Women's Legal Landmarks
Women's Legal Landmarks

Author: Erika Rackley

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-12-27

Total Pages: 829

ISBN-13: 1782259783

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Women's Legal Landmarks commemorates the centenary of women's admission in 1919 to the legal profession in the UK and Ireland by identifying key legal landmarks in women's legal history. Over 80 authors write about landmarks that represent a significant achievement or turning point in women's engagement with law and law reform. The landmarks cover a wide range of topics, including matrimonial property, the right to vote, prostitution, surrogacy and assisted reproduction, rape, domestic violence, FGM, equal pay, abortion, image-based sexual abuse, and the ordination of women bishops, as well as the life stories of women who were the first to undertake key legal roles and positions. Together the landmarks offer a scholarly intervention in the recovery of women's lost history and in the development of methodology of feminist legal history as well as a demonstration of women's agency and activism in the achievement of law reform and justice.

A History of Divorce Law
A History of Divorce Law

Author: Henry Kha

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-30

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1000286681

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The book explores the rise of civil divorce in Victorian England, the subsequent operation of a fault system of divorce based solely on the ground of adultery, and the eventual piecemeal repeal of the Victorian-era divorce law during the Interwar years. The legal history of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 is at the heart of the book. The Act had a transformative impact on English law and society by introducing a secular judicial system of civil divorce. This swept aside the old system of divorce that was only obtainable from the House of Lords and inadvertently led to the creation of the modern family justice system. The book argues that only through understanding the legal doctrine in its wider cultural, political, religious, and social context is it possible to fully analyse and assess the changes brought about by the Act. The major developments included the end of any pretence of the indissolubility of marriage, the statutory enshrinement of a double standard based on gender in the grounds for divorce, and the growth of divorce across all spectrums of English society. The Act was a product of political and legal compromise between conservative forces resisting the legal introduction of civil divorce and the reformers, who demanded married women receive equal access to the grounds of divorce. Changing attitudes towards divorce that began in the Edwardian period led to a gradual rejection of Victorian moral values and the repeal of the Act after 80 years of existence in the Interwar years. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers with an interest in legal history, family law, and Victorian studies.

Deserted Wives and Economic Divorce in 19th-Century England and Wales
Deserted Wives and Economic Divorce in 19th-Century England and Wales

Author: Jennifer Aston

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-11-14

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1509970622

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This book considers Section 21 of the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 and its significant impact on previously invisible married women in the 19th century. Tens of thousands of women used this little-known section of the Act to apply for orders from local magistrates' courts to reclaim their rights of testation, inheritance, property ownership, and (dependent on local franchise qualifications) ability to vote. By examining the orders that were made and considering the women who applied for them, the book challenges the mistaken belief that Victorian England and Wales were nations of married, cohabiting couples. The detailed statistical analysis and rich case studies presented here provide a totally new perspective on the legal status and experiences of married women in England and Wales. Although many thousands of orders were granted between 1858 and 1900, their details remain unknown and unexamined, primarily because census records did not consistently record dissolved marriages and there is no central index of applications made. Using sources including court records, parliamentary papers, newspaper reports, census returns, probate records and trade directories, this book reconstructs the successful – and unsuccessful – experiences of women applying to magistrates' courts and the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes to protect their assets across regions and decades.