Privacy in Family Law

Project period: 2024-2027

In family law scholarship, many authors take it for granted that an essential function of the family is ensuring a place of private life. Privacy is thereby considered a value of the family as well as of family law. At the same time, however, it is emphasized that the guarantee of privacy is more than the shielding of a space from regulation. The issue quickly becomes complicated at that point when the law seeks to formulate and embrace a fitting concept of privacy as the concept is one as fundamental as it is contentious and controversial. The theoretical structures and legal mechanisms with which privacy is realized in family law are correspondingly varied; they manifest themselves equally in the absence as well as in the presence of law.

This research project maps the essential instruments with which family law shapes and realizes legal concepts of privacy. The aim is to uncover guiding structural principles and to identify fundamental distinctions. The study not only draws deeply upon contemporary German legal theory but also tests the integrability and functionality of social-philosophy concepts of privacy for legal analysis.