Dr Sarah Trotter

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law, Erasmus Reciprocal Programme of Study, Exchange Programme for Students from University of California, Berkeley and LLB in Laws. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course is available with permission to General Course students.

This course is capped. Places will be assigned on a first come first served basis.

This is a course about the way in which law constructs and regulates family relationships and the effect of that regulation on those relationships. We will examine law’s idea of ‘the family’ and its ways of engaging with a range of relationships, including those that have tended to preoccupy family law (namely relationships between couples and between children and their parents) and those that have tended to attract less legal attention (including relationships between grandparents and grandchildren and sibling relationships). The kinds of questions that we will explore include: in what circumstances should a local authority intervene to remove a child from their family? How should the state respond to domestic abuse? Should cohabiting siblings be able to have a civil partnership? How should money and property be distributed in the event of a couple’s separation? How should the law respond to a situation in which a birthmother conceals her pregnancy and wants the baby to be taken into care without the birthfather’s knowledge? If you are interested in thinking through such questions and in embarking on a broader inquiry into how and why law constructs a particular vision of ‘the family’ and indeed regulates family life at all, then this could be a good course for you.

The focus of the first part of the course - in the Autumn Term - will be on adult relationships in family law. Topics covered will include marriage and civil partnership, cohabitation, divorce and dissolution, family finances, financial orders on divorce and dissolution, domestic abuse, and inheritance law.

The focus of the second term (the Winter Term) will be child law. Topics covered will include legal parenthood and parental responsibility, child welfare, children's rights, post-separation parenting and private disputes over children, grandparents, child protection, adoption, and sibling relationships. 

20 hours of lectures and 9 hours of classes in the Autumn Term.
20 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the Winter Term.
2 hours of lectures and 1 hour of classes in the Spring Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

You will be expected to write 1 essay in the Autumn Term and 1 essay in the Winter Term.

A course guide containing the syllabus will be provided at the start of the course and a reading list and handout with questions to think about will be provided for each topic. The essential reading for each class will be based on articles and cases.

To get a sense of the subject of family law prior to commencing the course, I would suggest reading Family Law and Personal Life (2nd edition) by John Eekelaar (2017, Oxford University Press) and In Your Defence: Stories of Life and Law by Sarah Langford (2018, Doubleday).

Exam (100%), duration: 210 Minutes in the Spring exam period.