Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law

Biography and Demography.
The law of demographic structural change in comparative perspective

Project period: 2025-2028

Family Laws in Flux

Japan and Germany are experiencing demographically driven structural transformation due to an aging population and declining birth rates. We aim to compare the impact of these changes on legal concepts and the role of Japanese and German law in coping with these changes.

To this end, we will examine whether and to what extent legal concepts in areas such as marriage, the protection of adults, assisted reproduction, elderly care, succession, and social security have changed as a result of demographic structural change. Are there debates over reform that are based on demographic structural change? Have the practical functions of certain legal institutions changed? In particular, we want to gain a more precise picture of whether and how recent demographic structural change in Germany and Japan has affected the extent to which aging and declining birth rates are seen as a task for the state or more as an individual matter of personal biography.

Other Interesting Articles

Adoption: Models, Motives, and Meanings

Family Laws in Flux

Legal systems that allow adoption thereby enable a legal redefinition of family. Such a process cannot be taken from granted. Looking back through history and around the world, we are confronted with a complex array of attitudes and legal concepts regarding adoption.

Structural Changes in Guardianship

Family Laws in Flux

As of 1 January 2023, German guardianship law underwent a structural change with the entry into force of reform legislation adopted in 2021. This research project aims to record and analyse the extent and focus of this structural change.

Physical Self-determination: Patients, Children, Care Recipients

Family Laws in Flux Legal concepts regarding personhood privacy and private life

Physical self-determination is understood as a human right. Nevertheless, physical self-determination has never been an equal right enjoyed by all people; rather, it is a right with gradations. To this day, the right of physical self-determination is different for children and recipients of care than it is for ‘normal’ adults.

Sibling Relationships in the Law and the Social Sciences

Extra-legal Perspectives for Legal Research Family Laws in Flux

Although siblings are part of the innermost family circle, family law scholars have thus far paid little attention to their legal position. The present interdisciplinary research project aims to both portray and close this gap.

Favour Relationships

Family Laws in Flux

If legal systems prematurely classify assistance as a favour or an act of good will, expectations of legal protection can be disappointed. Conversely, the law can prove to be dysfunctional if it sets the threshold for a contractual relationship (too) low. The aim of this research project is to systematize and analyse the regulatory strategies adopted by legal systems in respect of favours or acts of good will.

Family Law and Nationality

Family Laws in Flux

Family law is closely intertwined with the law of nationality. In particular, a person's nationality is linked to his or her line of descent. Legislators and practitioners therefore face the task of harmonizing areas of law that are already subject to their own individual dynamics. In addition, questions of nationality often have an international dimension, such that further complexity is added by the need to coordinate between the various family laws of third countries.

Family Law Under the Conditions of Late Modernity

Extra-legal Perspectives for Legal Research Family Laws in Flux

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?