TO PUT ASUNDER: THE LAWS OF MATRIMONIAL STRIFE

Berkeley, CA: Lawrence H. Stotter, 2011. hardcover, dust jacket. 8.25 x 10 inches. hardcover, dust jacket. 416 pages. An Introduction to the Seminal Anglo-American Literature and Laws of Domestic Relations up to the Year 1900, with Supporting Bibliography and Comments. Taking its cue from Matthew 19:6, "What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not man put asunder," this book describes humankind's actions in doing just that.



A readable selected history of family law, To Put Asunder traverses more than two thousand years of continuing attempts by various societies to inhibit the desires of men and women, kings and commoners, to terminate their unsatisfactory marriages. The stories revealed are surprisingly engaging when the reader is introduced to the lives and personalities of some who were directly affected by family law.



Examining court proceedings, the policies of church and state, scholarly literature, and the anger and frustration of unhappy spouses, Lawrence Stotter reports on the path of the domestic relations laws adopted in Western civilization. By clarifying the philosophy and goals behind the development of divorce laws in biblical times and tribal societies, under the influences of early Greek and Roman civilization, during the rule of the Roman Catholic Church, after the impact of the Reformation and Henry VIIIs Church of England, and with the modifications brought about by the founders of Colonial America up through the beginning of the twentieth century, Stotter makes clear the reasons for, and the foundations of, our current divorce provisions.



Lawrence Stotter provides, in five separate and extensive appendices, more than one hundred pages of bibliographic sources, never previously brought together in this manner.



Now retired, Lawrence H. Stotter has been a nationally renowned trial lawyer, specializing in family law litigation. For more than twenty years he was annually recognized in each issue of Naifeh and Smiths The Best Lawyers in America. His exploits in recovering a child wrongfully taken from his schoolroom in France and hidden for several years by a vengeful father became the pilot chapter for Emily Courics best-selling 1992 book Divorce Lawyers: The People and Stories Behind Ten Dramatic Cases. Over several decades, in his avocation as a scholar and collector of antiquarian literature on family law, Stotter established a collection that included a copy of nearly every English-language treatise published on the subject over a span of more than four centuries. The collection is now on permanent display at the Michael E. Moritz Law Library of the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.



Lawrence Stotter resides with Ruth, his wife of more than fifty years and a renowned folklorist and storyteller, in their home in Tiburon, California, overlooking San Francisco Bay.