How do the family and sexuality rights become the object of international legal norms? And, how do international norms shape the treatment of the family, gender and sexuality in national contexts? This panel traces international norm dynamics related to gender, sexuality and the family over time by drawing on diverse examples from politics, history, law and legal anthropology. In this way, the panel seeks to offer a novel contribution to the growing field of social-scientific research that has connected international policy diffusion with questions about gender and sexuality.

Each paper sheds light on different time periods and facets of these issues. Vanja Hamzic traces the medieval roots of later European legal thought on sexuality by focusing on the impact of changing understandings about Christianity and gender norms. Julia Moses examines the movement to harmonize family law across the world through new international conventions first discussed in the late nineteenth century. Kelly Kollman and Phillip Ayoub trace the role of policy learning in the international adoption of new laws on same-sex unions in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Anne Hedlum offers an alternative perspective on gender and sexuality rights by focusing on anti-discrimination provisions in international law since the mid-twentieth century. Finally, Andrea Büchler considers the legacy of these earlier discussions by focusing on contemporary conflicts of law and harmonization efforts at the European Court of Human Rights regarding international surrogacy.