caa a22 4500 388082593 CHVBK 20180307125221.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130s1999 xx s 000 0 eng 10.2307/744015 doi S0738248000007148 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.2307/744015 Wright Danaya C. On Judicial Agency and the Best Interests Test [Elektronische Daten] [Danaya C. Wright] I am grateful to Eileen Spring and Michael Grossberg for their thoughtful comments on a study that has occupied my life for the past five years, and which has finally been produced in a more detailed form as my dissertation. Unfortunately, many of their comments point to gaps, in the best interests standard and comparisons with U.S. law for instance, that are taken up in the longer study. But if I could put my entire dissertation into a single sentence, it would be that a history of English custody law reveals profoundly different commitments on the part of judges to protecting mother's rights and to recognizing some form of a best interests test as social conditions changed, and that the patriarchal moorings of custody law remain with us today as we try to solve the deeply problematic issues raised for a legal system that still pits parental rights against children's welfare. Grossberg and Spring both point to the issue of judicial agency that I grapple with in my article and I will briefly address a few points on that topic. Then, rather than address their comments individually, I would prefer to suggest some of the conclusions I draw in the larger study and make connections to what is presented here. Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1999 Law and History Review Cambridge University Press 17/2(1999), 319-324 0738-2480 17:2<319 1999 17 LHR https://doi.org/10.2307/744015 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2307/744015 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Wright Danaya C. NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Law and History Review Cambridge University Press 17/2(1999), 319-324 0738-2480 17:2<319 1999 17 LHR CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge