It was certainly serendipity that I should be an Associate at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge in the spring of 1973, when I received a letter from Ze’ev Falk, which was forwarded to me from my home institution, Boston College Law School. In the letter Ze’ev proposed a meeting of family law scholars in Birmingham, England. Since I was in England, a trip to Birmingham, a city I had never visited, sounded interesting. I had no idea what to expect, nor who would be in attendance. My wife Joan, and my two young sons, drove to Birmingham, never realising that the meeting would have an enormous impact on me, both professionally and personally. Indeed, the meeting would change my life.

It also changed the course of family law. One of the consequences of the meeting was the decision to create a society – the International Society of Family Law (ISFL) – that would hold an annual meeting and bring together family law scholars on a global basis. Of the scholars present at the meeting, Ze’ev Falk, J. Neville Turner, Tony Manchester, Frank Bates, Alastair Bissett-Johnson, Aidan Gough and John Eekelaar stand out in my memory. Little did I realise at that time that John Eekelaar would become not only a co-author in a number of publications, but a very close friend. What is so interesting about the meeting was the fact that all of us, mostly young scholars, were seriously interested in family law as an area for research and teaching. That is particularly noteworthy because in the United States, at that time, family law was not considered an important part of a law school curriculum, even though it was, and is, a subject found in most American bar examinations, and is a major area for law practice. That has changed, and family law now takes its place with contracts, torts, property, business associations, constitutional law and procedure in the teaching of fundamental principles of law. Indeed, it encompasses contemporary social issues in American society, like same-sex marriage, reproductive technologies and abortion.