Mavis Maclean

Mavis Maclean CBE has carried out Socio Legal research in Oxford since 1974, and was a founding director of OXFLAP in 2001. She has acted as the Academic Adviser to the Lord Chancellor’s Department, and served as a panel member on the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry between 1998 and 2001, a major public inquiry into the National Health Service. She is a Senior Research Fellow of St Hilda's College and a Research Associate at DSPI. In 1993 she was elected President of the Research Committee for the Sociology of Law of the International Sociological Association, in 2000 a Trustee of the Law and Society Association, in 2002 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and in 2012 of the Academy of Social Sciences . She was awarded the first SLSA Annual Prize for Contribution to the Socio Legal Community in 2012. In 2013 she was made an Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple. She has served on a number of grant making committees, notably the Children and Family Justice Committee, Nuffield Foundation, the Research Liaison Group for Children’s Services, Department of Health, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Social Policy Committee. She was a member of the Lord Chancellor’s Legal Aid Advisory Committee 1992-4, and is a Fellow of the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Onati, Spain. She chairs the TCRU Advisory Committee at the Institute of Education, and is a member of the Management Committee of the Centre for Family Research, Cambridge. She is joint editor of the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, and a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family and the International Journal of Law in Context. Her research interests are Family Law and Family Policy, particularly from a comparative perspective.

Recent work includes an Onati Workshop on Digital Family Justice in 2018, followed by the book edited by Maclean with Diksterhuis and Treloar in 2019, describing the failure of mediation and the rapid ongoing digitalisation of access to family justice in countries from Turkey to Canada. Following the Legal Aid Punishment and Sentencing of Offenders Act 2012 Maclean with Eekelaar carried out a study of the response to new needs for legal support from government, the professions and the voluntary sector. Maclean subsequently contributed to the Post Implementation Review of the Act and the Legal Support initiative, see also “After the Act” Maclean and Eekelaar, Oxford, Hart Bloomsbury paperback 2020. The latest publication in the Onati series “What is a family court for?” which assesses the role and purpose of the court in a number of jurisdictions, is forthcoming from Hart Bloomsbury. 

Current work focusses on the relationship between welfare and justice in the family justice system, with respect to the welfare and protection of those without legal capacity due to age or mental incapacity. An Onati Workshop is planned for 2022.

Books include:

Digital Family Justice ed Maclean with Bregje Dijksterhuis, Oxford, Hart Bloomsbury 2019

After the Act: access to family justice after LASPO, Maclean with John Eekelaar, Oxford, Hart Bloomsbury, 209, paperback 2020

Lawyers and Mediators: the Brave New World of Services for Separating Families, Maclean with Eekelaar, Oxford Hart Bloomsbury paperback 2018 

Delivering Family Justice in Late Modern Society, Maclean ed with John Eekelaar Hart Bloomsbury, Oxford, 2015 

Managing Family Justice in Diverse Societies Maclean ed with Eekelaar Oxford Hart Bloomsbury 2015

Delivering Family Justice in the 21st Century Maclean ed with Eekelaar and B Bastard, Oxford Hart Bloomsbury 2015 

Family Justice; The Work of Family Judges in Uncertain Times Eekelaar and Maclean Oxford Hart Bloomsbury 2013

Family Law Advocacy Maclean and Eekelaar Oxford Hart 2011

Making Family Law: A socio legal account of legislative process in England and Wales 1985-2010   Maclean and Kurczewski Hart Oxford 2011

Parenting after Partnering Maclean ed Oxford Hart 2005

Family Law and Family Values ed Maclean Oxford Hart 2005

Family Lawyers: the divorce work of solicitors Eekelaar Maclean and Beinart S Oxford, Hart, 2000

Making Law for Families ed Maclean Hart, Oxford 2000

The Parental Obligation Maclean and Eekelaar Oxford Hart 1997

Family Law and Family Policy in the New Europe ed Kurczewski J and Maclean M Dartmouth, 1996

 Families Politics and the Law ed Maclean and Kurczewski OUP Oxford 1994

Surviving Divorce Maclean Basingstoke Macmillan 1991 

Maintenance after Divorce Eekelaar and Maclean OUP Oxford 1984

Methodological issues in Social Surveys Maclean and Genn London Macmillan 1979