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This article charts the constellation of vision and research that underpin a new era in the Family Court of Australia, focusing on the development and outcomes of two programs that have attempted to meaningfully reinforce the centrality of children's rights and needs in family court proceedings. The Less Adversarial Trial and its front-end Child Responsive Program (CRP) both aim to minimise the potentially negative effects on parents of a litigation process by application of a more intensive case management model adopted with the intention of altering the parents’ experience of the journey. Key features of this approach include the adoption of inquisitorial techniques, which include direct consultation with children through the CRP, modified application of the rules of evidence, and strong judicial management rather than being party driven. Findings from two studies into the pilot Children's Cases Program (now the Less Adversarial Trial) and the CRP are discussed. Significantly, evidence is outlined around the capacity of the new processes to impact on both the co-parenting and parent–child relationships and to influence short-term adjustment of complex families in high-conflict dispute. In encouraging a more active focus on children's needs and views and by facilitating a stronger voice for children in proceedings that affect them, both initiatives advance Australia's commitments under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we respond to commentary by Patrick Parkinson on our research into allegations of child sexual abuse in the Family Court of Australia (both published in AJSI, vol 56, 2021). Parkinson's primary focus was on two of our key findings: (a) that the child was deemed to be at an unacceptable risk of harm in only 12 per cent of fully contested cases; and (b) that in only 14 per cent of the fully contested cases were the allegations coded as being believed. Parkinson suggested that the fully contested cases are disproportionately those in which police, child protection department staff or independent evaluators have been unable to reach a clear view; and that typically these cases involve children under 7 years old. He concluded that the Family Court was in the "too hard basket" of the child protection system and that our findings were not necessarily indicative of systemic failure. We think both suggestions, as well as the "too hard basket" conclusion, are problematic and explain why. Parkinson's comments have stimulated us to reflect on how Australian family courts are managing this important and complex area of decision‐making and what changes may be required into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study shows how legal evidentiary rules intended to make trials fair also enable biodiversity loss, even in courts charged with environmental protection. The common law is premised on two types of rules. The first, substantive laws, set rules for how society should function—obstructing and punishing some behaviours while enabling and rewarding others. In contrast, procedural laws are intended to level the playing field when there is a dispute over substantive rules during litigation. This case study concerns a routine environmental dispute over land development in Sydney, Australia. It demonstrates how, by enabling courts to determine what evidence will and will not be considered, procedural rules and practices drive substantive outcomes by rendering certain places, dynamics, and connections visible and capable of judicial action while obscuring others. Specifically, the court's efforts to use evidentiary tools to make litigation more efficient drove substantive outcomes in two ways. First, work to narrow evidence to address factual disputes also narrowed the court's geographic scale of analysis to the property boundaries of the site, thus obscuring broader threats to a critically endangered ecological community. Second, these procedural evidentiary decisions drove substantive outcomes undermining biodiversity protection, while concealing their inherently substantive nature. Combined with the tendency of the court to use procedural informality to promote compromise between the parties, and a broader juridical treatment of intact ecological communities as species that can largely be moved at will, the evidentiary rules enabled an environmentally focused court to enable the victory of development over species protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although judges may be well intended when taking an oath to be impartial when they reach the bench, psychological and legal literature suggests that their legal approaches, behaviour, and decision‐making processes are subconsciously impacted by biases stemming from and influenced by their attitudes, ideology, backgrounds, and previous experiences. Drawing from prior models of sources of bias in legal contexts and existing literature on judges, this paper discusses and models potential sources of pro‐prosecution bias in judges with prosecutorial backgrounds. These include (1) professional and self‐selection into the judiciary; (2) prosecutorial socialization and attitudes that can shape a prosecutorial mindset; and (3) the effects of common unconscious biases, confirmation bias and role induced bias, that may shape judicial behaviour through formed beliefs and approaches stemming from the prosecutorial mindset and selection into the judiciary. As the vast majority of judges are former prosecutors in the U.S. as well as in many other countries, this paper considers possible ways to deal with pro‐prosecution bias and the potential importance of diversifying judges' professional backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mediation was brought into family court cases as a divorce litigation alternative. Today, parents are not only encouraged but mandated across most U.S. states to consider mediation before further court action can be taken. Research has not kept up with understanding how publicly mandated and subsidized mediation services become part of court cases and possible case resolution. This article reviews how mediation has evolved from outside alternative to family court "workhorse" within a family dispute resolution paradigm centered on shared parenting as in the best interest of children. Research results from a family court mediation program are presented to highlight how parents encountered and responded to mediation as an embedded part of today's family dispute resolution paradigm/court system. Especially in cases that keep coming back to court, family dispute resolution has become a means of "making family" as much as supporting family separation. Implications for practice include limitations of a mediation service as provided in an under‐resourced court and ultimate reliance upon parents to uphold the best interest standard through ongoing co‐parenting interactions. Key points for the family court community: Mediation was brought into family law to as a divorce litigation alternative in the wake of "no‐fault" family law reforms in the 1970s and 1980s.The evidence base for mandated mediation in child custody cases continues to lie primarily from studies of divorce cases and of mediation as divorce litigation alternative. However, divorce is only one reason why today's litigants file child custody cases.This study provides empirical data on how today's parents engage in mandated mediation services through focus in one U.S. family court program.This article calls for an updated research paradigm in which mandated mediation provides more than a litigation alternative and, in some cases, becomes a means through which the state is "making family" through pressuring parents to share parenting responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allegations of child sexual abuse pose agonisingly difficult issues for families, family law professionals and the courts. We present data from the population (N=521) of Family Court of Australia judgements containing allegations of child sexual abuse published in the Australasian Legal Information Institute's Australian database. Our data cover all in‐scope judgements published between mid‐2012 and mid‐2019, of which 71 dealt with cases that were uncontested. A further 70 were contested but the allegations were abandoned before the end of the trial. We classified the remaining 380 cases as "fully contested". Of this group: (a) in 14% of cases, judicial officers expressed a direct or clearly implied belief that the allegations of child sexual abuse were true; (b) risk of sexual harm to a child was found in 12% of judgements; (c) when no risk of sexual harm was found, judges were more than twice as likely to regard the allegations as genuine but mistaken rather than to have been deliberately misleading; (d) just under two‐thirds of allegedly unsafe parents had the time they spent with their child(ren) increased by the court; and (e) in 17% of judgements, children's living arrangements were changed to the allegedly unsafe parent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports an evaluation study of co‐parenting education services in a pilot project on co‐parenting support services in Hong Kong. Based on the Cooperative Parenting Institute (CPI) model, there are two levels of education program: Level 1 is an information‐based program delivered through talks or lecture format; and Level 2 is participatory, interactive workshops. The study results would provide preliminary support to the effectiveness of the CPI‐based education programs in reducing inter‐parental conflicts with additional effectiveness on the reduction of putting children in the middle for parents participating in the Level 2 program. In response to the findings, it is recommended to match the participants' level of conflicts with the appropriate level of program. Parents with high conflict need more intensive program. Consequently, a range of mutual support and booster sessions is recommended to maintain the parents' commitment to co‐parenting after the education. The CPI‐based model is recommended to be the reference or protocol for training the social workers of related services. Moreover, cross‐disciplinary training may equip supporting professions such as judges, lawyers, and mediators with a common framework to facilitate appropriate court order or advice on the appropriate level of the education program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to Justice issues have shown us that our traditional adversarial dispute resolution model is slow, costly, divisive and complex ‐ for both self represented litigants and those with lawyers. Addressing these issues through the provision of information to litigants has not been enough. Family Justice reports speak of the need for "culture change" and judicial leadership in affecting change. Judges have created options to the traditional adversarial model with processes such as Settlement Conferences, Binding Settlement Conferences, Informal Trials and Case Management. COVID19 has "forced" courts to embrace Virtual and telephone proceedings. There are now choices in Court based, Judicially‐run dispute resolution processes. Nova Scotia's Supreme Court, Family Division has a process "add" ‐ an eCourt Pilot instituting an electronic, chat‐based Court process that gives litigants and Judges a new "choice" of process. Practitioner's Key Points: The traditional adversary system cannot adequately address access to Justice issues such as slowness, cost, divisiveness, and complexity.Access to Justice issues exist for litigants with and without lawyers.Judges should be leaders in change.Case management and new Judicial dispute resolution processes (such as Settlement Conferences, Binding Settlement Conferences, Informal Trials) have been and should be part of the change needed to address Access to Justice issues.Nova Scotia has embarked on an eCourt Pilot ‐ a Judge led chat room form of hearing to add another choice of process to the options available for addressing Judicial Family Law Dispute resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the business ethics literature, many argue that managerial decision making ought to be improved by more robust ethical concerns. Some see the virtue of "practical wisdom" as the key for improved managerial decision making. However, because of the epistemic limitations confronting decision makers in the face of irreducible market complexity, there is a risk that practical wisdom, employed in the context of day-to-day managerial decision making, becomes an impractical concept. Nevertheless, if the attempt to incorporate virtue ethics (and its related concepts) into business practices is laudable, if indeed a virtuous life is worth pursuing and practical wisdom plays an essential role toward that end, it is important to attempt to salvage practical wisdom and uncover its appropriate usage. Thus, this article pursues two major ends. First, upon surveying some of the prominent and standard usages of the term, it articulates concerns, rooted in epistemic limitations, about the way that practical wisdom appears in business ethics literature. Second, it offers a new way forward for understanding "practical wisdom." By contextualizing day-to-day, rule-based managerial decision making within the ethical value of the market order, practical wisdom reappears as the higher-order capacity to pursue vocations, as morally worthwhile projects, in business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that lawyers and courts are largely oblivious to scientific insights regarding the value and limitations of latent fingerprint evidence. It proceeds through a detailed historical analysis of the way fingerprint evidence has been reported and challenged. It compares legal responses with mainstream scientific research. Our analysis shows that fingerprint evidence is routinely equated with categorical proof of identity notwithstanding scientific warnings that such an approach is 'indefensible'. We find that legal challenges to latent fingerprint evidence have been uniformly focused on adjectival issues (e.g. compliance with enabling legislation), leaving the validity and accuracy of this subjective comparison technique virtually unexamined since its first reception at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Lack of legal engagement with validity, error and scientific research suggest that adversarial procedures have not worked effectively to secure scientifically reliable expert evidence and that legal personnel struggle with elementary scientific reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on use of medical evidence in the Edinburgh High Court of Justiciary in Scotland. Topics discussed include testimony by legal practitioners invites a reassessment of what it meant to be a forensic expert, students could learn the science and practice of medical jurisprudence in a proactive way and aware of the significance and interest increasingly felt by the public and court in medical witnesses and forensic testimony.

Adjustments to criminal trial processes, called special measures, are available to vulnerable and/or intimidated witnesses giving evidence. Findings from interviews with 13 criminal practitioners suggest that there are notable variations in the uptake of special measures between prosecution witnesses, defence witnesses, and the accused in Crown Court trials. These extend beyond any inequality in their legal provision. This article uses Keith Hawkins's conceptual framework of surround, field, and frames as a heuristic device to understand this differential uptake. The framework delineates the various factors – including the socio‐political, organizational, and attitudinal – which can influence decision‐making practices in relation to special measures. In doing so, this article demonstrates two things. First, that changing the legal provision is unlikely to effect much change in practice, absent specific complementary changes to the field. Second, that Hawkins's framework has potential as an explanatory device in decision‐making contexts outside his own health and safety setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the experience of small claims litigants who use alternative dispute resolution ( ADR) to those who proceed to trial without ADR. ADR had significant immediate and long-term benefits, including improved party attitudes toward and relationship with each other, greater sense of empowerment and voice, increases in parties taking responsibility for the dispute, and increases in party satisfaction with the judiciary. Cases that settled in ADR also were less likely to return to court for an enforcement action within the next year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Informal Domestic Relations Trial (IDRT) process adopted by the Deschutes County, Oregon, Circuit Court is described, evaluated, and compared to simplified family law procedural rules of other jurisdictions. The IDRT process has been created by local court rule, and will soon be adopted statewide in Oregon. The IDRT rule allows parties to choose a simplified trial or hearing format where the parties speak directly to the judge with no direct or cross-examination, nonparty witnesses are limited to experts, the traditional rules of evidence are waived, and all exhibits offered by the parties are admitted. IDRT cases are typically docketed more quickly than traditional trials; last just a couple of hours; and decisions are rendered promptly, usually the day of the hearing or trial. The court retains jurisdiction to modify the process as fairness requires and to divert cases where domestic violence or other reasons render IDRT inappropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to a widespread belief within the legal system that cross-examination is instrumental in uncovering the truth, we examined the effect of cross-examination questioning on the reports of children who had-and had not-been coached to lie. A group of children, aged 6-11 years (N = 65), played three computer games with one of their parents. For half of the pairs, the parents-who acted as confederates-coached their children to make lies of commission concerning the occurrence of two target activities. For the remaining pairs, these two target activities actually occurred, and there was no coaching. Immediately afterwards, children were interviewed about the two activities. Those who-correctly or incorrectly-reported that both activities occurred were retained for the final sample (n = 56); these children were then interviewed again with both neutral questions and cross-examination-style challenges. Neither style of questioning elicited responses that discriminated between liars and truth-tellers: although the accuracy of children who were lying increased in response to cross-examination questions, the accuracy of truth-telling children saw a corresponding decrease. When asked neutral questions, children's responses tended to be consistent with their earlier responses, whether or not those responses were lies. These findings raise important questions about the function that cross-examination might serve in trials involving child witnesses. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changing nature of family court and increasing awareness of mental health challenges force family lawyers to navigate tricky legal, ethical, and practical issues. This article reviews increased complexity for litigants as a result of procedural changes in the current family court, the rise of pro se representation, and statutory changes encouraging shared parental care of children. It analyzes common legal and ethical challenges for attorneys representing potentially impaired clients. It details practical means of supporting clients and increasing their capacity to engage meaningfully in family court matters. This roadmap can guide lawyers in improving their knowledge and skills in order to meet legal and ethical standards for representing family law clients with mental health challenges. Key Points for the Family Court Community: Trends such as procedural changes in the current family court, the rise of pro se representation, and statutory changes encouraging shared parental care of children require significant engagement and competence on the part of litigants., Family attorneys have a complex task in representing a possibly impaired client, as they must gauge the client's level of functioning throughout the legal process to ensure the client has sufficient capacity to participate meaningfully., Legal requirements and ethical guidelines address and shape many aspects of an attorney's interactions with a client living with mental illness., Experienced attorneys can support clients in maximizing their capacity to engage in family court proceedings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brief commentary on practical use of social science research in judicial practice. Key Points for the Family Court Community: Application of Social Science research requires comprehensible educative description by assessing clinicians, with understanding that Judges are not trained in research method. A Judges role is evaluative,. A clinicians report which acknowledges this, and provides and weighs research which expands understanding of options available to Judges is most useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how social anthropologists' expertise was employed in the international war crimes trials heard at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. It tracks how the anthropologists challenged the prosecution experts by raising concerns about their methodology and advancing a fundamental critique of abstract legal categories. The discussion between the experts centred on two contested issues: the character of the armed groups and the phenomenon of forced marriages during the civil war in Sierra Leone. The analysis of the experts' testimonies shows that the anthropologists were engaged in an epistemological contest with the prosecution experts. The article aims at understanding why the anthropologists' arguments had less resonance with the judges than the reports submitted by the prosecution experts. Beyond the courtroom, it also speaks to the general debate about expertise and ways to study it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article endeavors, from a point of view informed by domestic violence ( DV) research, to provide information, options, and tools that may help judicial (and nonjudicial) mediators make settlement processes equitable and safe. While opinions about the use of mediation and judicial dispute resolution in domestic violence cases are polarized, the reality is that the vast majority of these cases are settled by lawyers prior to trial, by judges in dispute resolution processes, by mediators, or by intimate (and formerly intimate) partners themselves. Thus the ultimate goal of this article is not to weigh the merits of settlement against litigation; instead the goal is to support the work of judges and mediators in making settlement processes equitable and safe. Key Points for the Family Court Community Judicial dispute resolution ( JDR) is a recognized component of judicial practice, Some JDR cases will involve intimate partner violence, Identifying and responding to domestic violence violence by type, Screening for domestic violence, Pre-dispute-resolution assessments: of risk, of parties, and of process, Options to enhance due process and safety [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the child's right to be heard in family law proceedings in four international jurisdictions, comparing laws, practices, and attitudes relating to children's participation. It critiques the methods by which children's views are heard and discusses the significant variations in each country's approach to listening to children. The article discusses each system's strengths and weaknesses in promoting children's right to be heard, reviewing international literature and highlighting recent initiatives to promote children's participation, such as the 2010 United Kingdom guidelines for judges meeting with children. The article concludes that there is little consistency in how children's voices are heard in family law matters internationally. One possible explanation is that each jurisdiction differs in its culture of and attitude toward children's rights. Keypoints Children's views in family law matters, Comparative analysis of law and practice in Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Canada, Child's right to be heard [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on participatory observations of trials and extensive interviews with judges, this article examines the operation patterns of the civil justice process in China and explores the underlying reasons behind. It finds that, despite the reform efforts placing more responsibility on the litigants, the Chinese civil proceeding remains largely inquisitorial. The decline of out-court investigation is evident, yet judges rely on a limited form of cross-examination aimed to obtain oral testimony that can be used to justify a decision. This kind of judge-initiated questioning becomes an inexpensive substitute for the previously labor-intensive court investigation. The article further argues that the judges do not adjudicate based on whatever evidence presented by the litigation parties, a change mainly attributed to the institutional constraints to which the judges are subject. They respond to the incentives by handling cases efficiently with the minimum possibility of reversal and complaint. The article concludes by offering theoretical implications on the study of comparative legal process more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Child Protection Mediation Guidelines Workgroup came together under the auspices of the Child Welfare Collaborative Decision Making Network to examine program development and the practice of child protection mediation. The Workgroup convened and began its work in 2010. The resultant Guidelines for Child Protection Mediation were approved by the AFCC Board of Directors in 2012. Keypoints for the Family Court Community Child protection mediation provides an opportunity for families and professionals involved in child abuse and neglect matters to resolve disputes in a safe, inclusive and thoughtful manner., The Guidelines for Child Protection Mediation establish core principles and strategies for establishing and maintaining high-quality child protection mediation programs and practices., The Guidelines for Child Protection Mediation can serve as a roadmap for programs and practitioners to follow in their day-to-day work with families and children who are involved with the child welfare system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a centrepiece of Australia's 2006 family law reforms, the community-based Family Relationship Centres ( FRCs) represented a major development in the Government's commitment to incorporate family relationship services into its family law system. This paper sees FRCs as a logical development of the original conceptualising the Family Court of Australia as a 'helping court'. The paper suggests that the aspiration to create a helping court was partially achieved in 1976 via the creation of an in-house family court counselling service, which was primarily focused not on law and legal principles, but on supporting the ways in which family members were managing the task of redefining relationships. While generally valued by judges and others, this service nonetheless found itself in tension with the Family Court's continued primary commitment to legally informed and adversarially driven negotiation and decision-making processes. Since 2006, the creation of FRCs has spearheaded a family law system that provides relationship-focused interventions away from the courts as the default option for most parenting disputes. Consistent with this aim, there is evidence of a diminished percentage of cases now requiring judicial intervention. The 2006 legislation also provides for courts to conduct 'less adversarial trials.' Paradoxically, this has occurred alongside unequivocal evidence from the Australian Institute of Family Studies' evaluation data that judicial officers are dealing mainly with families displaying seriously dysfunctional attitudes and behaviours. The legal challenge in dealing with these cases is for courts to provide child focused, fair and non-destructive internal processes. In addition, however, it is increasingly clear that to support and help facilitate their decisions, courts also need good working relationships with FRCs and other community based services. FRCs and the 2006 reforms offer the possibility of moving beyond the ideal of a 'helping court' to the broader concept of helping family law system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Should transactional lawyers bear responsibility when their competent actions facilitate unlawful activity by their client? Or is a lawyer's only concern to act in the client's interest by providing her with the advice and support she seeks? The high profile failure of Lehman Brothers provides a unique opportunity to explore these questions in the context of the provision of a legal opinion by a magic circle law firm. A legal opinion which, although as a matter of law was accurate, was a necessary precursor to an accounting treatment by Lehman Brothers which was described by the Lehman's Bankruptcy Examiner as 'balance sheet manipulation'. The article argues that the law's existing understanding of when consequential responsibility should be imposed on those who assist another's wrongdoing provides a theory and a tool-kit whose application can be justifiably extended to the professional regulation of transactional lawyers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Blind expertise' has been proposed as an institutional solution to the problem of bias in expert witness testimony in litigation ( Robertson ). At the request of a litigant, an intermediary selects a qualified expert and pays the expert to review a case without knowing which side requested the opinion. This article reports an experiment that tests the hypothesis that, compared to traditional experts, such 'blinded experts' will be more persuasive to jurors. A national sample of mock jurors ( N = 275) watched an online video of a staged medical malpractice trial, including testimony from two medical experts, one of whom (or neither, in the control condition) was randomly assigned to be a blind expert. We also manipulated whether the judge provided a special jury instruction explaining the blinding concept. Descriptively, the data suggest juror reluctance to impose liability. Despite an experimental design that included negligent medical care, only 46 percent of the jurors found negligence in the control condition, which represents the status quo. Blind experts, testifying on either side, were perceived as significantly more credible, and were more highly persuasive, in that they doubled (or halved) the odds of a favorable verdict, and increased (or decreased) simulated damages awards by over $100,000. The increased damages award appears to be due to jurors hedging their damages awards, which interacted with the blind expert as a driver of certainty. Use of a blind expert may be a rational strategy for litigants, even without judicial intervention in the form of special jury instructions or otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introducing a special issue of this journal, Youngs discussed the desirability of, but problems in realising, greater collaboration between psychology and the criminal investigation and trial processes. This paper acknowledges the value of investigative psychology's potential contribution but argues that the alleged incompatibilities, between psychology and law, are based upon too narrow a conception of law and legal action. A direct approach, with considerable potential for productive, principled, and practical research, already exists. It involves focusing on the evidence, assessing it along each of its three credentials, and identifying the nature of the inferential reasoning involved. This paper identifies a number of ways in which practical, inter-disciplinary and collaboration could and should be developed to ensure that the courts receive quality evidence. It also argues that more attention should be paid to abductive inferential reasoning, both by researchers and courts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on child interviewing has burgeoned over the past 25 years as expectations about children's agency, competence, and participation in society have changed. This article identifies recent trends in research, policy, and theory with implications for the practice of interviewing children in cases of contested divorce and for the weight to be given the information children provide. A number of fields of relevant research are identified, including studies of families who have participated in the family law system, studies of child witnesses in the field, experimental studies of the effects of interview techniques on children's memory and suggestibility, and ethnographic methods that elicit children's views of their own experiences. Finally, a set of 10 principles for practice are delineated based on the best available science. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyberspace is a new frontier for both international and domestic family law. On the one hand, it presents great opportunities for society and, on the other, great dangers particularly for children. This paper explores a number of issues from a domestic and international family law perspective. These issues include: •What is cyberspace, how has it emerged, and where is it likely to go? •What are the potential dangers for children that arise from children's engagement with cyberspace? •What is the nature and extent of domestic and international family laws that protect children from the dangers of cyberspace? •What are some of the present and emerging policy issues that impact on these matters? Cyber-abuse is a term that encompasses a wide range of aggressive online activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic violence is a common driver of family dissolution. Cases involving domestic violence are core business in the Australian family law jurisdiction. Family mediation is growing as an alternative to litigation for separated families in dispute over parenting arrangements. The specialized intervention of child-inclusive mediation is increasingly used to resolve family disputes in the best interests of the child. However, this child-empowering practice is often avoided by mediators where domestic violence is an issue. This article identifies some complex factors that need to be addressed and researched for appropriate development and use of child-inclusive mediation to enhance social justice for child subjects of parenting disputes from violent families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the implications of allowing witnesses to give evidence in trials from other locations through the medium of ‘live link’. Academic commentary on this technological aid has to date focused on the impact it has on the defendant's right to cross-examine or the ability to judge demeanour. Whilst these issues are important, this essay focuses on a less commented on implication of live link; its impact on our conception of where and how adjudication takes place. Particular emphasis is placed on the ways in which the courtroom as the prime site of legal practice is in danger of being dematerialized and the effect this is likely to have on the legitimacy of the trial as an authentic legal and public ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the relationship between the executive and the judiciary in respect of a legal case that provoked public outrage. This outrage entered into the media spectacle and was channelled by the executive into calling a royal commission. The royal commission was charged with re-examining the police actions and the legal case. However, hidden behind its narrow terms of reference was the larger question of justice being ‘blind’ to a network of privilege. As such, the royal commission had the potential to threaten the independence of the judiciary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents descriptions of the articles and the topics covered in this issue of "Family Court Review." An essay by Alastair Nicholson, former chief judge of the Family Court of Australia, discusses corporal punishment by parents. The issue also includes a special section of articles discussing international perspectives about the inclusion of the voices of children in family law proceedings. The articles are edited by Jennifer McIntosh, clinical child psychologist, family therapist, and research consultant.

This study compared outcomes over 1 year for two groups of separated parents, who attended two different forms of brief therapeutic mediation for entrenched parenting disputes. The two interventions each targeted psychological resolution of parental conflict, enhanced parental reflective function, and associated reduction of distress for their children. The child-focused (CF) intervention actively supported parents to consider the needs of their children, but without any direct involvement of the children, while the child-inclusive (CI) intervention incorporated separate consultation by a specialist with the children in each family, and consideration of their concerns with parents in the mediation forum. Repeated measures at baseline, 3 months, and 1 year postintervention explored changes over time and across treatments in conflict management, subjective distress, and relationship quality for all family members. Enduring reduction in levels of conflict and improved management of disputes, as reported by parents and children, occurred for both treatment groups in the year after mediation. The CI intervention had several impacts not evident in the other treatment group, related to relationship improvements and psychological well-being. These effects were strongest for fathers and children. Agreements reached by the CI group were significantly more durable, and the parents in this group were half as likely to instigate new litigation over parenting matters in the year after mediation as were the CF parents. The article explores the potential of CI divorce mediation to not only safely include many children in family law matters related to them, but also to promote their developmental recovery from high-conflict separation, through enhanced emotional availability of their parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper charts some major differences in the way in which evidence of the defendant's character is treated in France when compared with practice in England and Wales. Such evidence is more pervasive and visible (especially in the most serious cases) and its relevance is more broadly defined. Further, its presentation is shaped by a developed and positive conception of the French citizen. In part, these differences may be explained by differences in procedural tradition: the unitary trial structure in France, the dominance of fact—finding by the professional judiciary, and the rejection of general exclusionary rules of evidence. But a full explanation requires French legal culture to be understood in the context of French political culture. This reveals a very different conception of relations between state and citizen to that of Anglo-Saxon liberalism. As a result the legitimacy of trial is seen in terms of the rehabilitation of the accused as a citizen of the state rather than simply the punishment of a particular infraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Same-sex marriage is a contentious, politically charged issue full of diverse, complicated considerations. In 2003, Massachusetts joined the list of jurisdictions to legalize same-sex marriage, the first in the U.S. Now that same-sex couples can marry in particular international jurisdictions, governments must address how to sensitively allow these couples to divorce. Same-sex couples have a unique set of needs and issues, most clearly demonstrated if children are involved in the marriage. This Note argues for the creation of mediation programs in American jurisdictions with same-sex marriage, to specifically determine child custody agreements upon divorce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]