Law Commons^™

The Canon Of Family Law, Jill Elaine Hasday

Jill Elaine Hasday

What is the canon of family law? By canon, I mean the ways of thinking about family law that are widely shared by legal scholars and especially by legal authorities, like legislators and judges. The existing literature on canons, which has long centered on the literary canon and has recently turned to the constitutional law canon, has most commonly understood a canon to be a set of foundational texts that exemplify, guide, and constitute a discipline. In part, the family law canon tracks this traditional focus on the inclusion and exclusion of texts, even if the family law canon does …