ABSTRACT
Law, family. The words evoke very different images: law is formal, cold and impersonal; families are informal, warm and affectionate. Ideally, legal relationships are detached, restrained and sober; familial relationships, demonstrative, effusive and exuberant. On the surface, at least, the law and the family are antagonistic and belong to separate domains within society-the law to the public and the family to the private. Yet, as the essays in this volume illustrate vividly, law and family have a great deal to do with one another these days. It almost seems as if at every turn the family unit encounters the law.
