NEW FRONTIERS IN FAMILY LAW: INTRODUCTION

Abstract

A new discussion about families and care is unfolding in family law. Reproductive technologies, globalization, and left-of-center critiques of same-sex marriage offer an especially fertile environment for imagining sex, intimacy, care, and reproduction outside marriage and the nuclear family. The New Frontiers in Family Law symposium explored this new territory. Some of our questions were: (1) Is the notion of "the family" more limiting than helpful? After all, the history of the family in law is largely about oppression. What is gained by using the family as frame of analysis, and what is obscured?; (2) If our goal is to allow a diverse range of sexual and intimate affiliations to flourish, is law the best tool? After all, culture, social practices, and non-legal institutions order social and sexual life as well as formal law; (3) What is the appropriate balance of equality and freedom in our theorizing and advocacy about families? Freedom and equality often inform and enable each other in law and politics, but sometimes they are in tension, particularly in the intimate sphere where substantial dependencies exist. The symposium included the presentation of ten academic papers, as well as a monologues performance titled "Telling Tales on Families" giving voice to a wide range of experiences of family, intimacy, kinship, sexuality, and relatedness. From the wealth of material presented at the live symposium, the editors published seven articles and thirteen monologues, each of which, in its own way, reflects and challenges the major themes of the symposium.