REVIEWS
| Date | 01 May 1975 |
| Published date | 01 May 1975 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1975.tb01419.x |
REVIEWS
PRINCIPLES
OF
FAMILY
LAW.
By
S.
M.
CRETNEY.
[London:
Sweet
&
IT
is only quite recently that family law achieved legitimate status in the
undergraduate curriculum. Now it is runaway favourite among student options.
This
is not simply because its study will lighten the burden of the professional
examinations to lollow.
A
large part of the attraction lies in the bridge that
the subject provides between academic study and the human world out-
side.
So
many students come to law because,
so
they say, they
“
want to work
with people”
or
to
“
help them.” Here, in family law, at last, are people to
be
worked with and helped in the most personal way. The instinct that directs
the student’s choice is
a
sound one, and he will not be disappointed. We are all
family men and women, and are conscious
of
it; we are all able and willing
to conduct, at whatever intellectual, political
or
emotional levels, a continuing
critique of the regulations that society imposes, the proteotion it provides, the
arrangements it tolerates, the progress it achieves, in the field
of
intimate
human relationships.
The excitement of family law is increased by the pace of legal change. In
some areas of the law new developments can be as disturbing to
a
student’s
confidence as they are destructive of his teacher’s course. Not
so-or
not
nearly
so
much so-in this subject.
For
the student can have no difficulty in
perceiving the direction
of
change and involving himself with its policy. It is
possible to envisage family law as in motion along a road marked with sign-
posts that encourage a positively melioristic view of the law (and even of
human nature):
“
equality for women
”;
“
welfare
of
children
’I;
“
individual
self-determination
”;
“
social concern.” It is
a
road on which the student will
be excited to travel.
As
he goes he will learn much about both the importance
and the limitations of the law’s contribution; about the difficulties of giving
legal expression to social aspirations; and about the need to employ the
disciplined lawyerly skills and respect for statutory and judicial authority that
he has for some time been acquiring, even here where his human sympathy
is
most fully engaged.
These trite observations may perhaps be excused as an appropriate preamble
to the act
of
congratulating
Mr.
Cretney on having gone
a
long way towards
producing the family law textbook to meet the needs of the modem student.
It is right that the student’s principal companion in the subject, while providing
a
solid basis
of
legal principle and paying due regard to the autborities, should
at the same time be forward-looking and policy-based, and should draw its
critical and expository strength from non-legal as well as from Iegal
sources.
All
this can
be
said of
Mr.
Cretney’s
book.
For
instance, right at the start
(after
a
brief and rather poorly motivated introductory chapter) the reader
is
treated to critical discussions of the prohibited degrees and the minimum age
for marriage which draw upon
a
broad literature and cannot fail to awaken
his
interest. It is space well spent. The chapter on divorce admirably begins
with a generous passage on the significance
of
divorce statistics-an unusual
but wellconceived textbook introduction to the subject. When
Mr.
Cretney is
critical
of
the law (as he very often is) he is invariably interesting and often
extremely effective. See, for one brief example, his objections to the three-year
ban on divorce
(pp.
109-l1OF-a model of clarity and economy
of
statement.
His
discussions
of
policy are provocative; and very few aspects
of
family law
are the subjed simply of dry cxposition. Even marriage formalities fail to be
tedious, for
Mr.
Cretney is concerned to ask about the purposes
of
a
system
of formalities and to consider the law in the light
of
those purposes (abetted
therein by Iaw Corn. No.
53,
etc:):
There is, then, in this first edition the makings of a very good, attractive
and appropriate textbook.
If
from this point
I
concentrate upon some of its
360
Maxwell. 1974. xl
and
382
pp.
Cloth
fG.00,
Paper
€3.75.1
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