Catching family diversity in a legal questionnaire
Dans le cadre du volet Homosexualités et familles homosexuelles du projet européen Families and societies, nous accueillons actuellement à l’Ined José María Lorenzo Villaverde, juriste et chercheur à Leiden Law School (Leiden University)
A legal questionnaire accross europe : elaboration, troubles and possibilities beyond Europe
An increasing number of countries have been making their family
laws more diverse. Now, more jurisdictions recognise marital and
non/marital, formalised and non/formalised, different-sex and
same/sex family forms. What are the legal consequences of all these
different formats in different countries? How do they compare?
In order to capture this legal diversity, a detailed legal
questionnaire has been created under the direction of Prof. Kees
Waaldijk at Leiden Law School to compare relevant legal aspects of
three "legal family formats": marriage, registered partnership and
informal cohabitation. The questions are divided according to six
legally relevant transitions that families may go through:
formalisation, financial and other troubles, parenting,
immigration, splitting up, and death. Legal experts from some 25
countries will answer the questions.
The legal questionnaire is being transformed in an online
questionnaire at INED. Later, the results shall be available in an
online legal database which will enable further legal and
socio-legal analysis.
The presentation will explore the process of elaboration of the
legal questionnaire. It will present alternative approaches to its
preparation (socio-legal, black letter law approaches), the legal
hypotheses of the research, the selection of questions and some
problems that had to be faced during its preparation (how to deal
with multi-legal jurisdictions, discussions on single questions,
mixing the legal with the technical, etc).
Furthermore, the possibility of extending this legal survey beyond
Europe, in particular, to the American continent, will be
discussed.