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Family law & the judicial line of influence

19 April 2024 / David Burrows
Issue: 8067 / Categories: Features , In Court , Family , Procedure & practice
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David Burrows pays tribute to the enduring work of a legion of influential family judges
  • Covers seminal judgments by family court judges, including Lord Scarman, Lord Nicholls and Lady Hale.

What influence have individual judges had on the development and practice of family law over the past 30 or 40 years? Through those years the shadow—mostly benign—of the Children Act 1989 (CA 1989) has been long. So too has the Human Rights Act 1998 and all must be seen through the procedural prism of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (CPR 1998) and its pale imitation, the Family Procedure Rules 2010 (FPR 2010). But how has the common law progressed?

Development of the common law by presidents of the Family Division has been slight. It is hampered by the varied roles assigned to individual presidents. None have made a real mark on the law, even Munby P for all his administrative schemes and passion for ‘transparency’. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 defined separation of powers principles for

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NEWS
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
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