Can you really have a civilized divorce without an expensive and stressful court battle? Ending a marriage is always difficult, but it doesn’t need to be fraught with financial or emotional conflict. This book guides you through a negotiated divorce, using alternatives to court, such as divorce mediation or a new approach called, "collaborative divorce."

“A fascinating judicial study. The importance of the modern high court’s docket is so thoroughly and expertly chronicled in this book: reapportionment, courtroom cameras, personal injury, family law, environmental law, capital punishment, criminal justice, and equal justice under law.”—Thomas E. Baker, coauthor of Appellate Courts: Structures, Functions, Processes, and Personnel “A highly readable portrait of a crucial time in the history of the state high court. It brings to life the jurists and lawyers who contributed so much to contemporary Florida law.”—Mary Ziegler, author of After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate “A richly sourced, thoroughly researched, and entertaining account of one of the most significant eras in the history of what is arguably the most important (and least reported) branch of Florida government. Tells not only how the court’s decisions impact people’s lives but also how the personalities and life experience of new justices lead to evolutions in the law.”—Martin A. Dyckman, author of A Most Disorderly Court: Scandal and Reform in the Florida Judiciary “Necessary reading for anyone interested in law and politics in Florida. Makes historical figures come alive.”—Jon L. Mills, author of Privacy in the New Media Age This third volume in the history of the Florida Supreme Court describes the court during its most tumultuous years. Amid the upheaval of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, the story begins with reform in the Florida court system. It includes the court’s first black justice, Joseph Hatchett; Governor Reubin Askew’s new system for merit selection of justices; and revision of Article V, the section of the state constitution dealing with the judiciary. Neil Skene details landmark court decisions; the introduction of cameras in court; changes to media law, personal injury law, and family and divorce law; privacy rights; gay rights; death penalty cases; and the appointment of the first female justice, Rosemary Barkett. Shining a light on the often invisible work that informs the law, Skene recognizes lawyers and lower-court judges whose arguments and opinions have shaped court rulings. He integrates firsthand stories from justices with documents, articles, and cases. The result is an absorbing portrayal of a judicial institution adapting to a turbulent time of deep political and social change.

This important new text is the product of several years of research of the family law of fifteen Commonwealth Caribbean jurisdictions. It is the first and only legal text that comprehensively covers all the main substantive areas of spousal family law, including marriage, divorce, financial support, property rights and domestic violence. The rights of the statutory spouse in the jurisdictions of Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago are examined, thus addressing, on a jurisdictional basis, an important area of spousal family that is seldom covered in English family law texts. The book also covers the number and variations of divorce regimes applicable to the region – the matrimonial offence divorce model of Guyana and Montserrat, the English five fact model of Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, Grenada, Anguilla, and St Vincent and the Grenadines, the hybrid model of Antigua and Barbuda, Belize and St Kitts and Nevis, and the no fault model of Jamaica and Barbados. This book will prove an indispensable resource for law students and legal academics, as well as for family law practitioners across the English-speaking Caribbean. Other professionals, including sociologists and social workers, will also find the book useful and informative.

Few challenges to the modern dream of democratic citizenship appear greater than the presence of severe ethnic, religious, and linguistic divisions in society. With their diverse religions and ethnic communities, the Southeast Asian countries of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia have grappled with this problem since achieving independence after World War II. Each country has on occasion been torn by violence over the proper terms for accommodating pluralism. Until the Asian economic crisis of 1997, however, these nations also enjoyed one of the most sustained economic expansions the non-Western world has ever seen. This timely volume brings together fifteen leading specialists of the region to consider the impact of two generations of nation-building and market-making on pluralism and citizenship in these deeply divided Asian societies. Examining the new face of pluralism from the perspective of markets, politics, gender, and religion, the studies show that each country has developed a strikingly different response to the challenges of citizenship and diversity. The contributors, most of whom come Southeast Asia, pay particular attention to the tension between state and societal approaches to citizenship. They suggest that the achievement of an effectively participatory public sphere in these countries will depend not only on the presence of an independent "civil society," but on a synergy of state and society that nurtures a public culture capable of mediating ethnic, religious, and gender divides. The Politics of Multiculturalism will be of special interest to students of Southeast Asian history and society, anthropologists grappling with questions of citizenship and culture, political scientists studying democracy across cultures, and all readers concerned with the prospects for civility and tolerance in a multicultural world.

Cultural and religious identity and family law are inter-related in a number of ways and raise various complex issues. European legal systems have taken various approaches to meeting these challenges. This book examines this complexity and indicates areas in which conflicts may arise by analysing examples from legislation and court decisions in Germany, Switzerland, France, England and Spain.