Session 2: Doing Comparative Family Law

I really enjoyed our discussion today, although I wished we had more time to talk about the small group's thoughts on Islamic and Canadian divorce and custody laws. The information that was distributed today was taken from Lama Abu-Odeh's paper, but here you can find the tables used by the small groups. Also, if you are interested in a brief history of divorce laws in Canada (as well as a brief explanation of the current rules about divorce and custody), see here. For on-line resources on Islamic Law, this is a useful site, and for a good introduction to the Islamic legal tradition, you can read Chapter 6 ("An Islamic Legal Tradition: The Law of a Later Revelation") of H. Patrick Glenn's Legal Traditions of the World: Sustainable Diversity in Law, which should be available at Scott Library. And, if you are interested in a discussion of the concept of "incommensurability" from a philosophical perspective, click here.

You will see that the readings for next week's session are lighter (in terms of volume), so you should be able to read them closely. Next week we will also break into small groups and work on a problem for which we will use the assigned excerpts from various public and private international law conventions, so don't forget to familiarize yourself with their content. Finally, it seems that I was wrong about November 11th, that is, there will be classes at Osgoode that day.

See you next week!