Family Law and Personal Life
- ISBN-10
- 0191566462
- ISBN-13
- 9780191566462
- Series
- Family Law and Personal Life
- Category
- Law
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2006-11-30
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Author
- John Eekelaar
Description
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 behaviour 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 the centre 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.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Family Law in America
By Sanford N. Katz"A book that covered the basic principles of contemporary law but was less encyclopedic, and one that bridged the gap between scholarship and practice"--Acknowledgments, p. [vii].
-
Family Law in America
By Sanford N. KatzThis volume examines the state of family law in America.
-
Family Law in Perspective
By Walter Wadlington, Raymond C. O'BrienPrevious edition, 1st, published in 2001.
-
The Psychology of Family Law
By Eve M. BrankThis book encourages our use of psychological research and methods to inform understandings of family law. It considers issues including child custody, intimate partner violence, marriage and divorce, and child and elder maltreatment.
-
The Transformation of Family Law: State, Law, and Family in the United States and Western Europe
By Mary Ann GlendonThis volume, which offers an analytical survey of the changes in family law over the past twenty-five years, will burnish that reputation.
-
Family Law
By Harry D. Krause, David D. MeyerNature of Marriage and Marital Contracts; Marriage Requisites and Common Law Marriage; Cohabitation Without Marriage -- Heterosexual, Relationships and Same-Sex Unions; Husband and Wife; Divorce -- Status Issues; Divorce --...
-
Private Lives: Families, Individuals, and the Law
By Lawrence Meir FriedmanTwo gay men caring for their adopted son? In this provocative essay, a leading American legal historian argues that laws about family are increasingly laws about individuals and their right to make their own, sometimes contentious, choices.
-
Family Law: Theoretical, Comparative, and Social Science Perspectives
By James Dwyer... Professor of Law and Business Stanford University Marc and Eva Stern Professor of Law and Business Columbia Law School James E. Krier Earl Warren DeLano Professor of Law The University of Michigan Law School Richard K. Neumann, ...
-
Inside the Castle: Law and the Family in 20th Century America
By Joanna L. Grossman, Lawrence M. FriedmanOlcott, Joseph, 246–47 oliver twist (dickens), 59 Olsen, arthur P., 90–91 olson v. saxton (1917), 90–91 one-drop rule, 32. see also interracial marriage O'neill, william, 57 o'neil v. schuckardt (1986), 356n56 Oregon, laws and statutes ...
-
Family Law and Customary Law in Asia: A Contemporary Legal Perspective
By David C. Buxbaum, Assoc. of Southeast Asian Institutions of Higher LearningFamily Law and Customary Law in Asia: A Contemporary Legal Perspective