Co-coordinating family expectations: legalized families in the era of bordered globalization

According to Hacker, in a global world, basing family law in general, and cases of religious-secular tensions in particular, on prior agreements is an especially bad idea, for several reasons. [...]significant gender disparities in power between the spouses could lead to a one-sided agreement. There is a deep connection between the contractual regulation of marital relations and the processes of privatisation, individualisation and commitment to formal equality. [...]those who are persuaded by Hacker's critique of the wide breadth for contractual arrangement in the family should ask themselves whether this critique should not be aimed, at a deeper level, at the guiding principles of the modern Western conception of marriage. [...]recognition of the shortcomings of the current liberal arrangement and the need to identify new conceptual frameworks opens the door for a renewed examination of the encounter between ‘Eastern-religious and gender-specific’ and ‘Western-secular and formally gender-equal’ family-law systems.