Law's Role in Democratising the Family

De Munck, Jean [UCL]

This paper explores the dynamics of family law’s transformation over the past 50 years as the result of interactions of two autonomous systems: the law and the family. The interesting feature in the change of family is its democratisation. Equality, consent, freedom of partners and participative governance have become ideals of the Western family. Law is a motor of this family transformation through its own internal transformation on two points: the transformation of legal reasoning, based on human rights; the use of mediation in judiciary conflict resolution. This U turn can be explained by the new mechanisms of social order in modern differentiated societies. Following Anne Rawls’ reading of Durkheim’s insights, the article argues for the centrality of “constitutive practices” in modern societies. Legal framework can no longer derive and perform social order through moral rituals. Modern law must fit the procedural morality (instead of a moral consensus) of family interactions in order to be able to solve conflicts. This explanation of the success of mediation in family law is also the key to understand the constitutionalisation of family law via the use of principles (instead of rules) in legal reasoning. Intercultural conflicts arise inside families as well as inside societies. New flexible family law becomes a factor of pluralization of family forms. On this basis, transnationalization of family law can develop, even if state sovereignty remains a powerful brake of this evolution.