Family law research to be featured at Cambridge seminar

September 30, 2010

The Nuffield Foundation in London will host an invitation-only interdisciplinary seminar, “Family Law: Legal rules and Family values,” on Friday, Oct. 29, to discuss the recent work of Professor <a href="http://apps.law.asu.edu/Apps/Faculty/Faculty.aspx?individual_id=10">Ira Ellman</a> of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, currently a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College.<separator></separator>As explained in the invitation letter, Ellman “has carried out a series of elegant and rigorous empirical studies to look at the extent to which the public has shared values that might usefully influence policy in family law, on issues such as child support; it also raises important questions about the extent to which family law systems undermine or support wider social values. The seminar will aim to discuss this work, what insights it can provide, what methodological questions may arise, and whether it would be useful to undertake comparable work in the UK and other parts of Europe.” Comparative studies of family law can reveal cross-national differences in the values that govern family relations, as well as common principles that lie beneath legal rules that regulate them.<separator></separator>The seminar is presented by the Nuffield Foundation in association with the Faculty of Law at Cambridge University, and will be chaired by Mavis Maclean of the Oxford Centre for Family Law and Policy.<separator></separator>Ellman is a Willard Pedrick Distinguished Research Scholar at the College of Law, as well as Affiliate Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, and an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Child and Youth Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.<separator></separator>Janie Magruder, <a href="mailto:Jane.Magruder@asu.edu">Jane.Magruder@asu.edu</a> (480) 727-9052 Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law

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