Via the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, an interesting new series of papers on “Socio-Legal Perspectives on Wills and Inheritance,” edited by Daniel Monk (Birkbeck, University of London) and Daphna Hacker (Tel Aviv University). Here is an excerpt from their introductory essay:
This special issue, which brings together 8 papers from a workshop held in April 2013, does not set out to provide in any sense a comprehensive overview of all these diverse perspectives and lines of enquiry. Collectively, however, the articles here demonstrate the breadth of inheritance as a field of study in a number of ways and at the same time open up important new lines of enquiry.
The commentators come from 6 different countries (and eight different jurisdictions): Belgium, England and Wales, Israel, Spain (Catalonia and the Basque Country), Switzerland and the USA. This international breadth serves to foreground the significance of both national and regional political culture on inheritance law. Most significant in this respect is the fact that the authors are evenly split between those commentating on civil legal systems and those on common-law systems; for traditionally the two systems have adopted highly distinct responses to the principles of testamentary freedom and forced heirship. All the articles in this collection provide insight into this fundamental distinction but at the same time demonstrate its limits in practice.
One way in which the articles here trouble or complicate a simplistic binary view of the systems is by revealing how policy makers, legislators, judges, and indeed individual complainants across the divide confront similar concerns. Central here are understandings of the ‘the family’ and the articles here explore how shifting understandings of the family and questions of care, age, gender, religion and sexuality shape personal experiences of the law and inform law reform agendas.
A key question that the articles here address explicitly and implicitly is method. What criteria should be used to evaluate the effectiveness of inheritance laws? To what extent does laws’ normative stances reflect mainstream values? These are crucial questions that we hope this collection will open up for debate and conversation across disciplines and jurisdictions.
The full introduction is available here.
The papers in the series are:
- Clara I. Asua González (University of the Basque Country - Faculty of Law), Succession Rights and Unmarried Couples in Spanish Law.
- Michelle Cottier (University of Basel - Faculty of Law), Adapting Inheritance Law to Changing Social Realities: Questions of Methodology from a Comparative Perspective.
- Gillian Douglas (Cardiff University - Cardiff Law School), Family Provision and Family Practices - The Discretionary Regime of the Inheritance Act of England and Wales
- Daphna Hacker (Tel-Aviv University), Disappointed "Heirs" as a Socio-Legal Phenomenon.
- Albert Lamarca i Marquès (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), We Are Not Born Alone and We Do Not Die Alone: Protecting Intergenerational Solidarity and Refraining Cain-ism Through Forced Heirship.
- Melanie Leslie (Cardozo), Frustration of Intent in the Wealth Transmission Process.
- Daniel Monk (Birkbeck, University of London), Writing (Gay and Lesbian) Wills.
- Frederik Swennen (University of Antwerp) and Renate Barbaix (University of Antwerp), Ethical Wills – a Continental Law Perspective.
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