Mavis Maclean podcast
In this podcast, I talk to Mavis Maclean, a well known empirical legal researcher who has for many years integrated her research work with policy development in Government. As Director of the Oxford Centre for Family Law and Policy, she has played a major role in helping to shape ideas about how the family justice system should be developing. (For more information about OXFLAP see http://www.spsw.ox.ac.uk/research/groups/oxflap.html)
In the podcast she talks generally about how family justice has developed, both in England and Wales and elsewhere, and she offers insight into the newly established review of family justice – also mentioned by Ken Clarke in his speech (see related blog).
Listen to this audio file of Mavis Maclean:
Martin Partington: Introduction to the English Legal System 15th ed 2021
Oxford University Press Learning Link Resources
Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System 
I found the podcast illuminating.
I fundamentally disagree with many of Maclean’s views and assertions made here and elsewhere, eg that the Australian evaluation is ‘worrying’. I’ve examined the numbers collected and my views can be seen at http://equalparenting.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/1/.
I would agree with her about anonymised everyday judgments being put on-line for fellow professionals to consult. This is what the committee setting up CAFCASS in 2000 recommended on the assumption that a shared computer network was part of the setting up programme. The idea was that each area could see how many sole custody and shared parenting awards were being made around the country. But it never happened. The promised computer network never materialised.
Mavis speaks of Australia’s regime change in 2006 but omits Belgium’s switch to shared parenting in the same year (http://fkce.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/00031/).
rwhistonbert Whiston
June 10, 2011 at 1:24 am