What Kind of Debate Should We Be Having About Domestic Violence?

This post is a guest blog post written by Sarah Phillimore. Sarah is a family barrister with over 15 years of experience. She tweets as @SVPhillimore and this is her first foray into blogging. This post arose from a tweet from @change4victims calling for support for an e-petition entitled “review of access laws for domestic abusers”, subsequently retweeted by @womensaid. The petition [...]

Koo-ee! We’re over here love!

Where are all the feminist lawyers? Discuss. Kat Watson’s essay on the topic was posted on The F Word last week. I was alerted to it by a critical blog post in response written by another female lawyer type who had been irked by it (that post has now been removed hence no link). It [...]

Walking Talking Living Doll

Health warning: Enormo-post. Most legal eyes this week have been on the various Legal Walks taking place in London and elsewhere, to raise funds for Law Centres and Pro Bono legal advice (and in Bristol it was an Access to Justice Walk). Not satisfied with that, half of my chambers seems to have participated in [...]

Who’s the boss?

Hillary Clinton’s totally understandable response to being asked at a press conference in her capacity as Secretary of State has provoked reporting about her ‘extraordinary outburst’ (e.g. The Times). What’s extraordinary about it other than the fact that most government figures would not expect to be asked for their spouses views on an important matter rather than their own? It [...]

Harman v Prescott – Below the belt

Political commentary is not really my thing on this blog, but I just cannot let the very public online spat between Harriet Harman and John Prescott go unremarked. Let me say at the outset that I’m not a member of any political party, although you may discern from this blog that I am generally leftish. I [...]

MS is not a four letter word by Lucy Reed (neé Reed)

I despair sometimes at ever being properly addressed by my given and chosen name. It’s only short but it causes oh so much trouble. . Every time I attend an unfamiliar court I go through the motions when I sign in: I enunciate ‘Ms…Lucy…Reed…no it’s double E D…I’m counsel for the Respondent / Applicant…’ (it’s [...]

Scary Stuff – BNP White Paper on Family Law

No doubt the BNP are hoping to capitalise on the general disillusionment with mainstream political parties in order to gain seats in the forthcoming european elections and further down the line. (I have received a rather unpleasant leaflet through the door myself, plastered with respectable white people and unpleasant slogans.) For anyone contemplating casting a [...]

Who Cares?

At a wedding over the weekend my other half got chatting to the very pregnant lady on our table about parenthood. Overhearing him describe himself as the ‘primary carer’ to her provoked an unexpected reaction. It’s a term I throw about at work myself, and one which used in respect of my other half fairly describes the [...]

Less is Moore

Yuk yuk yuk. What an obnoxious woman! I had the misfortune last night of watching ‘Mums who leave their kids’ last night on telly, a ‘documentary’ by Jane Moore a writer for the Sun. I say documentary, but in fact this was really just an opportunity for Jane Moore to pour forth a whole load [...]

Family Units

Carol Sarler wrote a piece in The Times yesterday in which she questions the proposition that children need a father. She is clearly supportive of non-traditional family units, including same-sex two parent couples and rightly so. The thrust of what she says is: that the modern notion of the role of a father is just that – [...]