Scholarly conversations about transnational law, or law and globalization often ignore family law. While a majority of early transnational law scholars focused mostly on regulatory issues predominantly concerning economic matters, family law questions have only more recently become the object of interdisciplinary and transnational analysis.

Why do scholars of transnational law overlook family law? The reasons are varied and may be related to one’s understanding of family law or of the scope of ‘transnational law’ itself. A first reason is that family law is still predominantly perceived as a domestic field of inquiry, embedded within local religious or cultural values, a transnational analysis of the field may therefore seem unappealing. A second reason may be that family law is often understood to be distinct from market regulation, while transnational law is often characterized as predominantly interested in legal norms and actors related to market governance.