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Biography
Associate Professor of Family Law, University of Oxford; Tutorial Fellow in Law, Oriel College.
TEACHING
Family Law (BA special option); Children, Families, and the State (BCL option); Tort Law (BA core subject). I am the Senior Member for the Children's and Family Law Discussion Group.
As part of the undergraduate Family Law course, I lecture on financial provision upon relationship breakdown, children's rights, child protection, and parenthood and parental responsibility. My postgraduate teaching centres on the legal regulation of children (children's rights theory, international children's rights, welfare and wellbeing, and children and poverty).
If you are interested in pursuing Family Law at the graduate level, either as the subject-matter of a BCL dissertation, or for the MPhil, MLitt, or DPhil, I would be happy to discuss potential topics broadly within the fields of Family Law, Children's Law, or Education Law.
PROFILE AND BIO
I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In 2015, I was awarded a Distinction on the Post-Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
In 2016, I was a finalist for Oxford University Press' national Law Teacher of the Year award. I have received multiple university teaching awards: In 2015, I was awarded a Teaching Excellence Award from the University; in 2011-12, I was awarded the Oxford University Student Union Teaching Award for the Most Acclaimed Lecturer in the Social Sciences Division.
Outside of the University, I am an Associate Member of 1 King's Bench Walk.
I pursued my first two law degrees at Oxford (including a year studying at the University of Konstanz in Germany), before undertaking further graduate studies at Queen's University in Canada. In the course of my graduate studies, I was a recipient of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars' Foundation Scholarship, the Commonwealth Scholarship, and AHRC graduate funding in addition to competitive internal awards. From 2005 to 2007, I was an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Alberta in Canada.
RESEARCH
My research is centred on family law, children's law, and education law. Copies of my recent publications and presentations are available here. In particular, I work on family law theory, especially: children's rights and interests in domestic, European, and international law; aspects of private ordering and financial provision upon relationship breakdown; and, within education law, especially exclusion from school. Whilst my perspective is theoretical, my work is also deeply practical and concerned with how we might draw on the underlying theoretical arguments to improve outcomes for children and families regulated by law.
Publications
Recent additions
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L Ferguson, 'An Argument for Treating Children as a 'Special Case'' in Elizabeth Brake and Lucinda Ferguson (eds), Philosophical Foundations of Children's and Family Law (Oxford University Press 2018) (forthcoming) This chapter’s argument stems from the premise that legal language should speak for itself. The ‘paramountcy’ principle suggests the prioritization of children’s interests, and ‘children’s rights’ suggests some aspect of distinctiveness to children’s interests. But there is academic consensus in respect of both that children’s interests cannot and should not be prioritized over those of others. This chapter examines the justification for the contrary perspective, and for treating children as a prioritized ‘special case’ in all legal decisions affecting them. Four key counter-arguments frame the discussion. First, the ‘social-construct’ objection: as a social construct, childhood cannot sustain the prioritization of children’s interests over those of others. Second, the ‘vulnerability’ objection: children’s vulnerability is either not unique or suggests dependency or interdependency, not prioritization. Third, the ‘family autonomy’ objection: parents’ rights and the family unit justify deference of children’s interests. Fourth, the ‘equality’ objection: equal moral consideration makes prioritization unjustifiable.L Ferguson and E Brake, 'Introduction: The Importance of Theory to Children’s and Family Law' in Elizabeth Brake and Lucinda Ferguson (eds), Philosophical Foundations of Children's and Family Law (Oxford University Press 2018) (forthcoming) What defines family law? Is it an area of law with clean boundaries and unified distinguishing characteristics, or an untidy grouping of disparate rules and doctrines? What values or principles should guide it – and how could it be improved? Indeed, even the scope of family law is contested. Whilst some law schools and textbooks separate family law from children’s law, this is invariably effected without asking what might be gained or lost from treating them together or separately. Should family law and children’s law be distinguished or treated together? One would expect disagreement on these questions in any context. In bringing together theorists from multiple jurisdictions and at least two primary disciplines, we should not be surprised to find deep differences in approach reflecting different methodologies and foundational questions. The tension between them, we hope, can illuminate and enrich discussion on all sides. Further, through combining insights from law and philosophy, we also intend to add another layer to the current trend to focus on the empirical in family law research, and highlight how critical debates in children’s and family law are at once theoretical and empirical in nature. Understanding the nature and content of a child’s “best interests” as contained in multiple jurisdictions’ legal frameworks regulating private and/or public law concerning children, for example, requires us to approach the matter both conceptually – in order to adjudicate between frameworks – and in terms of fit with evidence from research. This immediately makes any satisfactory resolution more uncertain, contested, and subject to criticism. It is in this context that we hope that the conversations between law and philosophy, their points of agreement and divergence, can advance stalled debates. International differences correspond, of course, to differences in law, policy, and procedure. Contrast, for example, England and Wales’ ‘single pot’ approach to the distribution of property and maintenance upon marriage breakdown to the more common, “pillarised” treatment of matrimonial property, pensions, and maintenance. The difference in system design necessarily affects the available potential justifications. As a more nuanced aspect of the impact of system design, one might consider the normative difficulties created by the variation in default regimes adopted in relation to matrimonial (or marital) property between US states. Facing jurisdictional differences – like considering historical changes within one’s own jurisdiction – can yield an awareness of the context-specificity of one’s own starting points. And awareness of how things are done differently can lead us to call into question our own ways of doing things. Such awareness might alert us to unintended consequences of legislation or to innovative solutions. And, more fundamentally, it might cause us to interrogate what we take as the core, the normal, or even the natural. This is where philosophical investigation becomes indispensable. In Section II, we outline a number of respects in which the approaches taken by (academic) lawyers and philosophers writing in this field tend to differ, as well as how the structure of this collection seeks to cut across and highlight both these divergences and shared accounts. In Section III, we introduce the key themes that underpin the collection, which demonstrate the potential for cross-fertilisation between legal contexts as well as between legal and philosophical perspectives. When we refer to ‘lawyers’ and ‘philosophers’, we have in mind those working in family law and children’s law in particular.E Brake and L Ferguson (eds), Philosophical Foundations of Children's and Family Law (Oxford University Press 2018) (forthcoming)
Chapter (5)
Edited Book (1)
Journal Article (10)
Case Note (5)
Report (2)
Internet Publication (1)
Research programmes
Research projects
- Teaching and Learning Resources
- The Pivot of Positive Intervention: Local Authority Inclusion Services and School Exclusion
Research Interests
Family law theory; children's rights; welfare and wellbeing; education law