The final aspect of Third Way ideology is faith in law itself, and a belief in micro­managerialism through law. It is assumed throughout the documentation that surrounds the legislation that the availability of the legal status — as well as the difficulty in dissolution procedures for relationships — will encourage long-term, stable relationships. In this […]

The fifth aspect of New Labour ideology is a desire for consensus within One Nation, in which acceptance of multiculturalism and tolerance of ‘difference’ (within limits) prevails. This message is omnipresent in the material surrounding the legislation. Lesbians and gay men become understood as another constituency that needs to be managed. This is ‘their’ law […]

The importance of the family is pivotal as the ideological basis for the legislation. In particular, the family is cited for its central role in producing responsible, active new citizens, and as providing a counterbalance to rugged individualism and atomisation. Furthermore, the family is largely indistinguishable from the import­ance of ‘stable relationships’, which have empirically […]

Within New Labour discourse, community performs the key function of inculcat­ing the values of citizenship, social inclusion, and the social control of deviant behaviour. We can see this rationale underpinning the legislation. It is implicit in the Regulatory Impact Assessment in its discussion of the relationship between the Act and ‘social attitudes’, by which is […]

The theme of rights and responsibilities runs throughout the Act, the commentary that surrounds it and the parliamentary debates. The Act itself is characterised as ‘a package of rights and responsibilities’[120] and as aiming to ‘balance the responsibilities of caring for and maintaining a partner with a package of rights for example, in the area […]

An examination of the explanatory material produced by the Women and Equality Unit reveals, first, a strong justification for registered partnerships to be found in the importance of social inclusion. The Final Regulatory Impact Assessment emphasises that this is one of the benefits of partnership registration, and a causal connection between law and social change […]

No matter what one’s view of the political implications of the Act (if, indeed, it even registers on the political radar in a significant way), the contours of the Civil Partnership Act should not come as a surprise to any observer of New Labour ideology. I have elsewhere tried to understand New Labour’s ideological con­struction […]

Arguably, the ingeniousness of the Civil Partnership Act is the fact that it can produce a legal status of ‘civil partner’ that does not depend upon marriage, but which displays virtually all of the characteristics of a civil marriage. This is undoubtedly a strategy on the part of the government to avoid what it perceives […]

Carl Stychin Introduction It would be odd indeed if those who espouse and defend traditional values of com­mitment and faithfulness opposed giving gay couples the choice to live their lives according to those values.[104] Families are changing. I suspect that teachers of family law have been uttering those words to their students for more years […]

Feminism’s impact on family law has been mixed; almost paradoxical. Recent legal reform and the contributions to this collection illustrate this ambiguity. They show, for example, that families or legal partnerships may now be formed by people of the same sex and legal parenthood may now be held by people of the same sex; that […]