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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2011
I am grateful to Eileen Spring and Michael Grossberg for their thoughtful comments on a study that has occupied my life for the past five years, and which has finally been produced in a more detailed form as my dissertation. Unfortunately, many of their comments point to gaps, in the best interests standard and comparisons with U.S. law for instance, that are taken up in the longer study. But if I could put my entire dissertation into a single sentence, it would be that a history of English custody law reveals profoundly different commitments on the part of judges to protecting mother's rights and to recognizing some form of a best interests test as social conditions changed, and that the patriarchal moorings of custody law remain with us today as we try to solve the deeply problematic issues raised for a legal system that still pits parental rights against children's welfare. Grossberg and Spring both point to the issue of judicial agency that I grapple with in my article and I will briefly address a few points on that topic. Then, rather than address their comments individually, I would prefer to suggest some of the conclusions I draw in the larger study and make connections to what is presented here.
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3. Twiss, Horace, The Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon (London: Murray, 1844), 1:477.Google Scholar
4. Ibid., 383.
5. Matrimonial Causes Act (1857).
6. Cooke v. Cooke, 32 LJPMA 187, 191 (1863).
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