Family Law, Gender and the State. Text, Cases and Materials.

This new text,cases and materials text on family law provides not only an explication of legal principle but also explores, primarily from a feminist perspective, some of the assumptions relating to gender, sexual orientation, class and culture underlying the law. It 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, the book aims to offer the benefits of a textbook while also giving students a wide-ranging set of materials for classroom discussion, using the case method to demonstrate how various issues might be resolved.

As well as providing a firm grounding in family law, the text sets the law in its social and historical context and encourages a critical approach by students to the subject. It provides an ideal introduction to family law for undergraduates, but will be equally helpful for postgraduate students of family law for whom it provides a challenging set of materials accompanied by a theoretically rich set of ideas and arguments.

Alison Diduck is a Senior Lecturer in Law at University College London. Felicity Kaganas is a Senior Lecturer in Law and co-director of the Centre for the Study of Law,the Child and the Family at Brunel University.