Comparative in both approach and framework, Family Law, Sex and Society provides a critical exposition of key areas in family law, exploring their evolution and development within their historical, cultural, political and legal context. Cross-referencing to English law throughout, this comparative textbook pays particular attention to the transformation of marriage; the development of divorce laws; matrimonial property; the legal recognition of unmarried heterosexual and same-sex cohabitants; the universal adoption of the best interests standard for children in domestic and international legislation; and the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 on family law in a variety of jurisdictions. Divided into different sections, Family Law, Sex and Society includes coverage of: a jurisdictional and historical survey of some of the main themes in Family Law, as well as consideration of the evolution of the Western family the English law relating to divorce, marital property and children and a comparison with the equivalent law in the civil law jurisdictions of France and Germany family law developments in other common law countries such as Australia and New Zealand, selected American jurisdictions, parts of Africa and some Far Eastern countries; and hybrid jurisdictions like Japan and Russia an analysis of the law relating to unmarried cohabitation and domestic partnerships in civil law jurisdictions such as France, Germany and Sweden in comparison to Anglo-American law a comparative analysis of the laws relating to domestic violence. Family Law, Sex and Society offers valuable socio-legal and socio-cultural insights into the practice of family law, and is the only textbook that provides a unified, coherent and comparative approach to the study of family law as it operates in these particular jurisdictions.

This monumental study of medieval law and sexual conduct explores the origin and develpment of the Christian church's sex law and the systems of belief upon which that law rested. Focusing on the Church's own legal system of canon law, James A. Brundage offers a comprehensive history of legal doctrines–covering the millennium from A.D. 500 to 1500–concerning a wide variety of sexual behavior, including marital sex, adultery, homosexuality, concubinage, prostitution, masturbation, and incest. His survey makes strikingly clear how the system of sexual control in a world we have half-forgotten has shaped the world in which we live today. The regulation of marriage and divorce as we know it today, together with the outlawing of bigamy and polygamy and the imposition of criminal sanctions on such activities as sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, and bestiality, are all based in large measure upon ideas and beliefs about sexual morality that became law in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages. "Brundage's book is consistently learned, enormously useful, and frequently entertaining. It is the best we have on the relationships between theological norms, legal principles, and sexual practice."—Peter Iver Kaufman, Church History

This study of the regulation of sexuality in the Qing dynasty explores the social context for sexual behavior criminalized by the state, showing how regulation shifted away from status to a new regime of gender that mandated a uniform standard of sexual morality and criminal liability for all people, regardless of their social status.

This book draws on nearly one thousand cases and anecdotes about twins bending and breaking rules in order to fulfill or flout tenets of twinhood. Society’s unwillingness to contextualize mores and policies to suit twins may perpetuate controversy and law-breaking. Twins and Deviance shows how twins’ allegedly sacred bond violates conventions beginning at conception. Throughout their lives, they may be victimized, tortured, and neglected specifically because of their bond. Twins have lives that matter – their bond is not static or unconditional, it may be fluent and emotional. The book paints a picture of twin individuals whose lives relate to contemporary readers’ and audiences’ lives because they are weird, eccentric, ritualized, fetishized, pornographized, criminalized, and chastised by society; but what is especially interesting about twins is that society has institutionalized controversial practices and traditions sometimes implicitly or explicitly demanding that twinhood be realized or dishonored so that twins comply with social norms and expectations. Offering a truculent, unpretentious, and straightforward representation of contemporary society, Twins and Deviance does not defend or defy society’s strange, niche, and shaded view of twins. Rather, it artfully and sensitively depicts twins as historically and presently seeming like gods, heroes, renegades, saviors, mutations, terrorists, gangs, and betrayers; and skillfully discusses twins’ bodies to elucidate their individuality, decode their correspondence, and explore analytical tributaries new to sociocultural research. Using vivid examples, Twins and Deviance postulates that twins intrigue and entrance singletons because they deviate from norms, embody principles of duality, fulfill self-reflexive fantasies, and symbolize eternal life and the afterlife. The value of twins and twinhood to singletons is evident in psychoanalysis, reflections, religion and mythology, words, and politics; and yet, this is the only book to bring to light the immense depth of this captivating insight. Twins and Deviance challenges and improves previous research by collecting new topics to retool twins and deviance discussions. As such, it is a must-read for students, professors, and audiences engaging in gender, justice, sexuality, legal, and cultural studies, and all researchers conducting twin studies.

Westward Bound debunks the myth of Canada’s peaceful West and the masculine conceptions of law and violence upon which it rests by shifting the focus from Mounties and whisky traders to criminal cases involving women between 1886 and 1940. Erickson’s analysis of these cases shows that, rather than a desire to protect, official responses to the most intimate or violent acts betrayed an impulse to shore up the liberal order by maintaining boundaries between men and women, Native people and newcomers, and capital and labour. Victims and accused could only hope to harness entrenched ideas about masculinity, femininity, race, and class in their favour. This fascinating exploration of hegemony and resistance in key contact zones draws prairie Canada into larger debates about law, colonialism, and nation building.

In Reconstructing the Household, Peter Bardaglio examines the connections between race, gender, sexuality, and the law in the nineteenth-century South. He focuses on miscegenation, rape, incest, child custody, and adoption laws to show how southerners struggled with the conflicts and stresses that surfaced within their own households and in the larger society during the Civil War era. Based on literary as well as legal sources, Bardaglio's analysis reveals how legal contests involving African Americans, women, children, and the poor led to a rethinking of families, sexuality, and the social order. Before the Civil War, a distinctive variation of republicanism, based primarily on hierarchy and dependence, characterized southern domestic relations. This organic ideal of the household and its power structure differed significantly from domestic law in the North, which tended to emphasize individual rights and contractual obligations. The defeat of the Confederacy, emancipation, and economic change transformed family law and the governance of sexuality in the South and allowed an unprecedented intrusion of the state into private life. But Bardaglio argues that despite these profound social changes, a preoccupation with traditional notions of gender and race continued to shape southern legal attitudes.