Family Law Under the Conditions of Late Modernity

Project period: 2024-2028

Is European family law developing in a manner consistent with the sociological predictions of modernity? To answer this question, family law needs to be analysed from a variety of perspectives. First, it is necessary to undertake an overall assessment: In what ways is family law ‘modern’ in a socio-theoretical sense and in what ways is it not? It is therefore necessary to observe family law through the eyes of social theory and to identify not only the family law institutions, structures, and theoretical constructs that are used to realize the legal ideals of modernity but also the developmental processes – openings, pluralizations, individualizations, liberalizations, etc. – that fulfil such ideals and correspond to modernity’s principles of motion. This leads to an ultimately more pressing question: Are further modernizations of family law possible and plausible, or will (or must) the family law dynamics encountered in modernity at some point ebb in order to avoid becoming dysfunctional? How might we fashion a completely modern version of marriage that is neither devoid of content nor unattractive? How can European family law continue along a path of modernization without the consequence that its institutions slip into dysfunctionality – and which legal institutions guarantee the necessary capacity for moderation through self-observation and self-imposed restriction?

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