Volume 12, Number 1, 1994
Articles
- The Conciliatory-Adversarial Continuum in Family Law Practice - Carla Hotel and Joan Brockman
As the proportion of women entering the legal profession increases, there have been suggestions in the literature that women might actually introduce a more conciliatory approach to our adversarial system. This paper discusses the results of interviews conducted with family law practitioners in the Vancouver Lower Mainland. As an exploratory study it addresses three questions:
- How do lawyers describe their approach to family law practice?
- Is the conciliatory-adversarial continuum detectable among the lawyers interviewed?
- Are women lawyers changing the nature of family law and its application?
- Le Régime Juridique de L'Accessibilité aux Services de Garde à L'Enfance au Québec - Lucie Lauzière
Depuis plus d'un siècle qu'on s'en préoccupe, la garde des enfants oscille entre la famille et l'État. Vue d'abord comme une responsabilité privée de la famille, que l'on a par tradition rattachée à la vocation maternelle des femmes, la garde des enfants s'est accomplie pendant longtemps au sein de la famille en dehors de toute intervention étatique. L'État n'est intervenu significativement dans ce domaine que lors de la Second Guerre mondiale, au moment où les femmes ont joint en nombre le marché du travail. En vertu d'un accord fédéral-provincial, des gardieres gouvernementales on été mises sur pied pour soutenir dans leurs obligations parentales les femmes qui travaillaient dans les industries de guerre. Par ces mesures, la garde des enfants devenait temporairement une responsabilité sociale de l'État. Sitôt la guerre terminée, l'État a cessé de subventionner ces garderies qui ont été contraintes à fermer leur porte. Les femmes ont réintégré leur foyer et repris leur rôle d'éducation. Depuis les trente dernières années, avec les retour progressif des femmes sur le marché du travail et alors que l'État s'est défini un nouveau rôle dans les domaines économique et social, les interventions dans le champ des services de garde se sont multipliées. La reconnaissance législative des services de garde en 1979 est venue réaffirmer la responsabilité première des parents dans la fonction de garde de leurs enfants. En accordant aux parents un rôle de premier plan dans l'organisation et le financement des services de garde, l'État se confinait à un rôle de soutien. Délaissant l'idée d'un réseau de services de garde universel et gratuit, entièrement contrôle et financé par l'État, comme pour les autres services sociaux, les mesures législatives favorisaient l'implantation d'un réseau contrôlé et financé par les parents, mais avec l'aide de l'État. La responsabilité de la garde des enfants est devenue une responsabilité partagée.
- Post Marital Support Discourse, Discretion, and Male Dominance - Rosanna Langer
This article attempts to isolate the role of family law discourse in propagating and legitimating some contributing structural factors of male dominance. While men from every class tend to exercise economic control, women risk becoming poor or porroer upon separation and divorce. There is also a link between economic dependence and women's decisions to leave abusive spouses. I argue in this article that features of liberal thought embeedded in the current discourse of family law continue to assert an individualized rather than systemic understanding of women's detrimental position after marriage. I also contend that discretionary practices such as the award of support orders and enforcement of maintenance payments constitute crucial sites where the principles of patriarchal familialism are reinforced and applied in a legal context. These practices enforce male domestic dominance.
- Allegations of Childhood Sexual Abuse in Custody and Access Disputes: What Care is in the Best Interests of the Child? - Lise Helene Zarb
This article examines issues which arise in the context of a custody and access dispute where one parent has made allegations of sexual abuse against the other. The central questions is whether it is possible or even desirable for a child victim of sexual abuse to have a healthy relationships with an offending parent following disclosure. A survey of the relevant legislation and the recent case law reveals that there is as yet no Canadian consensus on this issue. Consequently, the judiciary have few concrete guidelines and are likely to base their decisions regarding custody and access on whatever combination of factors seems relevant in a given case.
- Civil, Constitutional and Criminal Justice Responses to Femal Partner Abuse: Proposals for Reform - Mark Anthony Drumbl
Femal partner abuse - the battering inflicted by heterosexual men upon their wives, common-law spouses and intimate partners - is a pervasive phenomenon in North American society. Through a comparative analysis of the responses to femal partner abuse in Buffalo (New York), Toronto and London (Ontario) this paper demonstrates that pro-arrest policing policies have a vital role in curbing conjugal violence. Nevertheless, any truly effective response to female partner abuse must link the criminal justice system with other areas of the law as well as community services. With this interdisciplinary approach as a governing paradigm, several reforms are proposed. These include:
- amending the Criminal Code to create a series of provisions that would punish female partner abuse in a manner different than stranger assault, with special emphasis on therapyas a key element of sentencing policy;
- reducing the weight given to provocation and drunkenness as mitigating factors;
- introducing a statutory civil remedy similar to that found in New York State with which battered women can expediently obtain protection orders and compensation;
- placing law enforcement officials under a statutory duty of care to protect potential victims by responsibly issuing and adequately enforcing protection orders.
The possibility of developing separate courtrooms with sui generis trial procedures in which all cases involving violence against women would be heard should also be investigated. Victims should also be permitted to participate more actively in the sentencing process. The animus for these reforms is derived from the fact that the gendered nature of domestic violence perpetuates the systemic inequality of women within Canadian society.
The Ontario Industrial Schools Act of 1874 - Charlotte Neff
The Ontario Industrial Schools Act of 1874 provided for the creation and operation by school boards of residential industrial schools to which a broad range of neglected and depedent children could be admitted by court order. In assigning responsbility to school boards, the Act suggested that these schools would be meeting primarily an educational function, rather than a reform function as suggested by the admission process and criteria. Yet the Act did not provide for a network of day schools to which vagrant, poor and neglected children attending school as a consequence of compulsory education could be sent, as many had demanded. Nor did it provide for involvement by private philanthropists or cooperation of school boards with them, although they were the ones primarily interested in the establishment of such institutions. Instead, it suggested an assumption of a new role for government in child rescue, and defined education as the primary mechanism for retrieving neglected children from a life of poverty and crime. However, to the extent that industrial schools (the vehicle chosen for this child rescue) promoted segregated education, they were inconsistent with the official vision of the public school system. In any case, school boards could not afford to make them a priority. After changes to the legislation, a limited number of industrial schools, focusing on reformation rather than education per se, were estblished by private efoort with some government funding. However, industrial schools never did become the primary mechanism for dealing with neglected children, but instead replaced the reformatories. For neglected children the government adopted the cheaper alternative proposed by the children's aid movement: foster home care administered privately under government supervision.
Review of Periodical Literature
- "Family Violence: Investigating Child Abuse and Learning from British Mistakes"
- "Reproductive Technology and Disability: Searching for the Rights and Wrongs in Explanation"
- "Beyond Pettkus v. Becker: Quantifying Relief for Unjust Enrichment"
- "Canadian Divorce Before Reform: The Case of Prince Edward Islan, 1946-1967"
Book Reviews
- Religion and Culture in Canadian Family Law