remedies for conjugal grievances and disputes. Drawing on extensive archival and ethnographic data, paired with unprecedented access to rural Chinese courtrooms, Ke Li presents not only a stirring portrayal of how these women navigate divorce litigation, but also a uniquely in-depth account of the modern Chinese legal system. With sensitive and fluid prose, Li reveals the struggles between the powerful and the powerless at the front lines of dispute management; the complex interplay between culture and the state; and insidious statecraft that far too often sacrifices women's rights and interests. Ultimately, this book shows how women's legal mobilization and rights contention can forge new ground for our understanding of law, politics, and inequality in an authoritarian regime.

China after Mao has undergone vast transformations, including massive rural-to-urban migration, rising divorce rates, and the steady expansion of the country's legal system. Today, divorce may appear a private concern, when in fact it is a profoundly political matter-especially in a national context where marriage was and has continued to be a key vehicle for nation-state building. Marriage Unbound focuses on the politics of divorce cases in contemporary China, following a group of women seeking judicial remedies for conjugal grievances and disputes. Drawing on extensive archival and ethnographic data, paired with unprecedented access to rural Chinese courtrooms, Ke Li presents not only a stirring portrayal of how these women navigate divorce litigation, but also a uniquely in-depth account of the modern Chinese legal system. With sensitive and fluid prose, Li reveals the struggles between the powerful and the powerless at the front lines of dispute management; the complex interplay between culture and the state; and insidious statecraft that far too often sacrifices women's rights and interests. Ultimately, this book shows how women's legal mobilization and rights contention can forge new ground for our understanding of law, politics, and inequality in an authoritarian regime.

For approaching two decades, family courts have been accused of making life changing decisions about children and who they live with made in secret, away from the scrutiny of the public gaze. Recognising the force of these accusations, senior family courts judges have, over that time, implemented a raft of rule changes, pilot projects and judicial guidance aimed at making the family justice more accountable and transparent. But has any progress been made? Are there still suspicions that family judges make irrevocable, unaccountable decisions in private hearings? And if so, are those suspicions justified and what can be done to dispel them? In this important and timely new book, Clifford Bellamy, a recently retired family judge who has been at the sharp end of family justice during all these changes, attempts to answer those questions and more. He has spoken to leading journalists, judges and academic researchers to find out what the obstacles to open reporting are - be they legal, economic or cultural - and interweaves their insights with informed analysis on how the laws regulating family court reporting operate. Along the way he provides a comprehensive review of the raft of initiatives he has seen come and go, summarises the position now and uses this experience to suggest how this fundamental aspect of our justice system could adapt in the face of this criticism. Every professional working in the family justice system - lawyers, social workers, court staff and judges - as well as those who job it is to report on legal affairs, should read this informative, nuanced exposition of what open justice means and why it matters so much to those whose lives are upended by the family justice system.

Why are women still at a disadvantage in Chinese divorce courts? Despite the increase of gender consciousness in Chinese society and a trove of legislation to protect women, why are Chinese women still disadvantaged in divorce courts? Xin He argues that institutional constraints to which judges are subject, a factor largely ignored by existing literature, play a crucial role. Twisting the divorce law practices are the bureaucratic incentives of courts and their political concerns for social stability. Because of these concerns, judges often choose the most efficient, and safest, way to handle issues in divorce cases. In so doing, they allow the forces of inequality in social, economic, cultural, and political areas to infiltrate their decisions. Divorce requests are delayed; domestic violence is trivialized; and women's child custody is sacrificed. The institutional failure to enforce the laws has become a major obstacle to gender justice. Divorce in China is the only study of Chinese divorce cases based on fieldwork and interviews conducted inside Chinese courtrooms over the course of a decade. With an unusual vantage point, Xin He offers a rare and unfiltered view of the operation of Chinese courts in the authoritarian regime. Through a socio-legal perspective highlighting the richness, sophistication, and cutting-edge nature of the research, Divorce in China is as much an account of Chinese courts in action as a social ethnography of China in the midst of momentous social change.

It is widely claimed that we are facing a 'demographic time bomb' with an increasing older population and a decreasing working population. On the whole there are three conflicting attitudes in society towards older people. Firstly, there are those who see older people as a 'problem': how can we afford their care? Will the NHS be crippled by the expense of caring for older people? Secondly, there are those who are concerned by the maltreatment of older people: how can we protect older people from abuse? How can we be sure they are receiving adequate health care? Finally, there are those who argue that society is squandering the resources that older people can offer and seek ways to empower them to play a more active role in community life. These conflicting views of how to approach the 'problem' of older people are also reflected in the mixed response of the law. This book presents possible solutions to these problems and highlights the need not only to protect older people from abuse and poverty in order to ensure that they have a dignified old age, but also the need to empower older people to live their final years in an active and fulfilling way.

The UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty detailed many children's poor experiences in detention, highlighting the urgent need for reform. Applying a child-centred model of detention that fulfils the rights of the child under the five themes of provision, protection, participation, preparation and partnership, this original book illustrates how reform can happen. Drawing on Ireland's experience of transforming law, policy and practice, and combining theory with real-life experiences, this compelling book demonstrates how children's rights can be implemented in detention. This important case study of reform presents a powerful argument for a progressive, rights-based approach to child detention. Worthy of international application, the book shares practical insights into how theory can be translated into practice.

This book presents an empirical examination of consent-seeking among Pashtun Muslims in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), to determine whether cultural norms and beliefs have largely come to diverge from the principles of consent in Islamic law and jurisprudence. Is culture part of the 'inevitable decay' to which Max Muller says every religion is exposed? Or - if rephrased in terms of the research encapsulated within this book - are cultural beliefs and practises the inevitable decay to which Islam has been exposed in Muslim societies? Drawing on interviews with Muslims in Pakistan and Australia, the research broadly broaches questions around the rights of women in Islam and contributes to a wider understanding of Muslim social, cultural, and religious practices in both Muslim majority nations and diaspora communities. The author disentangles cultural practices from both religious and universal legal principles, demonstrating how consent seeking in Pashtun culture generally does not reflect the spirit or the intent of consent as described in Hanafi law and jurisprudence. This research will be of interest to students and scholars across sociology, anthropology, socio-legal studies, and law, with a focus on Islamically-justified law reform in Muslim nation states.

This bookresolves a key problem that all evaluators need to attend to:, i.e., what constructs ought to be measured?, all the while giving them practical ways of doing this. It also presents data showing family court judges like the model, and it does this fairly briefly but in a way that is nicely embedded in the research literature."

This book breaks new theoretical ground by constructing a framework of 'relational vulnerability' through which it analyses the disadvantaged position of those who undertake unpaid caregiving, or 'dependency-work', in the context of the private family. Expanding on existing socio-legal scholarship on vulnerability and resilience, it charts how the state seeks to conceal the embodied and temporal reality of vulnerability and dependency within the private family, while promoting an artificial concept of autonomous personhood that exposes dependency-workers work to a range of harms. The book argues that the legal framework governing the married and unmarried family reinforces principles of individualism and rationality, while labelling dependency-work as a private, gendered, and sentimental endeavor, lacking value beyond the family. It also considers how the state can respond to relational vulnerability and foster resilience. It seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of resilience, theorising its normative goals and applying these to different hypothetical state responses.

This book critically analyses how the law has facilitated, or hindered, the recognition of same-sex family formations in Ireland, and how it might be reformed to provide greater parental rights for same-sex couples. The book covers four key issues facing same-sex couples: - Civil partnerships: the first chapter analyses the pragmatic and symbolic effects of registered civil partnership, and compares Ireland's decision to discontinue this alternative form of relationship recognition with the UK's recent move towards extending civil partnership laws. - Cohabitation: chapter 2 assesses whether the cohabitation model introduced in Ireland might be effective in other jurisdictions where there are calls for cohabitation law reform. - Marriage equality: chapter 3 explores the initial move to prohibit marriage equality in Ireland, and critiques the subsequent route towards the 2015 referendum, with comparison to the more recent move towards marriage equality in Australia. - Parental rights: the fourth chapter focuses on the legal position of same-sex couples who are parenting children born via Assisted Reproductive Techniques (ARTs), such as donor-assisted human reproduction and surrogacy. In particular, it explores shortcomings in the existing legislation and proposes a viable method of regulating these ARTs via future legislation, partly based on models in operation elsewhere. The book concludes by assessing the impact, or lack thereof, of the European Convention on Human Rights on same-sex relationship recognition, same-sex parenting, and marriage equality, in order to determine whether it could promote increased legal recognition for same-sex families in Ireland.

No federal law in the United States requires that egg or sperm donors or recipients exchange any information with the offspring that result from the donation. Donors typically enter into contracts with fertility clinics or sperm banks which promise them anonymity. The parents may know the donor's hair color, height, IQ, college, and profession; they may even have heard the donor's voice. But they don't know the donor's name, medical history, or other information that might play a key role in a child's development. And, until recently, donor-conceived offspring typically didn't know that one of their biological parents was a donor. But the secrecy surrounding the use of donor eggs and sperm is changing. And as it does, increasing numbers of parents and donor-conceived offspring are searching for others who share the same biological heritage. When donors, recipients, and "donor kids" find each other, they create new forms of families that exist outside of the law. The New Kinship details how families are made and how bonds are created between families in the brave new world of reproductive technology. Naomi Cahn, a nationally-recognized expert on reproductive technology and the law, shows how these new kinship bonds dramatically exemplify the ongoing cultural change in how we think about family. The issues Cahn explores in this book will resonate with anyone-and everyone-who has struggled with questions of how to define themselves in connection with their own biological, legal, or social families.

How do multireligious and multiethnic societies construct accommodative arrangements that can both facilitate cultural diversity and ensure women's rights? Based on a study of legal adjudication of marriage and divorce across formal and informal arenas in contemporary Mumbai, this book argues that the shared adjudication model in which the state splits its adjudicative authority with religious groups and other societal sources in the regulation of marriage can potentially balance cultural rights and gender equality. In this model the civic and religious sources of legal authority construct, transmit, and communicate heterogeneous notions of the conjugal family, gender relations, and religious membership within the interstices of state and society. In so doing, they fracture the homogenized religious identities grounded in hierarchical gender relations within the conjugal family. The shared adjudication model facilitates diversity as it allows the construction of hybrid religious identities, creates fissures in ossified group boundaries, and provides institutional spaces for ongoing intersocietal dialogue. This pluralized legal sphere, governed by ideologically diverse legal actors, can thus increase gender equality and individual and collective legal mobilization by women effects institutional change.

This book considers whether coercive control (particularly non-physical forms of family violence) should be prohibited by the criminal law. Based on the premise that traditional understandings of family violence are severely limited, it considers whether the core of family violence is power-based controlling or coercive behavior: attempts by men to psychologically dominate their partners. Such behavior can cause significant psychological, physical and economic harms to victims and is increasingly recognized as a form of human rights abuse. The book considers the new offences that have been introduced in England and Wales (controlling or coercive behavior), Ireland (controlling behavior) and Scotland (domestic abuse). It invites consideration of three key questions: Do conventional criminal laws adequately regulate non-physical abuse? Is the criminal law an appropriate mechanism for responding to the coercive control of family members? And if a new and distinctive offence is warranted, what is the optimal form of that offence? This ground-breaking work is essential reading for researchers and practitioners interested in coercive control and the proper role of the criminal law as a mechanism for regulating family violence.

Recent changes to the legal aid system and the promotion of mediation have put the future of family law work in doubt. The legal process is widely perceived as being in itself harmful to the resolution of family disputes and wastefully expensive. Yet such attitudes are based on little evidence. Family Lawyers considers these issues on the basis of research into the way family lawyers deal with their divorcing clients, and how this fits into their general legal practice. It examines how solicitors negotiate both with their clients and with the "other side", how long cases take and what causes delays, and whether clients get value for their money. At a time of great change within the delivery of legal services, this book provides an insight into the real world of family solicitors, and will allow a more balanced assessment of the role and of the place of the law in this aspect of social life.

This book continues the themes addressed by its two predecessors in this mini-series by examining the role of the principle of the welfare interests of the child in the law of the U.S. and Canada. It provides a record of the key milestones in its development in each country and conducts a comparative analysis of the contemporary law relating to children in both. In doing so, it focuses also on the Indigenous communities - the AN/AI and the First Nations - of the U.S. and Canada respectively. By identifying and analysing the functions of the principle in the public (care, protection and control etc), in the private (matrimonial, adoption etc), and in the hybrid (adoption from care, surrogacy etc) sectors of family law, it builds a picture of the law relating to children in the two countries and reveals significant jurisdictional differences. By examining the legislation and related caselaw it assesses the differential effect of the same legal framework on the welfare of Indigenous and other children. In addition to a digest of cases and legislation that identifies and tracks the role of this legal principle, lawyers, academics and other researchers will find a wealth of information on how it has evolved to reflect corresponding changes in social mores. For those interested in politics and social policy, there is much illuminating evidence on how the law has balanced this principle relative to others within both civil and criminal contexts.

The removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families gained national attention in Australia following the Bringing Them Home Report in 1997. However, the voices of Indigenous parents were largely missing from the Report. The Inquiry attributed their lack of testimony to the impact of trauma and the silencing impact of parents' overwhelming sense of guilt and despair; a submission by Link-Up NSW commented on Aboriginal mothers being "unwilling and unable to speak about the immense pain, grief and anguish that losing their children had caused them." This book explores what happened to Aboriginal mothers who had children removed and why they have overwhelmingly remained silent about their experiences. Identifying the structural barriers to Aboriginal mothering in the Stolen Generations era, the author examines how contemporary laws, policies and practices increased the likelihood of Aboriginal child removal and argues that negative perceptions of Aboriginal mothering underpinned removal processes, with tragic consequences. This book makes an important contribution to understanding the history of the Stolen Generations and highlights the importance of designing inclusive truth-telling processes that enable a diversity of perspectives to be shared.

Should grandparents have rights in relation to their grandchildren? If so, what should the content of those rights be, both procedurally and substantively? And what is the appropriate role of the law in providing solutions to problems arising in the context of grandparents' rights? This book considers these questions from both a public and a private law perspective, and analyses the human rights implications for parties such as children, parents and grandparents. It also explores the topic of grandparents' rights in the context of the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as in other jurisdictions, such as Iran, France and Nepal. The book argues that grandparents' rights have so far received insufficient acknowledgement and, consequently, that relationships between grandparents and grandchildren have received insufficient protection. However, it is crucial that the protection of grandparents' rights is balanced with the rights of parents and the rights and welfare of children; the book considers how best to achieve this, for example in disputes on child arrangements (i.e. residence and contact), child protection matters and in adoption cases. The book is of particular interest to all academics seeking a clear framework for the protection of grandparents' rights in private and public law proceedings.

After years of research and reflection on the work of the interdisciplinary family justice system Mervyn Murch offers a fresh approach to supporting the thousands of children every year who experience a complex form of bereavement following parental separation and divorce. This stressful family change, combined with the loss of support due to austerity cuts, can damage their education, well-being, mental health and long-term life chances. Murch argues for early preventative intervention which responds to children's worries when they first present them, without waiting until things have gone badly wrong. His radical proposals for reform involve a much more coordinated and joined up approach by schools, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. This book encourages practitioners and academics to look outside their professional silos and to see the world through the eyes of children in crisis to enable services to offer direct support in a manner and at a time when it is most needed.

Drawing from a wide range of material and socio-legal methods, this collection brings together original essays - written by internationally renowned scholars - investigating emerging patterns in the shape and form of the legal regulation of domestic relations. Taking as a focus the theme of 'caring and sharing, ' the collection includes chapters which reflect on: the changing contours of what we think of as 'domestic relations' * the impact that legal recognition carries in making visible some relationships rather than others * the potential for normative values carried within patterns of legal recognition and regulation * intersections between private law and public policy * the role of private law in the allocation of responsibility and privilege * the differential impact of seemingly progressive policies on economically vulnerable or socially marginal groupings * tensions between family law models and models carried within other fields of private law * and, unusually, architectures in law and the built environment designed to facilitate broader accounts of domestic relationships. This thoughtful, provocative, and wide-ranging collection will be a must for anyone, whatever their discipline background, interested in the insights and potential offered by a fresh engagement with the complexity of domestic relations and the law. It will also appeal to the general reader as it addresses topics of human interest, such as family, intimacy, and caring. (Series: Onati International Series in Law and Society

Thirty years after the adoption of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, this book provides diverse perspectives from countries and regions across the globe on its implementation, critique and potential for reform. The book revolves around key issues including progress in implementing the CRC worldwide; how to include children in legal proceedings; how to uphold children's various civil rights; how to best assist children at risk; and discussions surrounding children's identity rights in a changing familial order. Discussion of the CRC is both compelling and polarizing and the book portrays the enthusiasm around these topics through contrasting and comparative opinions on a range of topics. The work provides varying perspectives from many different countries and regions, offering a wealth of insight on topics that will be of significant interest to scholars and practitioners working in the areas of children's rights and justice.

This book explores the series of issues that emerge at the intersection of disability, care and family law. Disability studies is an area of increasing academic interest. In addition to a subject in its own right, there has been growing concern to ensure that mainstream subjects diversify and include marginalised voices, including those of disabled people. Family law in modern times is often based on an "able-bodied autonomous norm" but can fit less well with the complexities of living with disability. In response, this book addresses a range of important and highly topical issues: whether care proceedings are used too often in cases where parents have disabilities; how the law should respond to children who care for disabled parents - and the care of older family members with disabilities. It also considers the challenges posed by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, particularly around the different institutional and state responsibilities captured in the Convention, and around decision-making for both disabled adults and children. This interdisciplinary collection - with contributors from law, criminology, sociology and social policy as well as from policy and activist backgrounds - will appeal to academic family lawyers and disability scholars as well as students interested in issues around family law, disability and care.

The growth of data-collecting goods and services, such as ehealth and mhealth apps, smart watches, mobile fitness and dieting apps, electronic skin and ingestible tech, combined with recent technological developments such as increased capacity of data storage, artificial intelligence and smart algorithms, has spawned a big data revolution that has reshaped how we understand and approach health data. Recently the COVID-19 pandemic has foregrounded a variety of data privacy issues. The collection, storage, sharing and analysis of health- related data raises major legal and ethical questions relating to privacy, data protection, profiling, discrimination, surveillance, personal autonomy and dignity. This book examines health privacy questions in light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the general data privacy legal framework of the European Union (EU). The GDPR is a complex and evolving body of law that aims to deal with several technological and societal health data privacy problems, while safeguarding public health interests and addressing its internal gaps and uncertainties. The book answers a diverse range of questions including: What role can the GDPR play in regulating health surveillance and big (health) data analytics? Can it catch up with internet-age developments? Are the solutions to the challenges posed by big health data to be found in the law? Does the GDPR provide adequate tools and mechanisms to ensure public health objectives and the effective protection of privacy? How does the GDPR deal with data that concern children's health and academic research? By analysing a number of diverse questions concerning big health data under the GDPR from various perspectives, this book will appeal to those interested in privacy, data protection, big data, health sciences, information technology, the GDPR, EU and human rights law.