This collection of articles arises from a conference held in Tel Aviv in 2009 at the Concord Research Centre for the Integration of International Law in Israel, School of Law, College of Management Academic Studies. Delegates to the conference came from a variety of professions and areas of expertise and included academics and legal and welfare practitioners. What was common among us, however, was our interest in the international dimensions of both understandings of the family and of the normative systems that define and regulate it. We all believed that understandings of family are situated in and across cultural and economic manifestations of reproduction, dependency and care relations in a global context and that they are regulated in international and regional as much as in domestic law.

In a number of European countries there are fears that foreign, particularly Islamic, family law is becoming entrenched. All parties to this discussion see themselves as under threat. Migrant populations claim their right to cultural identity, while their host countries' domestic populations see a risk to social cohesion. Family law brings the underlying tensions into sharp focus. Cultural and religious identity and family law are interrelated in a number of ways and raise various complex issues. European legal systems have taken various approaches to meeting these challenges, many of which have been apologetic, and few of which have been informed by theory. I propose to examine this complexity and indicate areas in which conflicts may arise by analysing a family-law case involving migrants living transnationally. I will include questions of international private law, comments on the various degrees of consideration accorded to cultural identity within substantive family law, and remarks on models of legal pluralism and the dangers that go along with them. I will conclude with an evaluation of approaches which are process-based rather than institution-based.

This article attempts to unravel the universal human rights implications of family law in the three monotheisms – Jewish, Christian and Muslim. At issue is the requirement of gender equality as justice in the family. This requirement is inherent in the human rights agenda, a novel point of departure in political philosophy and antithetical to the patriarchal family sacralised in the monotheistic religions.

This article analyses the structures and substances of personal systems of family law based on religious affiliation within their social, political and historical contexts, and explores the varied ways in which they implicate the human rights of those governed by these systems, and the way international law and jurisprudence of human rights respond to these challenges. This analysis suggests that looking at the specific manifestations of personal family law systems in concrete contexts illuminates significant human rights implications which have not received sufficient attention in mainstream human rights discourse, for various legal, cultural and political reasons. The contexts which this article will draw on are personal family law systems in Israel, India, Lebanon and Morocco, which comprise a varied sample of family law structures and legal, cultural, social and political contexts.

The practice of Arab women voluntarily renouncing their shares in the family inheritance is well known, having been noticed in several Mediterranean and African countries, including Israel and the West Bank. This practice seems grossly inegalitarian, reflecting many Muslim women's social and economic inferiority and their dependent status. Some Islamic feminists argue that the practice contradicts not only the letter of the sharia, which guarantees women shares in the family inheritance, but also fundamental Islamic principles. Conservatives, however, see the practice as cohering with the spirit of Islam (though not with the letter of sharia), as a voluntary choice by many Muslim women to let their brothers or husbands fulfil their traditional role of providing for their sisters or wives. International institutions concerned with enhancing gender equality have taken the latter view seriously enough to refrain from judging the practice negatively. Our article highlights the Israeli civil courts' diverse responses to the practice: some judges criticise it while others choose a policy of non-interference. The article further discusses the practice and Israeli civil courts' responses in the comparative perspective of Jewish women's practice of renouncing their property and other rights on divorce. Some Jewish husbands make such renunciation a condition of their dissolving the marriage. Israeli civil courts often see such renunciation as an effect of extortion and permit women to rescind it once divorced. We thus conclude with a plea to the civil courts to encourage gender equality among the Arab population to the same extent, at least, to which they promote it among Israel's Jews.

Throughout the history of the modern state, homosexuality has been a legal category, and not simply a medical or a psychiatric one. Fear of that legal subject manifests itself in law and policy not only about ‘the family’ but also about nationhood and citizenship. This is an article about this fear of the ‘Wandering Gay’, about the ways in which this fear has influenced domestic and international law regarding recognition in same-sex relationships, and about ways in which it can be overcome. I begin by introducing the Wandering Gay as a hidden driving cultural concept behind a state's reluctance (and in some places, outright objection) to recognise same-sex relationships. I then compare American and Israeli immigration policies concerning immigrants' sexuality, and discuss the different focuses of each system: while American policy (prior to its reform) was mainly concerned with ‘sexual deviancy’, Israeli policy was concerned with otherness, particularly non-Jewishness, in general. However, as I argue, homosexuality is one way in which individuals are ‘othered’ by Israeli immigration policy, since they cannot acquire legal status based on their marital status. I then contend that marriage is being used as a weapon against LGBT individuals, and that this is done from within a discourse that elevates marriage to a right that only heterosexual citizens are entitled to. I argue that marriage is used as a means of discrimination against minorities, and I question whether the proper solution to this violation of human rights is indeed to add more and more minorities to the privileged class of those who can marry, thus equipping them with the weapon of marriage to use against others.

This article analyses the way in which the use of the rights to family life and to private life has evolved as a bar to the deportation of immigrants. The analysis focuses on the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) with respect to the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which uses a rights-based framework; and of the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) with respect to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which uses a status-based framework. It notes the interaction between the two bodies and the attempt in each forum to modify its normative framework to follow the other's. The article further considers the implications of each normative framework for both integrated immigrants and other immigrants.

For scholars of law, the turn to Michel Foucault's works almost inevitably invokes an apology, a qualification, or a caveat. With the acknowledgement that Foucault never offers a sustained account of law as an ‘object of inquiry’ comes a sense that his work might nonetheless offer important insight into contemporary forms of law and modern legal problems. The difficulty with which many scholars struggle is how to begin from the position of this ‘nevertheless’ or ‘however’ that marks the contingent ground from which they argue. That is, scholars grapple with how to make Foucault say something about law when what he says is indirect or culled from several different works.