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When Were Marriages Between Cousins Banned in China?

Posted by: Laney Zhang

In my previous blog post, How Degrees of Kinship Are Calculated Under Chinese Law?, it was mentioned that cousin marriage is banned by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Marriage Law. In fact, the ban has not been there for very long: it officially appeared in the Law when it was revised in 1980. Marriage between …

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China’s Population and Family Planning Law – Law Library Collection Highlights

Posted by: Laney Zhang

China’s population and family planning law, known as the “one child law” recently changed to “two child law,” has always been a topic of interest to our patrons who have submitted many questions to the Law Library. Our Foreign Law Intern, Emma Wei, has prepared a bibliography with highlights of our collections and publications on …

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An Index to In Custodia Legis Legal Research Guides

Posted by: Robert Brammer

The Law Library of Congress blog,  In Custodia Legis, is celebrating its seventh year in operation! During this time, we have published many research guides for both foreign and domestic law. I thought it would be useful to go back and revisit those guides in order to organize them into a basic index. Are there any …

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How Degrees of Kinship Are Calculated Under Chinese Law

Posted by: Laney Zhang

I was recently doing research for a patron on marriage law of the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China), and I found the method used by the Chinese marriage law in calculating degrees of kinship very unique. Marriage law usually prohibits blood relatives within certain degrees of blood relatedness to get married. First cousins, …

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“Would You Be Interested in Getting (Attorney General) William Wirt’s Head Back?” Rebecca Roberts Brings Us a Tale From the Congressional Cemetery

Posted by: Robert Brammer

This is a guest post by Rebecca Boggs Roberts. Rebecca is a program coordinator at Smithsonian Associates, writer, and the former program director for the Historic Congressional Cemetery. In 2003, an unidentified man called the Historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. and asked the cemetery manager, “Would you be interested in getting William Wirt’s head back?” The answer, of course, …

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Chinese Courts Pilot the Issuance of Single-Page Divorce Decrees

Posted by: Laney Zhang

Here at the Law Library of Congress we are frequently asked about different aspects of family law. When asked about Chinese family law, one of the questions that I have found more difficult to answer relates to the documents needed to prove that a divorce has taken place in China. Proving a Chinese divorce can …

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Happiness on the Shelf

Posted by: Jennifer Davis

Are you happy today? If not today, are you happy with your life generally? If you’re wondering why that question matters, and you tend to think about pursuing happiness as a poetic flourish rather than a  mission statement, you might want to look at the United Nations’ (UN) declaration in support of its 4th International …