UPPSALA 1979

My first experience of the International Society of Family Law (ISFL) was the third World Conference, held in Uppsala, Sweden in 1979, which I attended together with my colleague at the University of Bristol, Gillian Douglas. I had never been to an ISFL World Conference before, and I was excited by the prospect – and I was not disappointed. For me, it remains one of the best and most stimulating international conferences I have attended. The theme of the conference was ‘Cohabitation’, which in those days was regarded as being very ‘avant-garde’, but then, this was Sweden after all. Indeed, I recall one of the sociological papers was on ‘deviant behaviour’, and examined, in particular, jurisdictions in which, because of its incidence, cohabitation had become ‘normative’ as opposed to ‘deviant’ behaviour. Another memorable paper was one given by Eric Clive, who argued that marriage could be jettisoned as a legal concept (aliter a religious one) in favour of one based on cohabitation. Food for thought indeed!

I remember, too, being impressed and not a little overwhelmed by a scholarly paper presented by a German academic examining English common law. I was clearly going to have to ‘up my game’ if I was to perform on the world stage.

Amongst the myriad of stars that attended and presented at Uppsala, one stood out above the rest – Mary Ann Glendon. Not only did she give a fascinating paper, but on one occasion she considered the English simultaneous translation of a paper given in French to be inadequate. She offered to take those who wanted to to a separate room, where she gave a seminar on what the speaker was trying to say. Sadly, that was the only occasion that I came across Mary Ann.

The conference, of course, was not without incident – I remember one in particular. After a German scholar had made his presentation in English, he was asked a question, to which he turned to the German-speaking Chair and answered in German. The Chair translated his answer into English.