This unique contribution to comparative law brings together dedicated essays 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 unparalleled 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 contemporary family law and its possible future direction.

A. Background to the Twentieth Century 1. How to Give the Present a Past: Family Law in the United States: 1950-2000, Michael Grossberg 2. Changing Family Patterns in England and wales Over the Past Fifty Years, Colin Gibson 3. Century of the American Family, Donna Duane Morrison 4. Family Policy in the Post-War Period, Jane Lewis 5. The Evolution of Family Policy in the United States after the Second World War, Barry L. Friedman and Martin Rein 6. English Family Law Since The Second World War, John Dewar B. Establishing the Family 7. The Shadowlands: The Regulation of Human Reproduction in the United States, George J. Annas 8. The Legal Regulation of Infertility Treatment in Britain, Ruth Deech 9. Parenthood in the United States, Ruth-Arlene W. Howe 10. Marriage, Cohabitation, and Parenthood: From Contract to Status?, Gillian Douglas 11. Marriage: An Institution in Transition and Redefinition, Walter J. Wadlington , Jr. 12. The Constitutionalization of American Family Law: The Case of the Right to Marry, Jerome A. Barron 13. Dual Systems of Adoption in the United States, Sanford N. Katz 14. English Adoption Law: Past, Present, and Future, Nigel Lowe C. Regulating and Reorganizing the Family 15. Divorce in the United States, Ira Mark Ellman 16. Divorce in England 1950-2000: A Moral Tale, Carol Smart 17. The Finacial Incidents of family Dissolution, Grace Ganz Blumberg 18. Post-Divorce Financial Obligations, John Eekelaar 19. The Status of Children: A Story of Emerging Rights, Barbara Bennett 20. Disputing Children, Michael Freeman 21. The Law and Violence Against Women in the Family at Century's End: The American Experience, Elizabeth Schneider 22. Violence Against Women in the family, Rebecca Dobash and Russell Dobash D. The Family and Governmental Agencies 23. A Forum for Every Fuss: The Growth of Court Services and ADR Treatments for Family Law Cases in the United States, Jessica Pearson 24. Access to Justice for Families in Post-War Britain, Mavis Maclean 25. Child Wefare Policy and Practice in the United States from 1950 to 2000, Martin Guggenheim 26. From Curtis to Waterhouse: State Care and Child Protection in the UK 1945-2000, Judith Masson 27. The Hague Children's Conventions: The Internationalization of Child Law, Linda Silberman E. Epilogues 28. Individual Rights and Family Relationships, Sanford N. Katz 29. The End of an Era?, John Eekelaar

John Eekelaar , Reader in Law and Fellow, Pembroke College, Oxford, Mavis MacLean , Senior Research Fellow, Wolfson College, Oxford

`... offers a timely appraisal of family law and family policy at the start of the new millennium. ... The full sweep of family law gets 'state of the art' treatment ... The book is an important collection of its individual chapters, each written by a recognised scholar in its respective area, as well as a 'state of the art' statement of family law and policy at the start of the twenty-first century. ... the book will appeal to a wide constituency: its chapters are accessibly written for the non-specialist, yet contain original insights for the specialist. It deserves to become a standard reference for students and teachers of family law, social policy, sociology, and social work, and is a worthy successor to the volume that inspired it.' Social Policy |d 19 Sept 2002.