Through the ‘Family Responsibilities’ research theme, Centre members have made a distinctive contribution to the theorising, academic analysis of, and debates on, responsibility as well as rights in family law and policy. Their collaborative work enables them to bring their individual expertise to research on a range of issues within family law including parental and professional responsibilities for children’s healthcare; the criminal responsibility of children; family and legal responsibilities for compassionate killing; the allocation of parental responsibility.
A series of seminars and academic conferences have resulted in a number of publications in which the concept of responsibility in relation to the family is developed:
Regulating Family Responsibility, (Bridgeman, Keating and Lind eds, 2011) the essays in this collection critically analyse the effect of legal regulation, and the absence of regulation, on the day to day responsibilities which people take, or seek to avoid, within their families in order to advance understanding of family responsibilities.
Taking Responsibility, Law and the Changing Family, (Lind, Keating and Bridgeman eds, 2011) the essays in this collection explore the role of the law in recognising the acceptance, avoidance and allocation of family responsibilities in an era of increasing diversity in family life.
Children, Family Responsibilities and the State, (Keating and Lind eds, 2008) the essays in this collection examine the role of the state in fostering and meeting the responsibilities owed to children.
Responsibility, Law and the Family, (Bridgeman, Keating and Lind eds, 2008) the essays in this collection explore the different conceptualisations of responsibility in family life, law and practice through examination of moral, social and legal responsibilities in order to challenge developing conceptualisations of responsibilities arising in intimate and caring relationships and their legal regulation.