Lucinda Ferguson
University Lecturer in Family Law
Lucinda Ferguson is University Lecturer in Family Law, University of Oxford; Tutorial Fellow in Law, Oriel College, Oxford; and Director of Studies (Law), Regent's Park College, Oxford. She is on leave until April 2013. When not on leave, she is Subject Convenor for the FHS Family Law special option. As part of the undergraduate Family Law course, she provides lecture series in Financial Provision upon Relationship Breakdown, Children's Rights, Child Protection, and Parenthood. In 2011-12, she was awarded the Oxford University Student Union Teaching Award for the Most Acclaimed Lecturer in the Social Sciences Division.
She holds an MA in Jurisprudence (English Law with German Law) from Magdalen College, Oxford, as well as a BCL from the University of Oxford. She also holds an LLM from Queen's University, Canada. From 2005 to 2007, she was Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Alberta in Canada. She has worked with the Law Commission of Canada and Canadian provincial governments on various matters relating to family and children's law, particularly the use of age-based rules in regulating children's entitlement to make legally effective decisions and the impact of the UNCRC on provincial government policy and practice. Her work has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Her research interests concentrate on family law theory. More particularly, her work adopts an analytic lens that recognises the synchronous tensions of legal theory, empiricism, social and public policy that are frequently co-terminous (and often conflated) within the field of family law.
Lucinda is current working on three projects: firstly, an examination of the new and developing role for the parental responsibility concept in English law; secondly, a study of the privatisation of the substance of family law through the impact of family justice reforms on married couple's regulation of their financial obligations; and thirdly, a virtue-based model for decision-making in respect of children (as a way to move forward the rights 'vs' welfare debate).
Publications
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L Ferguson, 'Arbitration in Financial Dispute Resolution: The Final Step to Reconstructing the Default(s) and Exception(s)?' (2013) 35 Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 115 [...]
DOI: 10.1080/09649069.2013.774757
In this article, I argue for caution in embracing family arbitration as a new form of private ordering for resolving parties’ financial disputes. I explain that family arbitration may be more successful than other forms of private ordering and final court hearings in enabling certain types of parties to resolve certain types of disputes. I consider why family arbitration may not become numerically significant despite its potential benefits, but may be much more important in normative terms. Lawyer-led negotiations remain the most common form of out-of-court resolution and constitute the de facto default form of bargaining in the shadow of the normative regime framed by ss 23-25 Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. Together with the transformation in approach to nuptial agreements, family arbitration may mark a normative shift towards autonomy and private ordering. I question whether this is a desirable step for family law, at least before we have resolved the underlying policy debate.
L Ferguson, '\'Not Merely Rights for Children but Children\'s Rights: The Theory Gap and the Assumption of the Importance of Children\'s Rights' (2012) International Journal of Children's Rights (forthcoming)
L Ferguson, '“Families in all their Subversive Variety”: Over-Representation, the Ethnic Child Protection Penalty, and Responding to Diversity whilst Protecting Children' (2012) Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (forthcoming)
Mavis Maclean and others, 'Family Justice in Hard Times: Can We Learn from Other Jurisdictions?' (2011) 33 Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 319
L Ferguson, 'Rights, Social Inequalities, and the Persuasive Force of Interpersonal Obligation' (2008) 22 International Journal of Family Law and Policy 61
L Ferguson, 'Uncertainty and Indecision in the Legal Regulation of Children: The Albertan Experience' (2007) 23(2) Canadian Journal of Family Law 159
L Ferguson, 'Case Comment: ‘Retroactivity, Social Obligation, and Child Support’' (2006) 43 Alberta Law Review 1049 [Case Note]
Nicholas Bala, Martha Shaffer and L Ferguson, 'Family Law for the Older Canadian' in Ann Soden (ed), Advising the Older Client (Butterworths 2005)
L Ferguson, 'Trial by Proxy: How s.15 Removes Age from Adolescence' (2005) Journal of Law and Equality 84
L Ferguson, 'The End of an Age: Beyond Age Restrictions for Minors' Medical Treatment Decisions' (2004) SSRN [...]
This report was commissioned by the Law Commission of Canada. However, shortly after the report was published on the Law Commission’s website in 2005, the incoming Canadian government abolished the Commission and reports on pending issues were removed from the website. It is now available on the SSRN site.
