Friday, March 20th (WCL- Room 603)

3:00- 3:10 Welcome

• Dean Claudio Grossman, Washington College of Law
• Ann Shalleck, Washington College of Law
• Fernanda Nicola, Washington College of Law

3:15-4:15 - Opening Remarks: The Evolution of Family Law in the United States and in the World

• Duncan Kennedy, Harvard Law School- "Family Law as a Category in Savigny’s ‘System of Modern Roman Law"
• Janet Halley, Harvard Law School- "When is the family? A Comparative Research Agenda"

4:15-5:30 Framing Comparative Family Law

This introductory panel offers a frame to begin our conversation on methods, genealogies, hidden agendas and policy implications of Comparative Family Law.

Chair: Ann Shalleck, Washington College of Law

• Kerry Abrams, University of Virginia School of Law
• Mary Anne Case, University of Chicago Law School
• Isabel C. Jaramillo- Sierra, Universidad de los Andes
• Sylvia Kang’ara, University of Washington School of Law
• Fernanda Nicola, Washington College of Law
  

Saturday, March 21st (WCL- Room 603)

9:00- 10:30 Post-colonial Family Law: Colonization, De-Colonization

Questions: What is the traditional role that family law plays in colonization/decolonization and nation building by creating a local culture or transplanting western ideas? Does your work offer alternative genealogies or unmask hidden agendas to traditional accounts of family law? What is comparative about the methodologies or analyses that these questions invoke?

Chair: Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Washington College of Law

• Rawia Aburabia, Washington College of Law
• Yun-Ru Chen, Harvard Law School
• Domenico Francavilla, University of Turin
• Bianca Gardella Tedeschi, Universita’ del Piemonte Oriental

10:45- 12:15 Modernization and Tradition in the Identity of the Family

Questions: In what ways does family law in academic projects or regulatory policies of the modern state represent a crucial element of legal and/or social modernization? In what sense do these questions move us to compare family law or other legal regimes that implicate the family?

Chair: Janet Halley, Harvard Law School

• Lisa Jabaily, Washington College of Law
• Lisa Kelly, Harvard Law School
• Maria Rosaria Marella, University of Perugia
• Michelle McKinley, University of Oregon School of Law
• Philomila Tsoukala, Georgetown Law School

12:15- 1:15 Lunch

1:15- 3:15 The Economic Family

Questions: What are the economic uses of family law institutions? What are the distributive outcomes of regulatory regimes on family members? What is the relation between domestic and international legal orders: for instance, how do international trade and economic development policies enlist the family as a site of economic regulation? Does asking these questions help us to compare?

Chair: Ann Shalleck, Washington College of Law

• Adrienne Davis, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
• Daniela Kraiem, Washington College of Law
• Havva G. Guney-Ruebenacker, Harvard Law School
• Claire Smearman, University of Baltimore School of Law
• Barbara Stark, Hofstra University School of Law

3:30- 5:30 Comparative Rights/Identity Discourses in Family Law as Public Policy

Questions: How is the family increasingly politicized? We would like panelists to think about individual rights orientation, criminalization of behaviors and more broadly about the constitutionalization of the family. What are the emerging rights/identity discourses in comparative constitutional law or criminal law relating to the family? Can we imagine a comparative critique of rights?

Chair: Pamela Bridgewater, Washington College of Law

• Libby Adler, Northeastern University School of Law
• Pascale Fournier, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law
• Aya Gruber, University of Iowa, College of Law
• Ummni Khan, Carleton University Department of Law
• Rachel Rebouche, Washington College of Law
• Jennifer Reich, University of Denver