In 2023, John Eekelaar and I will be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of our friendship. We met in 1973 in Birmingham, England, when I sat next to him at a meeting set up by Zehv Falk, an Israeli family law scholar. Professor Falk had written to me at my home institution, Boston College Law School, and the letter had been forwarded to me at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, where I was an Associate. Professor Falk wanted to establish an International Society of Family Law, and the Society was formed at that meeting. I became President of the Society ten years later, and John Eekelaar followed me in 1985. Together we have co-authored articles and co-edited books.

1. MARRIAGE

In Stephen Cretney’s 2003 masterwork, Family Law in the Twentieth Century, the first 150 out of 775 pages are devoted to marriage. In Homer Clark’s 1988 masterpiece, The Law of Domestic Relations in the United States (2nd edition), the author devotes about 200 out of 938 pages to marriage. The number of pages in each book does not include the discussion of divorce. The point is that marriage is given such attention because it has been considered the foundation of the family, both in the United Kingdom and in America.

What is meant by ‘foundation of the family’ is that it is the source of family relationships. In American law, the family is not considered a legal entity like a corporation or a trade union. Rather, it is a bundle of relationships, like husband and wife, parent and child, or sibling and sibling, that are legally recognised. Marriage laws have been untouched by change for hundreds of years, except for outlawing polygamy, 1 and until recently, restrictions on interracial marriage 2 and same-sex marriage.

Closely associated with religious institutions, the secular characteristics of marriage are frequently lost sight of: that it is comprised of a woman and a man, in a monogamous and affectionate relationship, making a public commitment, either oral or in writing, for life companionship. Although framed somewhat differently from the view of the Roman Catholic Church, whose pope stated 89 years ago that ‘marriage is for the sake of generations’, marriage does provide the enclosure for having children and raising them.