The course is designed to equip students with the theoretical and contextual material to enable them to think critically about, and to take a considered position on family law issues. It is also designed to enable students to acquire understanding of law and its contexts in relation to the following areas: marriage, nullity and dissolution; violence and abuse in families; decision-making about parenting after separation; economic aspects of marriage and relationship breakdown. Themes which run through the course (and associated questions) include:

• the public/private dichotomy (to what extent and in what ways is "the family" a private sphere?)
• the focus of regulation (has marriage as the benchmark of family law been replaced by parenthood?)
• gender and domestic violence (how well does the family law system respond to domestic violence? Are family laws and decision-making gendered?)
• child-centredness (to what extent are laws, decision-making, process and research on family law child-centered?)
• the form of regulation (to what extent does family law rely on discretion, principles and rules? What are the advantages and disadvantages of these various forms of regulation?)
• private ordering (to what extent is family law privately ordered? What are the implications of this?).

The means of assessment for this course will involve a compulsory research essay and a compulsory end of semester examination.  Details of the final assessment will be provided on the course home page by the first week of semester.

Three hours per week.

Completed or completing five LAWS courses at 1000 level.

Belinda Fehlberg and Juliet Behrens, Australian Family Law: The Contemporary Context (OUP, 2007).  Please refer to LAWS2217 course home page.

Students should read the outline, and Chapter 1 of the prescribed text before the end of the first week of term.

Please note that classes in Family Law will not be recorded in 2009.  Students are advised not to enrol in this course unless they can attend class on a regular basis.

This course can be taken at any stage in a degree.  Students sometimes say that they find it easier to cope if they have done property.

There is a lot of feminist writing on family law, and those who have an interest in feminist legal theory and women and the law will find this course enhances their study in those areas.

The course is also particularly recommended for those who are interested in social welfare and social security issues.  There are also commercial aspects to the course, and links with Property, Equity and Trusts and Corporations Law.