Afterword

Abstract

The preceding chapters have been organized around a theme in a manner that, I hope, will make the book a useful contribution to the literature. The purpose has been to link law and demography. Unfortunately, legal scholars and demographers have lived in their separate worlds, with little discourse between them, and since only a handful of people have acquired expertise in both law and demography, the link between the two fields has been overlooked. Yet, as one observer has noted: “The subject of law and demography is a very important and often neglected area which has been hampered by the lack of personnel who have an understanding of both law and demography. Heretofore, the literature has been dominated by either lawyers writing in a classical legal tradition or by demographers writing in a classical social science tradition.”¹ The book will, I hope, promote the cross-fertilization of concepts and principles from the two fields.