The present “revolution” in biological technology is leading lawyers to fundamentally reconsider the laws of human reproduction .What is at stake is not only the transmission of life but also the transmission of a certain order of the things on which society is based. This is the reason why the law has always sought to regulate the transmission of life. Covering themes from Canon and medieval Roman Law to the 1804 ‘Code civil’, the work includes twenty-three articles on the history of law about a number of modern-day questions. They deal with the close connections long maintained between marriage and procreation; with natural and legal "filiation" especially regarding the very delicate problems of evidence; with the institution of legitimation but also of the child as a person. There is also an article on the important matter of the "conceived child".

This volume contains terms often found in international human rights instruments together with clear, authentic, objective and easily understandable definitions of them. Human rights are so fundamental and so important for everyone that all human rights documents should be understood by anyone, old or young, educated or uneducated, expert or non-expert. Yet many human rights conventions, declarations, instruments and volumes and papers are extremely hard to comprehend or are easily misunderstood because certain expressions and terms are not clearly defined, or are written in such a way that only those familiar with UN jargon can understand. This publication is a useful tool for those who face such difficulty in understanding UN human rights documents and other texts. The volume is easy to use, yet rich in detail, and will be an indispensable tool for practitioners, researchers and students of human rights law.

Texts of the lectures supplied by Hungarian scholars for the 9th International Congress of Comparative Law give information on the Hungarian state of jurisprudence, and on the relating issues of socialist law.