Developments in the law, scholarship, and research since 2006 form a substantial part of the second edition of this book which sets the governance of personal relationships in the context of the exercise of social and personal power. Its central argument is that this power is counterbalanced by the presence of individual rights. This entails an analysis of the nature and deployment of rights, including human rights, and children's rights. Against that background, the book examines the values of friendship, truth, respect, and responsibility, and how the values of individualism co-exist with those of the community in an open society. It argues that central to these values is respecting the role of intimacy in personal relationships. In doing this, a variety of issues are examined, including the legal regulation of married and unmarried relationships, same-sex marriage, state supervision over the inception and exercise of parenthood (including surrogacy and assisted reproductive technology), the role of fault and responsibility in divorce law, children's rights and welfare, religion and family rights, the rights of separated partners regarding property and of separated parents regarding their children, and how states should respond to cultural diversity.

John Eekelaar taught family law at Pembroke College, Oxford from 1965 to 2005, and was its academic director from 2005-2009. He was lecturer (later reader) in law at Oxford University from 1965-2005. He was a founder member of the International Society of Family Law, of which he was president from 1985-8, and founding co-editor of the International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family. He has written and researched widely in family law. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2001 and distinguished visiting fellow by the New Zealand Law Foundation in 2005, and is now emeritus fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.