The challenge of rewriting family law to accommodate today's wider diversity of family norms will be the topic of a lecture at the UC Davis School of Law Thursday, Nov. 12. Ira Mark Ellman, who has drafted a prestigious legal institute's recommended principles of family law, will present "Inventing Family Law." Ellman, a law professor at Arizona State University, says family law reforms of the '70s and '80s effectively ended the gender-based rules and traditional system that allocated all marital property to the breadwinner. "The search for new principles is more difficult," he says. "Modern family law is often criticized for employing principles so broadly worded that trial judges have nearly limitless discretion." In his lecture, Ellman will examine some of the issues he and his colleagues have faced during eight years' work on the American Law Institute's Principles of Family Law Dissolution. The institute will publish the work to encourage legislatures and courts to adopt the principles. Ellman is co-author of a leading textbook on family law, and he has served on legislative and judicial committees on family law in Arizona. His lecture, free and open to the public, will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Moot Court Room of King Hall. The annual lecture was established in memory of Brigitte M. Bodenheimer, a UC Davis professor who helped draft a child custody act adopted nationwide and a convention on international child abduction. Media contacts: Ira Mark Ellman, Arizona State University, Tempe, (602) 965-2125, ira.ellman@asu.edu; Julia Ann Easley, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-8248, jaeasley@ucdavis.edu.