October 2013

• Published date: 01 October 2013
• Date: 01 October 2013
• Author: Andrew Schepard
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12048

EDITORIAL NOTES

OCTOBER 2013

I have tried to develop a practice of writing short editorial notes for Family Court Review (FCR)

October issues, which are the final issue of every volume. My theory is that readers havealready heard

a lot from me and want to get on to the articles in the issue. I will try to maintain the tradition of brevity

(for me at least) with these notes, while emphasizing the diversity, high quality, and relevance of the

material this issue contains.

GLOBAL FAMILY LAW

In our fiftieth anniversary January 2013 issue, Michael Saini and Jessica Barnes performed an

extraordinary service for FCR by systematically reviewing the content of FCR’s 1,778 articles over

fifty years to see if what we published advanced FCR’s core values.1I am proud that they concluded

that

[t]he findings suggest that FCR has focused on a rich diversity of legal and social issues impacting children

and families. FCR has evolved into a leading source for interdisciplinary communication among mental

health and legal professions, with growing emphasis on international collaboration and an increasing

emphasis on empirical evidence to guide practice, policy, and future research.

One of their more specific findings is addressed by the Special Issue on Global Family Law in this

issue. AFCC has members and FCR has readers around the World. We have thus tried to include

perspectives from outside the United States in the articles we publish so that wecan all learn from each

other. On that subject Mike and Jessica wrote in January 2013 that:

[t] he exchange and sharing of international perspectives on issues that are relevant to the FCR readers is

not only a long-standing interest of FCR, but also a core value....The geographical location of the

published authors, however, demonstrates that historically, the vast majority of authors have been from

the United States. The remaining authors originate from multiple other countries, with Canada, Australia,

the United Kingdom, and New Zealand at the top of the list. The good news is that these findings suggest

that there has been an emerging trend of including articles written by authors from outside of the United

States. Although there is always room for improvement, the data support the notion that FCR has increased

attention on including international perspectives.2

I couldn’t have said it better myself.This Special Issue on Global Family Law is an attempt to further

improve FCR’s performance on what might be called for shorthand the value of “globalization.” It is

guest edited by FCR’s wonderful associate editor,Bob Emer y, and expresses his particular passion for

finding knowledge and perspectives on family law problems and processes everywhere.

What is particularly noteworthy about the issue is that Bob has recruited authors from places where

articles published in FCR do not generally come from—Quebec, Flanders, Italy, Croatia, South Korea,

and China. I hope readers and colleagues in those and other countries not well represented in FCR in

the past will take this issue as an invitation to submit their work so that we can learn even more from

each other than we already have.

FAMILY COURT REVIEW,Vol. 51 No. 4, October 2013 517–519

© 2013 Association of Familyand Conciliation Cour ts