In memoriam: Helen Reece (1968-2016)
Helen Reece, who died on 26th October 2016, aged 48, was a lecturer in the School of Law at Birkbeck from 1998 until 2009.
Helen Reece, who died on 26th October 2016, aged 48, was a lecturer (and subsequently Reader) in the School of Law at Birkbeck from 1998 until 2009, when she left to take up a position at the LSE. Here, she is remembered by Daniel Monk, Reader in Law at Birkbeck.
Internationally acknowledged as one of the most brilliant and original family law scholars of her generation, her work has been essential reading for students in every university for over twenty years. Her 1996 article ‘The Paramountcy Principle: Consensus or Construct?’ is a classic, and in 2007 was cited by Albie Sachs in the Constitutional Court of South Africa. As with so much of her work it challenged a widely held orthodoxy, in this case the requirement that ‘the best interests of the child’ should determine judicial decision making about children. While few mainstream academics agreed with her, it nevertheless provoked a paradigm shift in thinking, and generated an extensive secondary literature in which leading commentators either shifted or tightened up their own arguments. Her work had this effect because of her, legendary, intellectual rigour, her determination to be driven by the evidence and rational argument, rather than emotion or what was assumed to be true, and because it was always attentive to the views of other people.
Before specialising in family law her research focused on the interface between law and the philosophy of science and, as a young new lecturer at UCL, she applied this to tort law in her first article, ‘Losses of Chances in the Law’. The article was awarded the prestigious Wedderburn Prize, was cited in the House of Lords, and numerous senior judges, most uncharacteristically, wrote to thank her for having illuminated and resolved a longstanding complex problem.
Her interest in family law emerged while covering some teaching for a colleague. As a student she claimed she had found it the hardest subject because it was ‘all over the place’; and she ‘liked the tight legal subjects’. But later she said that what she liked about the subject was that: ‘It’s about the everyday way that people live and conduct their relationships. And it’s good if you like people, if you like gossip! And I like both of those of things’. Trying to make sense of the relationship between the inherent messiness of people’s lives and the necessary tidiness of law, both of which she valued, was a key theme underlying all her work.
Her research was wide ranging, examining divorce, domestic violence, parenting, cohabitation, adoption and rape, and while centered on law always went far beyond it. Her monograph, Divorcing Responsibly (2003), which was awarded the Socio-Legal Studies Association Book Prize, drew on politics, psychology and philosophy and developed an original theory of post-liberalism to demonstrate shifting meanings of autonomy, responsibility and choice.
Fearless in challenging orthodox opinions, her views often provoked hostile reactions, particularly in response to her argument against the blanket ban on people on the sex offender register being able to adopt and, more recently, her questioning of the accuracy of ’rape myths’ and the extent to which the public ascribed to them. Those who could look beyond the headline, whether or not they agreed with the argument, acknowledged the deep integrity and rigour of her scholarship. Some people mistook her for a contrarian. But her aim was never to provoke and her arguments were always based on firm principles and political commitments. She cared deeply about people and was deeply sceptical of law’s increasing attempts to regulate ‘civility’ and intimate relations. A communicator, in print and speech, of great clarity and a passionate defender of free speech, she was that rare thing – a genuine public intellectual.
As a teacher, colleague and editor she was much admired and valued for her kindness, generosity and integrity. Her two children, Hannah and Ben, aged 14 and 11, were born while she was at Birkbeck, and will always be our 'Birkbeck babies'. She is survived by her partner, John, her two children, her father, sister and brother, and many friends. Her early death is a tragedy and she will be greatly missed.