Fomenters of Strife, Gladiatorial Champions or Something Else Entirely? Lawyers and Family Dispute Resolution

Batagol, Becky

doi:10.5204/qutlr.v8i1.61

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Legal norms must permit lawyers and judges to perform this role, even in the face of increased emphasis on (sometimes mandatory) mediation and collaborative methods that has accompanied the normative rise of shared parenting. Becky Batagol's research also supports the important role that lawyers can play in redressing the vulnerability of (female) clients in negotiating family law disputes (Batagol 2008). Legal norms should also encourage lawyers to engender a sense of self-trust (Goering 2009) in their mother-clients, so that they do not bow too readily to normative pressure to share parenting in inappropriate circumstances, in contrast to shared parenting norms, which tend not to permit this flexibility.…”

Section: Looking For Norms That Balance Responsibility and Autonomymentioning

confidence: 86%

Autonomy for Mothers? Relational Theory and Parenting Apart

Boyd

2010

Fem Leg Stud

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This article explores the tensions between autonomy and expectations of mother-caregivers, in the context of normative trends in post-separation parenting law. Going back to first principles of feminism, the article asks what scope for autonomy there is for modern mothers in the face of socio-legal norms that prioritise shared parenting. The very relationship between mother-caregivers and children illustrates the important connection between relationships and autonomy: the caregiving that mothers provide enables children to become autonomous persons yet, at the same time, this caregiving relationship constrains maternal autonomy. In the current context that encourages shared parenting, the potential for maternal autonomy may be even more compromised-a deep irony in a supposedly postfeminist era. A responsible mother is now expected to nurture a child's relationship with the father, unless he is proven to be harmful. The ability of women to be at all autonomous from the fathers of their children in the face of this normative expectation is dubious, even when the adults live separately. Moreover, the dominance of the heterosexual and patriarchal family-always a challenge for women's autonomy-is reproduced in this imposition of equal parenting in the name of children's rights. This article uses a contextual approach to relational autonomy to point to an approach that might challenge the normative climate of shared parenting.

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Section: Looking For Norms That Balance Responsibility and Autonomymentioning

confidence: 86%

Autonomy for Mothers? Relational Theory and Parenting Apart

Boyd

2010

Fem Leg Stud

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“…While family law operates under its own system, it is still subject to the legal method, meaning that it was fundamentally 'designed with the conception of the adversarial lawyer in mind'. 32 Furthermore, the assumption of gender neutrality has very different consequences for males and females. 33 For example, taking a sameness approach to property distribution based on liberal principles of autonomy can be problematic because, as Marcia Neave points out, it ignores the social circumstances in which women are already disadvantaged by being forced to choose between wage-earning, caring for children, or 'attempting to have the best (or worst) of both worlds'.…”

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confidence: 99%

Can the legal method produce justice? Contemporary reflections on Mary Jane Mossman

Nemec

2023

Alternative Law Journal

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As Mary Jane Mossman has identified, and despite it containing ample room for judges to choose, legal method has customarily been used as a tool to preserve the status quo and exclude other perspectives. This Brief combines personal experiences in the law with contemporary cases to demonstrate why justice is still so rare. I argue that it is not possible for justice to be consistently achieved without changing the predominant legal method.

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