Mr Matt Hasler

A characteristic feature of family law is its imposition of relational obligations. For example, a spouse will typically owe special legal obligations to her spouse because she is married to him, and a parent will owe special legal obligations to her child because she is his parent. Some jurisdictions also impose special legal obligations on unmarried cohabitants because of their co-participation in cohabiting relationships, and others establish special schemes of legal regulation for non-conjugal, and possibly non-familial, relationships of personal care and support. Relational obligations pose a range of difficult normative questions. To which relationships and relations should they attach? What should be their precise content? And what procedures should their acquisition, amendment, and enforcement? Disagreements about the correct answers to these questions animate a number of significant scholarly disputes within the field of family law and policy. 

To have any chance of providing compelling answers to these questions, we require a theory of relational obligations. The purpose of any such theory is to identify the circumstances in which relational obligations are properly, improperly, and mandatorily imposed. In my thesis I expound and defend a liberal-egalitarian theory of relational obligations, and then use it to answer some specific normative questions about the proper imposition of relational obligations.

My project is significant for two reasons. First, and most obviously, because it sheds light on particular normative problems pertaining to relational obligations. Second, because many scholars of family law worry that liberal principles militate in favour of a minimalist and non-interventionist system of family law that privileges individual autonomy at the expense of substantive obligation, and fails to recognise or respond appropriately to the relational, interdependent, intimate, and caring character of healthy family and personal relationships. Through my development of a liberal-egalitarian theory of relational obligations, I show that these worries are unfounded. Properly understood, liberal political principles require the state to engage in proactive regulation of personal and family life, and thereby obligate the state to impose robust schemes of relational obligations. Taken as a whole, my thesis therefore contributes to the development of a liberal-egalitarian political morality of family law.