Search

The article focuses on the issue of the requirement of spousal notification and consent in name-change law in Massachusetts. It discusses reasons which are making spousal-consent requirement a problem. It suggests some changes to cure the disparity. It also suggests some legislative remedies to address the outdated spousal-consent requirement for name changes. It also explores the negative impact of the consent requirement.

Abstract: Recent French legislative reforms have established a system of name transmission that is less rigid than in the past. But this new system, beneath its more liberal appearances, is not less controlled by the law. The devolution of the name remains an affair of the law: it is the law that determines which name can be transmitted. Finally, the main value of these new laws was to introduce into the legislation some formerly unknown spaces of liberty. These new spaces demonstrate that, from the perspective of the current legislator, the name has in part surpassed its function as civil police to additionally become an aspect of the private and family life of its owner. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Recent legal provisions, in force since January 2005, allow parents to declare a family name for their first child by choosing it among their own names. The term “Family name” has since replaced that of “patronymic” and a new registered form has been created, “the double name” associating both the father''s and the mother''s family name. This reform, being as important as complex and which began in 2002 and was implemented in 2005, particularly affects the method of transmission of the child''s name and offers research new openings which will enable us to explore the representations of family in society today. This new institution, in that it favors the transmission of the name following the process of attribution, carries with it, until childbirth, an extra burden of personal commitment. It also highlights the permeability of the unconscious psychic issues and points out the singularity of the notion of transmission, which takes its color through a movement of appropriation singular to each individual within his or her history. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article investigates the legislative process that produced the 1930 Nationalist Family Law Book of the Republican Civil Code, focusing in particular on the debate over married women's surnames. In the accompanying discussion, Guomindang (GMD) lawmakers, legal experts, educators, women's rights advocates, and others grappled in a remarkably open manner over how best to address the surname question in light of their concerns with Party consolidation, legal modernisation, gender equality, social stability, and individual identity. Although the outcome of the legislative process affirmed customary surname practices (albeit with progressive overtones), the process itself was uniquely radical, with participants thoroughly reevaluating one of the oldest and most fundamental patriarchal institutions in Chinese society. The legislative and post-legislative debate over surnames illuminates the Nanjing Decade as a singular transitional period in the history of Chinese law and gender during which law was subject to revision and amendment rather than orthodoxy, and GMD policy toward women was subject to deliberation rather than dictated by ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Arkansas rules on the use of pseudonym, for which the rules on federal and Arkansas civil procedure are silent. It notes that opposition to the use of pseudonym cites the lack of authority while courts allowing it cite the lack of prohibition. It states that the Rules on Civil Procedure does not contain pseudonym rules. It adds that the Arkansas courts have heard the call of legal practitioners throughout Arkansas and the U.S. for clarity in the area of pseudonym use.