Law and Economics in Jane Austen traces principles of law and economics in sex, marriage and romance as set out in the novels of Jane Austen, unveiling how those meticulous principles still control today's modern romance. You will learn fascinating new insights into law and economics by seeing these disciplines through Jane Austen's eyes. Readers who find themselves wishing Jane Austen had written just one more novel, or that she had somewhere offered more examination and analysis of her characters' predicaments, or who desire to go deeper with her investigation of love, money and culture will praise this book. Discovering the legal and economic principles that drove her stories, Jane Austen's Law & Economics reveals that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Love and money are constants in social connection. While culture may have changed over 300 years, principles of law and economics remain staples of modern romance - which is why Jane Austen continues to fascinate the modern mind. So sit back, enjoy, and be pleasantly taught and surprised at what you will learn from the methodical mind of Jane.

This book explores the regulation of intimate relationships today. Using historical and contemporary legal-political sources, the author investigates the changing meanings and effects of conjugality.

Each year more than 2 million Americans divorced, and most of them use a lawyer. In closed-door conversations between lawyers and their clients strategy is planned, tactics are devised, and the emotional climate of the divorce is established. Do lawyers contribute to the pain and emotional difficulty of divorce by escalating demands and encouraging unreasonable behavior? Do they take advantage of clients at a time of emotional difficulty? Can and should clients trust their lawyers to look out for their welfare and advance their long-term interests?
Austin Sarat and William L.F. Felstiner's new book, based on a pioneering and intensive study of actual conferences between divorce lawyers and their clients, provides an unprecedented behind-the- scenes description of the lawyer-client relationship, and calls into question much of the conventional wisdom about what divorce lawyers actually do. Divorce Lawyers and Their Clients suggests that most divorces are marked less by a pattern of aggressive advocacy than by one of inaction and drift. It uncovers reasons why lawyers find divorce practice frustrating and difficult and why clients frequently feel dissatisfied with their lawyers. This new work provides a unique perspective on the dynamics of professionalism. It charts the complex and shifting ways lawyers and clients "negotiate" their relationship as they work out the strategy and tactics of divorce.
Sarat and Felstiner show how both lawyers and clients are able to draw on resources of power to set the agenda of their interaction, while neither one is fully in charge. Rather, power shifts between the two parties; where it is achieved, power is found in the ability to have one's understandings of the social and legal worlds of divorce accepted. Power then works through the creation of shared meanings. Divorce Lawyers and Their Clients examines the effort to create such shared meanings about the nature of marriage and why marriages fail, the operation of the legal process, and the best way to bring divorces to closure. It will be fascinating reading for anyone who is going through, or has gone through a divorce, as well as for lawyers, judges, and scholars of law and society.

A critical reader of the history of marriage understands that it is an institution that has always been in flux. It is also a decidedly complicated one, existing simultaneously in the realms of religion, law, and emotion. And yet recent years have seen dramatic and heavily waged battles over the proposition of including same sex couples in marriage. Just what is at stake in these battles? License to Wed examines the meanings of marriage for couples in the two first states to extend that right to same sex couples: California and Massachusetts. The two states provide a compelling contrast: while in California the rights that go with marriage-inheritance, custody, and so forth-were already granted to couples under the state's domestic partnership law, those in Massachusetts did not have this same set of rights. At the same time, Massachusetts has offered civil marriage consistently since 2004; Californians, on the other hand, have experienced a much more turbulent legal path. And yet, same-sex couples in both states seek to marry for a variety of interacting, overlapping, and evolving reasons that do not vary significantly by location. The evidence shows us that for many of these individuals, access to civil marriage in particular-not domestic partnership alone, no matter how broad-and not a commitment ceremony alone, no matter how emotional-is a home of such personal, civic, political, and instrumental resonance that it is ultimately difficult to disentangle the many meanings of marriage. This book attempts to do so, and in the process reveals just what is at stake for these couples, how access to a legal institution fundamentally alters their consciousness, and what the impact of legal inclusion is for those traditionally excluded.

"Baby safe haven" laws, which allow a parent to relinquish a newborn baby legally and anonymously at a specified institutional location-such as a hospital or fire station-were established in every state between 1999 and 2009. Promoted during a time of heated public debate over policies on abortion, sex education, teen pregnancy, adoption, welfare, immigrant reproduction, and child abuse, safe haven laws were passed by the majority of states with little contest. These laws were thought to offer a solution to the consequences of unwanted pregnancies: mothers would no longer be burdened with children they could not care for, and newborn babies would no longer be abandoned in dumpsters. Yet while these laws are well meaning, they ignore the real problem: some women lack key social and economic supports that mothers need to raise children. Safe haven laws do little to help disadvantaged women. Instead, advocates of safe haven laws target teenagers, women of color, and poor women with safe haven information and see relinquishing custody of their newborns as an act of maternal love. Disadvantaged women are preemptively judged as "bad" mothers whose babies would be better off without them. Laury Oaks argues that the labeling of certain kinds of women as potential "bad" mothers who should consider anonymously giving up their newborns for adoption into a "loving" home should best be understood as an issue of reproductive justice. Safe haven discourses promote narrow images of who deserves to be a mother and reflect restrictive views on how we should treat women experiencing unwanted pregnancy.

This book examines the strength of laws addressing four types of violence against women--rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment--in 196 countries from 2007 to 2010. It analyzes why these laws exist in some places and not others, and why they are stronger or weaker in places where they do exist. The authors have compiled original data that allow them to test various hypotheses related to whether international law drives the enactment of domestic legal protections. They also examine the ways in which these legal protections are related to economic, political, and social institutions, and how transnational society affects the presence and strength of these laws. The original data produced for this book make a major contribution to comparisons and analyses of gender violence and law worldwide.

As states across the country battle internally over same-sex marriage in the courts, in legislatures, and at the ballot box, activists and scholars grapple with its implications for the status of gays and lesbians and for the institution of marriage itself. Yet, the struggle over same-sex marriage is only the most recent political and public debate over marriage in the United States. What is at stake for those who want to restrict marriage and for those who seek to extend it? Why has the issue become such a national debate? These questions can be answered only by viewing marriage as a political institution as well as a religious and cultural one. In its political dimension, marriage circumscribes both the meaning and the concrete terms of citizenship. Marriage represents communal duty, moral education, and social and civic status. Yet, at the same time, it represents individual choice, contract, liberty, and independence from the state. According to Priscilla Yamin, these opposing but interrelated sets of characteristics generate a tension between a politics of obligations on the one hand and a politics of rights on the other. To analyze this interplay, American Marriage examines the status of ex-slaves at the close of the Civil War, immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, civil rights and women's rights in the 1960s, and welfare recipients and gays and lesbians in the contemporary period. Yamin argues that at moments when extant political and social hierarchies become unstable, political actors turn to marriage either to stave off or to promote political and social changes. Some marriages are pushed as obligatory and necessary for the good of society, while others are contested or presented as dangerous and harmful. Thus political struggles over race, gender, economic inequality, and sexuality have been articulated at key moments through the language of marital obligations and rights. Seen this way, marriage is not outside the political realm but interlocked with it in mutual evolution.

This book explores non-consensual adoption - an area of law which has sparked considerable debate amongst academics, practitioners and the judiciary nationally and internationally. The emphasis of this book is on the circumstances in which non-consensual adoption may be regarded as a proportionate measure and when less severe forms of intervention, such as long-term foster care or kinship care, may also meet children's needs while providing protection to children's rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. The book builds on existing literature on adoption law but takes the discussion in new directions, placing an emphasis on the need to closely scrutinise children's and parents' rights at all stages of the adoption process, not simply when parents appeal against the making of an adoption order. A unique feature of this book is its emphasis on routinely incorporating key provisions from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into analysis when determining whether an adoption order is a proportionate measure.

"Enjoyable and provocative. . . . This collection nicely reveals and sorts through a host of exciting and complex questions about marriage."
--Martha McCluskey, co-editor of "Feminism, Media, and the Law"

"One of the curious features of the early twenty-first century has been the noisy presence of 'marriage' in the public culture. The result has been a public dialogue that often marries bad social science and homophobia, with understandable public anxieties about how children grow up in our world. We deserve better and "Marriage Proposals" provides it. Anita Bernstein's collection draws on the best work by some of the smartest and most thoughtful participants in the recent marriage wars. The authors ask the reader to think hard about how marriage can be justified today. And the result is a book that confronts some of the hardest and deepest questions that face us as a society."--Hendrik Hartog, author of "Man and Wife in America: A History"

"Bringing together insights from law, anthropology, and political theory, the rigorous essays in "Marriage Proposals" strip away easy assumptions about marriage. Readers will emerge from the volume inspired to bring the national conversation on these issues to a deeper and more interesting level."--Suzanne B. Goldberg, author of "Strangers to the Law: Gay People on Trial"

""Marriage Proposals" brings new insights to the marriage debates by discussing the provocative idea of getting the government out of the business of marriage recognition altogether. Anyone seeking to think clearly about the nature and function of marriage in our society should read this collection."--Brian Bix, Frederick W. Thomas Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Minnesota Law School

The essays in Marriage Proposals envision a variety of scenarios in which adults would continue to join themselves together seeking permanent companionship and sustenance, linking sexual intimacy to a long commitment, usually caring for each other, and building new families. What would disappear are the legal consequences associated with marriage. No joint income tax return; no immigration privileges like the "fiancA(c)e visa" or the right to bring in a husband or wife; no special statuses for prison visits or hospital decisions; no prerogative to remain silent in court by claiming "confidential marital communications"; no pension entitlements; no marital benefits and detriments regarding criminal or civil liability.

The anthology makes a unique contribution amid the two marriage furors of the day: same-sex marriage and the Bush Administration's "marriage movement" (that marrying is good and more marriages would be better for society). Abolishing the legal category of marriage is the only policy suggestion in current American discourse that speaks to both causes. Activists on both sides of the same-sex marriage fight, along with marriage movement partisans, all seek improvement through law reform. Marriage Proposals gives them a viable reform--abolition of marriage as a legal status--for fighting battles in the courtroom and the streets.

Contributors include Anita Bernstein, Peggy Cooper Davis, Martha Albertson Fineman, Linda C. McClain, Marshall Miller, Lawrence Rosen, Mary Lyndon Shanley, and Dorian Solot.

For more than 2,500 years, the Western tradition has embraced monogamous marriage as an essential institution for the flourishing of men and women, parents and children, society and the state. At the same time, polygamy has been considered a serious crime that harms wives and children, correlates with sundry other crimes and abuses, and threatens good citizenship and political stability. The West has thus long punished all manner of plural marriages and denounced the polygamous teachings of selected Jews, Muslims, Anabaptists, Mormons, and others. John Witte, Jr carefully documents the Western case for monogamy over polygamy from antiquity until today. He analyzes the historical claims that polygamy is biblical, natural, and useful alongside modern claims that anti-polygamy laws violate personal and religious freedom. While giving the pro and con arguments a full hearing, Witte concludes that the Western historical case against polygamy remains compelling and urges Western nations to hold the line on monogamy.

This is the authoritative textbook on family mediation. As well as mediators, this work will be indispensable for practitioners and scholars across a wide range of fields, including social work and law. It draws on a wide cross-disciplinary theoretical literature and on the author's extensive and continuing practice experience. It encompasses developments in policy, research and practice in the UK and beyond. Roberts presents mediation as an aid to joint decision-making in the context of a range of family disputes, notably those involving children. Mediation is seen as a process of intervention distinct from legal, social work and therapeutic practice, drawing on a distinctive body of knowledge across disciplinary fields including anthropology, psychology and negotiation theory. Incorporating empirical evidence, the book emphasises the value of mediation in mitigating the harmful effects of family breakdown and conflict. First published in 1988 as a pioneering work, this fourth edition has been fully updated to incorporate legal and policy developments in the UK and in Europe, new sociological and philosophical perspectives on respect, justice and conflict, and international research and practice innovations.

Collating the important case law from across public children law, this title provides a comprehensive and in-depth compendium of cases entirely devoted to this field of family law. The Compendium uses easily navigable headings and aims to present the most relevant case(s) on each issue. Case references include neutral citation, reporting citation, location of the relevant principle or guidance within the case, identity of the judge(s) and quotation of the relevant section from the case. The Compendium covers: -Section 20/section 76 Accommodation -Emergencies and Investigations -Threshold Criteria -Interim Care and Supervision Orders -Case Management -International Issues -Evidence -Experts -The Welfare Stage -Care and Supervision Orders -Placement and Adoption Orders -Special Guardianship Orders -Restricting Liberty -Costs -Appeals This book will help the reader to: * Identify the leading authorities on issues across the field of public children law. * Locate principles and guidance within those authorities, including: o identifying where principles are found in those cases; and o providing quotation of those principles. This is an essential text for all public children law practitioners, including barristers, solicitors, members of the judiciary, magistrates, court clerks, legal executives and social work professionals. It would also be a desirable text for academics concerned with public children law.

Well-selected and authoritative, Macmillan Core Statutes provide the key materials needed by students in a format that is clear, compact and very easy to use. They are ideal for use in exams. Undergraduate students taking second or third year elective courses in family law as part of their LLB. Postgraduate students and researchers in family law

Not the Marrying Kind is a new and comprehensive exploration of the contemporary same-sex marriage debates in several jurisdictions including Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. It departs from much of the existing scholarship on same-sex marriage, which argues either for or against marriage for same-sex couples. Instead, this book begins from a critical analysis of the institution of marriage itself (as well as separate forms of relationship recognition, such as civil partnership, PaCS, domestic partnership) and asks whether and how feminist critiques of marriage might be applied specifically to same-sex marriage. In doing this, the author combines the theories of second wave feminism with insights from contemporary queer theory.

In Understanding and Managing Parental Alienation: A Guide to Assessment and Intervention, Janet Haines, Mandy Matthewson and Marcus Turnbull offer a comprehensive analysis of contemporary understanding of parental alienation. Grounded in recent scientific advances, this is the first book of its kind providing resources on how to identify parental alienation and a guide to evidence-based intervention. Parental alienation is a process in which one parent manipulates their child to negatively perceive and reject the other parent. Recognising this phenomenon and knowing when to intervene is often the biggest challenge faced by practitioners and this book provides a guide to this process. Divided into six parts, it examines what parental alienation is and how it is caused, how it affects each family member as a mental health concern and form of violence, and how to assess, identify and intervene successfully from a legal and therapy standpoint. Taking on a gender-neutral approach, the book is filled with contemporary case examples from male and female perspectives, cutting-edge research, practitioner-client dialogues, and practitioners' reflections to show the difficult realities of parental alienation. Practical and accessible, this is an essential resource for mental health professionals working with families experiencing parental alienation, as well as postgraduate students of clinical psychology, counselling, family therapy, social work, and child and family psychology. This book will also be of immense interest to family lawyers and mediators due to its multidisciplinary approach.

In the last few years European Family Law has undergone considerable changes. Although in the past law reform was slow, since 1969 the impetus for reform has gathered momentum. It is no exaggeration to say that the changes that have occurred in Europe in the last six or seven years have radically altered the very concept of the family in Europe. As a distinguished scholar and former editor of the Family Law volume of the International Encyclopaedia of Com parative Law, Professor Max Rheinstein, has put it: 'These transformations are not fully completed anywhere. They have gone farthest in the countries of highest industrialization and in those of socialist rule. But they have set in wherever industrialization has obtained a foothold. The degree of 'modernization' offamily law may indeed be used as an index of a society's degree of Westernization. 'l Yet, such is the force of traditional patterns of thought that, although we are aware of distinct changes in various legal systems, the underlying and implied assumption is that family law can still move within the traditional framework. This is not surprising for, until comparatively recently at least family law was not thought of as a suitable subject of unification. It was claimed that there is a peculiar and distinct element which derives from the mores and innermost beliefs of each people, from a sort of family Volksgeist that renders impossible the approximation or unification of family law."

Beginning with Etan Patz's disappearance in Manhattan in 1979, a spate of high-profile cases of missing and murdered children stoked anxieties about the threats of child kidnapping and exploitation. Publicized through an emerging twenty-four-hour news cycle, these cases supplied evidence of what some commentators dubbed "a national epidemic" of child abductions committed by "strangers." In this book, Paul M. Renfro narrates how the bereaved parents of missing and slain children turned their grief into a mass movement and, alongside journalists and policymakers from both major political parties, propelled a moral panic. Leveraging larger cultural fears concerning familial and national decline, these child safety crusaders warned Americans of a supposedly widespread and worsening child kidnapping threat, erroneously claiming that as many as fifty thousand American children fell victim to stranger abductions annually. The actual figure was (and remains) between one hundred and three hundred, and kidnappings perpetrated by family members and acquaintances occur far more frequently. Yet such exaggerated statistics-and the emotionally resonant images and narratives deployed behind them-led to the creation of new legal and cultural instruments designed to keep children safe and to punish the "strangers" who ostensibly wished them harm. Ranging from extensive child fingerprinting drives to the milk carton campaign, from the AMBER Alerts that periodically rattle Americans' smart phones to the nation's sprawling system of sex offender registration, these instruments have widened the reach of the carceral state and intensified surveillance practices focused on children. Stranger Danger reveals the transformative power of this moral panic on American politics and culture, showing how ideas and images of endangered childhood helped build a more punitive American state.

Catholic Greg Bourke's profoundly moving memoir about growing up gay and overcoming discrimination in the battle for same-sex marriage in the US. In this compelling and deeply affecting memoir, Greg Bourke recounts growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, and living as a gay Catholic. The book describes Bourke's early struggles for acceptance as an out gay man living in the South during the 1980s and '90s, his unplanned transformation into an outspoken gay rights activist after being dismissed as a troop leader from the Boy Scouts of America in 2012, and his historic role as one of the named plaintiffs in the landmark United States Supreme Court decision Obergefell vs. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015. After being ousted by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), former Scoutmaster Bourke became a leader in the movement to amend antigay BSA membership policies. The Archdiocese of Louisville, because of its vigorous opposition to marriage equality, blocked Bourke's return to leadership despite his impeccable long-term record as a distinguished boy scout leader. But while making their home in Louisville, Bourke and his husband, Michael De Leon, have been active members at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church for more than three decades, and their family includes two adopted children who attended Lourdes school and were brought up in the faith. Over many years and challenges, this couple has managed to navigate the choppy waters of being openly gay while integrating into the fabric of their parish life community. Bourke is unapologetically Catholic, and his faith provides the framework for this inspiring story of how the Bourke De Leon family struggled to overcome antigay discrimination by both the BSA and the Catholic Church and fought to legalize same-sex marriage across the country. Gay, Catholic, and American is an illuminating account that anyone, no matter their ideological orientation, can read for insight. It will appeal to those interested in civil rights, Catholic social justice, and LGBTQ inclusion.

How have Muslim marriages legally ended around the turn of the 21st century? Who has the power to initiate and resist shari'a derived divorce? When are husbands and wives made to bear the costs of their marital breakdown? What does divorce law indicate about the development of gender regimes in the Middle East and North Africa? This book opens with a description of the historical development of Islamic divorce in the MENA. Subsequent chapters follow a Syrian male judge, a Moroccan female legal advice worker and a Libyan female judge as they deal with divorce cases in which husbands, wives, their relatives and lawyers debate gender roles in contemporary Muslim marriages. MENA 'state feminism' has increasingly equalized men's and women's access to divorce and encouraged discussions about how spouses should treat each other in marriage. The real life outcomes of these reforms have often been surprising. Moreover, as the last chapter explores, jihadi proto-states (such as Islamic State) have violently rejected state feminist divorce law reform. This accessible book will appeal to students, researchers and a general readership interested in Islamic law; Middle Eastern studies; gender and sexuality; and, legal and social anthropology.

Families and family law have encountered significant challenges in the face of rapid changes in social norms, demographics and political expectations. The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Family Law highlights the key questions and themes that have faced family lawyers across the world. Each chapter is written by internationally renowned academic experts and focuses on which of these themes are most significant to their jurisdictions. In taking this jurisdictional approach, the collection will explore how different countries have tackled these issues. As a result, the collection is aimed at students, practitioners and academics across a variety of disciplines interested in the key issues faced by family law around the world and how they have been addressed.

High-Conflict Parenting Post-Separation: The Making and Breaking of Family Ties describes an innovative approach for families where children are caught up in their parents' acrimonious relationship - before, during and after formal legal proceedings have been initiated and concluded. This first book in a brand-new series by researchers and clinicians at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families (AFNCCF) outlines a model of therapeutic work which involves children, their parents and the wider family and social network. The aim is to protect children from conflict between their parents and thus enable them to have healthy relationships across both 'sides' of their family network. High-Conflict Parenting Post-Separation is written for professionals who work with high-conflict families - be that psychologists, psychiatrists, child and adult psychotherapists, family therapists, social workers, children's guardians and legal professionals including solicitors and mediators, as well as students and trainees in all these different disciplines. The book should also be of considerable interest for parents who struggle with post-separation issues that involve their children.

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

Children often fare the worst when communities face social and environmental changes. The quality of food, water, affection and education that children receive can have major impacts on their subsequent lives and their potential to become engaged and productive citizens. At the same time, children often lack both a private and public voice, and are powerless against government and private decision-making. In taking a child rights-based approach to sustainable development, this volume defines and identifies children as the subjects of development, and explores how their rights can be respected, protected and promoted while also ensuring the economic, social and environmental sustainability of our planet.

The Hague Child Abduction Convention has proved to be one of the most widely ratified treaties ever agreed at the Hague Cbar2001ce on Private International Law. This book provides a much needed systematic analysis of the way in which the Convention has been applied in England and Scotland, with extensive reference also to the case law of Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand and the United States. All the key provisions and terms of the Convention are thoroughly explored. The book also provides broader insights into the role of the Hague Conference and the use of habitual residence as a correcting factor. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has described the book as 'the leading treatise on the Convention' (Mozes v. Mozes, 9 January 2001).

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.