Giving the keynote address at the Four Jurisdictions Family Law Conference this week, Mr Justice McDonald made some predictions for legal issues in the next 25 years.
He said lawyers are ‘already seeing new categories of maltreatment emerge’, the most recent example of which is the systematic exploitation of children by criminal gangs. Future parental disputes could involve biomechanical modifications and biotechnical interfaces for humankind.
‘Will screen time become a welfare issue? We might also contemplate whether the emergence and acceptance of entirely self-driving vehicles will see the end of disputes as to who supervises the handover of children as between separated parents.’
Ultimately, however, he predicted the ‘best interests of the child’ test, in the Children Act 1989, would retain its value.
‘On their face, disputes between parents as to whether to allow their child the addition of a biotechnical interface to supplement the child’s memory capacity… appear new and exotic to us. But the essential question remains the same. Namely, which of the diverging choices advanced by the parents as a legitimate exercise of their parental responsibility is in the child’s best interests, having regard to the child’s wishes and feelings, characteristics, physical, emotional and educational needs, any risk of harm, the capabilities of the parents and the powers of the court.
‘The best interests test and, in my jurisdiction, the welfare checklist constitute supremely malleable tools, sufficiently flexible to last us long into the future.’
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