Le droit de la famille, dans sa dimension civiliste, fortement ancré dans les cultures nationales des États membres, est une matière qui ne relève pas, en principe, du droit de l’Union européenne. Pourtant, il n’est plus possible d’affirmer que la matière échappe dans son entier au droit de l’Union. De nombreux aspects de la famille sont sous influence européenne, au point que l’on voit se dessiner les contours d’une « famille européenne ». L’ouvrage propose de mettre en lumière l’acquis européen en matière de droit de la famille, au prisme du droit matériel (citoyenneté européenne, politique sociale de l’Union, fonction publique européenne...), comme du droit international privé. Le droit de la famille de l’Union s’identifie alors comme un «droit spécial» complétant la diversité des droits nationaux de la famille. Sa signification théorique et politique dans l’Union est débattue par les auteurs, autant que son devenir. Loin de demeurer fragmentaire à côté des droits nationaux des États membres, il a probablement vocation à se densifier pour offrir aux citoyens et résidents européens un droit commun de la famille au sein de l’Union. Family law, with its civil law tradition, and strong roots in the national cultures of the Member States, does not normally fall within the scope of European law. However, it is no longer possible to argue that family law is outside European law entirely. There are many aspects of the family which are subject to European influence, to the point that the outlines of a «European family» are starting to emerge. This book is intended to highlight the European experience of family law and its substantive (i.e. European citizenship, EU social policy, EU civil service...) and private international law aspects. Union law therefore contains a form of «special» family law which is shared between the Member States and supplements their national family laws. Its theoretical and political importance in the Union, as well as its future, are discussed by the authors. Far from remaining fragmented alongside the national laws of Member States, it will likely develop to offer European citizens and residents a common family law within the EU.

The Research Handbook on International Family Law brings together a carefully selected array of experts to address legal topics pertaining to family relationships in a cross-border context, and international family law disputes. It shows how this independent field of study has developed, and continues to develop, and adeptly surveys the practice and regulation of international family law.

This book argues that insufficient recognition of new families is a legal problem that needs fixing in light of recent evolutions in family patterns and normative conceptions of 'family'. People increasingly invest in relationships falling outside the model of the marital family, such as non-conjugal unions of friends or relatives, polyamorous relationships and various religious-based families. Despite this, Western jurisdictions retain the marital family as the relevant basis for allocating family law benefits, rights and obligations. Part I of the book illustrates recent evolutions in family patterns and norms, and explores how law can accommodate multiple family grids without legal recognition involving normalisation. Part II focuses on courtroom litigation on the basis that courts nowadays are central avenues of social change. It takes non-conjugal families as a case study and provides an analysis of the most compelling argumentative strategies that non-conjugal families can mobilise to pursue legal recognition in Canada and the United States, and within the systems of the European Convention of Human Rights and the European Union. Through its comparative, interdisciplinary and critical legal method, the book provides scholars, activists and policymakers with conceptual tools to tackle the current invisibility of new families. Further, by advancing legal arguments to enhance the protection of non-conjugal families in courtrooms, the book illuminates the different approaches jurisdictions are likely to take and the hindrances thereof to overcome and debunk stereotypes associated with proper familyhood.

Contemporary debates about the changing nature of law engage theories of legal pluralism, political economy, social systems, international relations (or regime theory), global constitutionalism, and public international law. Such debates reveal a variety of emerging responses to distributional issues which arise beyond the Western welfare state and new conceptions of private transnational authority. However, private international law tends to stand aloof, claiming process-based neutrality or the apolitical nature of private law technique and refusing to recognize frontiers beyond than those of the nation-state. As a result, the discipline is paradoxically ill-equipped to deal with the most significant cross-border legal difficulties - from immigration to private financial regulation - which might have been expected to fall within its remit. Contributing little to the governance of transnational non-state power, it is largely complicit in its unhampered expansion. This is all the more a paradox given that the new thinking from other fields which seek to fill the void - theories of legal pluralism, peer networks, transnational substantive rules, privatized dispute resolution, and regime collision - have long been part of the daily fare of the conflict of laws. The crucial issue now is whether private international law can, or indeed should, survive as a discipline. This volume lays the foundations for a critical approach to private international law in the global era. While the governance of global issues such as health, climate, and finance clearly implicates the law, and particularly international law, its private law dimension is generally invisible. This book develops the idea that the liberal divide between public and private international law has enabled the unregulated expansion of transnational private power in these various fields. It explores the potential of private international law to reassert a significant governance function in respect of new forms of authority beyond the state. To do so, it must shed a number of assumptions entrenched in the culture of the nation-state, but this will permit the discipline to expand its potential to confront major issues in global governance.

Is the unification and harmonisation of (international) family law in Europe necessary? Is it feasible, desirable and possible? Reading the different contributions to this book may certainly inspire those who would like to find the right answers to these questions.