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This book is a comprehensive analysis of common law marriage. Part I provides a cultural and historical history of the subject, from Ancient Roman Law to Medieval Canon Law, and analyzes the reception of the doctrine in the United States. The current law concerning common law marriage is extremely complex and uncertain. By analyzing more than 2,000 American cases, Part II of the book is intended to be a legal guide for courts, public authorities and law firms dealing with common law marriage cases. It discusses the legal requirements for the establishment of a common law marriage as to capacity, contract, implied agreement, cohabitation and holding out, burdens of proof, and presumptions. Choice of law rules in all American jurisdictions are analyzed. One of the greatest challenges that family law today faces in the Western World is the decreasing rate of marriage and the increasing number of unmarried cohabiting couples. Part III conducts from historical, comparative, and sociological perspectives a legal policy discussion concerning the future of common law marriage and the modern cohabitation law. It contains a comparison of both the judicial and legislative developments in the United States, Northern and Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. With no predetermined agenda or bias, arguments are presented and discussed to give legislators and policymakers a basis for their considerations. Different legal constructions are discussed and a new model of marriage is presented.

Over the past thirty-five years, federal courts have dramatically retreated from actively promoting school desegregation. In the meantime, state courts have taken up the mantle of promoting the vision of educational equity originally articulated in Brown v. Board of Education. This book provides a detailed analysis of why the state courts have taken on this active role and how successful their efforts have been. Since 1973, litigants have challenged the constitutionality of education finance systems in forty-five states on the grounds that they deprive many poor and minority students of adequate access to a sound education. While the plaintiffs have won in the majority of these cases, the decisions are often branded “judicial activism”—a stigma that has reduced their impact. To counter the charge, the book persuasively defends the courts' authority and responsibility to pursue the goal of educational equity. It envisions their ideal role as supervisory and offers innovative recommendations on how the courts can collaborate with the executive and legislative branches to create a truly democratic educational system.

This contribution to comparative family law brings together chapters on a comprehensive range of issues in family law in the United States and England, showing how they stand at the beginning of the new century and how they reached there. This provides an opportunity to examine how family law has reacted to a period of change in family life widely held to be without precedent. The legal analyses are set within critical accounts of wider social and family policy and against a fully explored demographic background provided by leading scholars in these areas. Readers will be challenged to understand the nature of family law and its possible future direction.

The book explores a significant episode of Indian social history, the Hindu Code Bill controversy that stirred the Indian social consciousness in the mid-twentieth century. Revisiting the communicative processes surrounding the reform of Hindu customary laws relating to marriage, divorce, succession, adoption, and maintenance, the book provides an in-depth account of the intense debate that took place in and outside the legislature involving political groups, social associations, religious organizations, legal associations, and the women’s movement. Placing the debate in a historical continuum, the author traces the genesis of the Hindu Code Bill by exploring the linkages of late eighteenth century initiatives of colonial administration, the efforts of eighteenth century social reformers, and the contribution of Indian national movement as well as women’s organizations in early twentieth century. The book analyses the relationship of discourses in the public and legislative spheres and emphasizes the role of Nehru, Ambedkar, B.N. Rau and other prominent personalities in the promotion of gender justice. The book argues that while effective implementation of enabling legal provisions were impeded by deeply entrenched patriarchal structures in Independent India, the debate contributed towards a gradual transformation of the Indian social consciousness, thus contributing towards gender justice in Indian society.

During the past three decades, nations all over the world have been debating whether to allow same-sex couples to marry, or at least grant these couples various rights associated with marriage. This book presents a comparative study of the legal regulation of same-sex partnerships worldwide, as well as a unique survey of the status of same-sex couples in Europe. The author begins by providing a historical overview of the transformation of marriage from antiquity to the present, and then identifies and critically compares four principal models for the legal regulation and recognition of same-sex partnerships: civil marriage, registered partnership, domestic partnership, and cohabitation. He concludes that all of the models except civil marriage discriminate against gays and lesbians just as the “separate but equal” doctrine discriminated against African Americans; thus, so-called alternatives to marriage, even if they provide the same rights and benefits as marriage, are inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional.

The book sees the governance of personal relationships as the exercise of power, from the traditional assumptions of patriarchy and the control one generation seeks to exercise over its successor, to the ideology of welfarism, where state institutions protect the interests of the vulnerable in accordance with its own perceptions of their interests. It argues that perceptions of rights are a significant counterpoise to such exercises of power. Against that background, it explores the interrelationship between the regulation by law of people's personal lives and the values of friendship, truth, respect, responsibility and community. 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 financial support, and of separated parents regarding their children. The book offers a new picture of intimacy at the centre of personal relationships and sets out the elements for a conceptual framework according to which regulation of people's personal lives can be justified in an open society.

For many years family law was viewed as a study of the regulation of relationships of husband and wife, and parent and child. By the close of the 20th century, basic questions about who should be officially designated a family member and by what procedure were being raised both in the legislature and in litigation. In addition, conventional models that had defined domestic relations such as marriage, divorce, and adoption were being expanded to include contemporary patterns of living arrangements. This book examines the present state of family law in America. Among its themes is the tension between individual autonomy and governmental regulation in all aspects of family law. It examines both conventional and new definitions of formal and informal domestic relationships. It analyses the extent to which relationships established before marriage are being regulated, and how marriage is being redefined to take into account equality of the sexes. It demonstrates how the definition of marriage as a partnership in which the individual spouse's rights are recognized has resulted in protection of the vulnerable spouse. It examines fault and no-fault divorce procedures and the extent to which these procedures reflect social realities. This book describes state intervention into the parent and child relationship and how this is reflected in the re-examination of the privacy of the family unit. It concludes with a discussion of the conventional model of adoption of children and how additional models are being developed to take into account new family forms.

The law governing family relationships has changed dramatically in the past one hundred years. This book is a study of the pressures and processes which led to those changes. It examines the work of individuals and organisations campaigning for change, and the (often ignored) influence of officials in government and (in particular) the Parliamentary draftsmen. It gives particular attention to the pressures for compromise which have so often influenced the otherwise difficult to understand legislation. The book makes extensive use of archival material and of the results of empirical research, and tells the stories of the sometimes rather eccentric individuals who have had an impact on the law-making process. Although the book focuses on the twentieth century, it reaches back into earlier periods when relevant to later developments.

This book is a detailed study on family law in India. It attempts to combine women’s rights into legal theory, and uses case laws extensively. The book is composed of three chapters, starting with a discussion on the concepts of justice, law, and gender. The next chapter examines various personal laws — Parsi, Jewish, Hindu, Islamic, and Christian — related to marriage, property rights, succession, and divorce. Each of these laws is examined for the colonial and post-colonial periods. The final chapter focuses on the different constitutional provisions important to personal laws and in the role of the judiciary in the reconciliation of personal laws of each community and the supreme constitutional provisions. This chapter also attempts to determine whether the law can be conformed to the modern changes made through and in both the statutory law, formal, and the pluralistic and fluid community-based practices. The book presents a comparison of the personal laws of the majority and minority communities, as well as a study of the Uniform Civil Code. These discussions prepare the reader for the second volume, where the author acknowledges and discusses three distinct concerns: matrimonial rights, the obligations and the procedural aspect of the functioning of family courts in India, and women’s rights within the law of marriage and divorce.

This book fills the void within the rubric of a contemporary and evolving discipline, ‘gender and law’, which is interdisciplinary in its approach. In this context, it specifically fills the gap between the theory and practice of law, between the ‘doctrinal’ and ‘non-doctrinal’, between the ‘ideal’ and the ‘technical’ and hopes to blur these binaries through a comprehensive and inclusive approach. Women’s rights within the law of marriage and divorce, matrimonial rights and obligations, and the procedural aspect of the functioning of family courts in India are the three distinct concerns of this volume.