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09 September 2010 / David Allison
Issue: 7432 / Categories: Features , Family
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Rhetoric, reviews & reality

David Allison berates the uneasy alliance of family politics & law

When I was elected as Resolution chairman in March the political parties were fighting to be elected. In my speech to the Resolution national conference I warned then that political parties offered “puff rather than progress” and failed to engage with the reality of family life in the UK.

Six months on, and with Cameron and Clegg at the helm of a coalition government that few had predicted, the rhetoric around family law remains far removed from the reality for families facing the consequences of severe and far-reaching cuts. Meanwhile the family law profession is grappling with a series of government reviews which promise to fundamentally alter the system in which justice is done.

Let me start with the rhetoric. We have been told that “strong and stable families are the bedrock of a strong and stable society”, a taskforce has been set up by the prime minister to put “strong, stable and loving families at the heart of British life”, and

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NEWS
Children can claim for ‘lost years’ damages in personal injury cases, the Supreme Court has held in a landmark judgment
Holiday lets may promise easy returns, but restrictive covenants can swiftly scupper plans. Writing in NLJ this week, Andrew Francis of Serle Court recounts how covenants limiting use to a ‘private dwelling house’ or ‘private residence’ have repeatedly defeated short-term letting schemes
Artificial intelligence (AI) is already embedded in the civil courts, but regulation lags behind practice. Writing in NLJ this week, Ben Roe of Baker McKenzie charts a landscape where AI assists with transcription, case management and document handling, yet raises acute concerns over evidence, advocacy and even judgment-writing
The cab-rank rule remains a bulwark of the rule of law, yet lawyers are increasingly judged by their clients’ causes. Writing in NLJ this week, Ian McDougall, president of the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation, warns that conflating representation with endorsement is a ‘clear and present danger’
The Supreme Court has drawn a firm line under branding creativity in regulated markets. In Dairy UK Ltd v Oatly AB, it ruled that Oatly’s ‘post-milk generation’ trade mark unlawfully deployed a protected dairy designation. In NLJ this week, Asima Rana of DWF explains that the court prioritised ‘regulatory clarity over creative branding choices’, holding that ‘designation’ extends beyond product names to marketing slogans
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