12 – 15 July 2023 – Antwerp
The programme of the event – https://isflhome.org/conferences/forthcoming-conferences/18th-world-conference/
Description of the event
The conference title echoed Alison Diduck’s book title Law’s Families (Cambridge University Press, 2003), in which she addresses the tension between the conception of the family in family law and policy, and how we actually do family in our daily lives. The conference explored and critically examined who the “law’s families” are and what role family law plays and should play. The conference was intended to be inclusive, extending to a diverse range of topics and methods. Panels were clustered alongside their topic (partners; parents & children; the extended family) or method (international and comparative approaches; interdisciplinary approaches; and approaches pertaining to conflict handling).
As the 18th World Conference also marks the ISFL Golden Jubilee, a Jubilee stream covered the past and future of family law.
The members of both the International Society of Family Law and the Central European Academy had space to promote their activities and present their papers especially during the special panel devoted to the changes.
Zdeňka Králíčková opened the block of presentations during the panel „Changing Perspectives in National Family Law 2: Central and Eastern Europe“. Her paper was titled „Changes in Families and Family Law: On Law´s Families in the Czech Legal Order“.
She stressed that we all know that we have so much in common, not only due to political reasons, Soviet family law influence etc. in Central and Eastern Europe.
She reminded that the International Society of Family Law was established in 1973 and that families, family life and family law looked like very different 50 years ago. Family law was a traditional marriage centric family law with fixed perceptions of gender roles.
Then she mentioned that there were big changes in Europe, or everywhere, later on. She added, that in this year, in 1998, the Parliament of the Czech Republic passed the great amendment to the Act on the Family from 1963 that was originally designed according to the soviet doctrine. She said that legislative changes to family law, that took place in the year of 1998, radically directed its later development in the Czech Republic and that even these days there are changes.
The portrait of family has been changing, which is reflected not only in the Czech Republic, but in legal orders of different countries as well as in the case law of the European court of Human Rights and other Human Rights Courts. To illustrate the point, she started by talking
about the situation in the Czech Republic in more details. The question she posed to herself was whether the Czech Republic reflects the changes in family and family life adequately and whether there should be more legal innovations in the future.
She concluded the presentation with statement that it is not easy to describe family and family life in the Czech Republic. The statistical date might help to illustrate the point. However, there is not enough relevant literature to interpret the data.
In general, there are less and less marriages in the Czech Republic and a lot of divorces. There is quite low natality/fertility (1,7 in the last decade – less than in communist past which was 1,9 in 1989, but more in 2000 when it was only 1,1).
And in addition, some children are unwanted and left in baby-boxes or abandoned by their mothers in the hospitals etc. No every child is adopted.
Almost 50 per cent of children are born out of wedlock which creates a lot of problems for single mothers and for legally or socially fatherless children as well.
Besides that, there are same sex couples who desire adopt children or call for regulation of surrogate motherhood.
Some questions are still taboo, for instance assisted reproduction for singles.
Important Constitutional Court decisions and pending drafts opened discussion on further changes in Czech Family Law, although new civil code was passed only few years ago.
There was no discussion to this paper immediately.
However, later, during and at the end of the panel „Changing Perspectives in National Family Law 2: Central and Eastern Europe“ a very fruitful discussion has developed, not only on general issues of family development, forms of family life and family law, but also on particular aspects and new phenomena. It can be said that the minor child and his or her all-round protection as the centre of family law has been widely discussed, especially in relation to the new concept of parental responsibility. It is common knowledge that, especially in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, many changes have taken place in the last few years, which have been reflected in both written law and case law.
Following other papers within the panel, in particular those of Lilla Garayová, Veronika Kissová and Piotr Fiedorczyk, the new notion of children’s rights in the context of their position in the family and parental responsibility was discussed. Separate attention was paid to the position of the child and the rights of the child born from surrogacy, especially in relation to the paper of Denisa Kotroušová.
All the panellists and the audience agreed that the development of family law in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe is not over, that it is necessary to look for new ways to protect especially minors in specific situations, including, among others, a legals tatus of a child born from surrogacy and child trafficking.
