Kirsteen Mackay

The approach in Scotland to child contact disputes involving allegations of domestic abuse

ABSTRACT This article considers the approach taken in Scotland to the processing of child contact cases in which there are allegations of domestic abuse. Four key features of the processing of cases which may facilitate outcomes that prioritise safety are considered. These are: the availability of legal aid; the cautious process of successive child welfare hearings; the use of child welfare reports; and the taking of the child’s views. All these features occur within a policy context that recognises domestic abuse as gender-based violence and where courts have a statutory duty to protect a child from abuse. Drawing on the author’s court based analysis of papers from 208 child contact disputes and from interviews with sheriffs, this article discusses the strengths and limitations of all four process features in terms of protecting women and children, and the risks to these features posed by perpetually reducing government budgets.

Book review: MAVIS MACLEAN AND JOHN EEKELAAR, Family Law Advocacy: How Barristers Help the Victims of Family Failure. Oxford & Portland, OR: Hart, 2009, 132pp. ISBN 9781841132778, £25.00 (pbk)

are less inclined to identify within Plato or Aristotle a supposed origin of a monolithic ‘Western’ absolutism, supposedly ‘continued’ by an Aquinas or a Hegel, and which turns out to be more of a backward, neo-Hellenist projection than a real origin. My reservations about Bhaskar’s grand historical and Occidentalizing narrative in no way impeach the real interest of his concepts of absence, negativity and non-being. I question only whether the ‘totalising critique’ of ‘Western thought’ is required to articulate them. Historical references do, of course, facilitate the exposition of a theory centred so strongly on critiques of earlier thinkers. Yet such references seem amply available within the tradition of post-Kantian modernity. Be that as it may, Alan Norrie is to be applauded for an account as faithful as possible to Bhaskar’s writings. Dialectic and Difference displays precision and depth. It will certainly aid anyone seeking greater insight into Bhaskar, and achieves clarity on points that Bhaskar himself exposes with some difficulty. The book introduces ideas that can certainly hold their own in current debates about social theory. Whatever problems may lie within the theory’s exposition, Norrie has rendered a service to scholars wishing to examine critical realism through a focused and probing study.