Jane Mair

Marriage: A Meaningful Relationship?

For family lawyers with an interest in marriage, the latter decades of the 20th century were lean times. Marriage was a settled subject. From the 19th century Married Women’s Property Acts, through to no-fault divorce and financial provision in the 1970s and 80s, a century of legal reform had groomed a somewhat aged model and made it suitably modern for contemporary family law.1 Nagging doubts remained about declining social relevance, accompanied by growing interest in alternative relationships, but these were concerns which tended to divert our gaze away from marriage itself and towards the other, newer possibilities: cohabitation, civil union, Pacs,2 mother/ child dyad,3 friendship.4 Marriage itself attracted relatively little attention. Then into that quiet and settled landscape, there blew ‘a perfect storm.’5 At the centre of the storm was same-sex marriage but, caught up along with it, were calls and concerns from every perspective: conservative, liberal, religious, secular, feminist, functional, expressive.6 Far from being calm, settled and slightly overlooked, marriage has become fiercely contested and deeply controversial. Marriage is now at the centre of a struggle between

Direct Discrimination: Limited by Definition?

As the result of the introduction of new EU equality provisions, a definition of direct discrimination has been included for the first time. Where previously the ECJ had considerable flexibility to develop the concept of direct discrimination and to focus on the principle of equality without recourse to a detailed legislative structure based on direct and indirect discrimination, there are now defined concepts within the scope of the equality directives. Considered against the background of previous decisions on equal treatment and equal pay, it is questioned whether the newly defined concept of direct discrimination may in fact limit the scope for future flexibility.