Focusing on Florence, Thomas Kuehn demonstrates the formative influence of law on Italian society during the Renaissance, especially in the spheres of family and women. Kuehn's use of legal sources along with letters, diaries, and contemporary accounts allows him to present a compelling image of the social processes that affected the shape and function of the law. The numerous law courts of Italian city-states constantly devised and revised statutes. Kuehn traces the permutations of these laws, then examines their use by Florentines to arbitrate conflict and regulate social behavior regarding such issues as kinship, marriage, business, inheritance, illlegitimacy, and gender. Ranging from one man's embittered denunciation of his father to another's reaction to his kinsmen's rejection of him as illegitimate, Law, Family, and Women provides fascinating evidence of the tensions riddling family life in Renaissance Florence. Kuehn shows how these same tensions, often articulated in and through the law, affected women. He examines the role of the mundualdus—a male legal guardian for women—in Florence, the control of fathers over their married daughters, and issues of inheritance by and through women. An ambitious attempt to reformulate the agenda of Renaissance social history, Kuehn's work will be of value to both legal anthropologists and social historians. Thomas Kuehn is professor of history at Clemson University.

This book studies family life and gender broadly within Italy, not just one region or city, from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Paternal control of the household was paramount in Italian life at this time, with control of property and even marital choices and career paths laid out for children and carried out from beyond the grave by means of written testaments. However, the reality was always more complex than a simple reading of local laws and legal doctrines would seem to permit, especially when there were no sons to step forward as heirs. Family disputes provided an opening for legal ambiguities to redirect property and endow women with property and means of control. This book uses the decisions of lawyers and judges to examine family dynamics through the lens of law and legal disputes.

First published in 1985, Women-in-Law is a collection of essays examining the complex interactions of law, sexuality, and the family. It explores the ways in which legal ideology and practice affect women and looks at issues such as child custody, domestic violence and prostitution in the light of new research. The contributors review the history of feminist involvement with the law and analyse the law’s fundamental failure to improve the status of women. They also assess strategies for change in view of the current backlash against women’s rights and the traditional role of law in the subjugation of women. This book will be of interest to students of law, political science, sociology, gender studies, and sexuality studies.

This second edition of John L. Esposito's landmark book expands and updates coverage of family law reforms (in marriage, divorce, and inheritance) throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Southeast Asia, and analyzes the diverse interpretation of Muslim family law, identifying shifts, key problems, and challenges in the twenty-first century.

An easy to navigate guide to family law in New South Wales, Australia. This book helps women understand the law as it impacts on their relationships with ex-partners and children. The book covers family law issues including separation, divorce, arrangements for children, child support, division of property and protection against violence.