Short presentation

Assoc. Prof. in Family Law and Family Policy

Dr. Frank H. Pedersen’s interests relate to the effect of legal regulation on the individual person’s life, family and economy. A common denominator of his work is legal rights to respect for liberty, privacy and integrity. His main areas of research are subjects like family law, assisted reproduction, tax law and tax politics. His work concerns the understanding of existing regulation, the public administration of the rules as well as sociological questions and methods: Why is the law the way it is? What is the effect of the regulation and what will be the future development?

In 2018 Frank started a three-year research project, funded by the Danish Council for independent Research. The project is called Reconceptualising Reproductive Rights. This work is a continuation of Frank’s earlier research project from the University of Southern Denmark called Reproductive Medicine and Mobility. “Assisted reproduction, reproductive rights and family law are closely connected. The people who use assisted reproduction, do not only want a child, they want that child to be a part of their particular family, in one of the many different versions of a family”.

Finances and tax are a part of a family’s life. Frank has worked with taxation academically and for a number of years at the Ministry of Taxation as a Head of the Tax Simplification Unit, directly under the authority and operational direction of the Permanent Secretary. His Ph.D. dissertation “Tax-aversion” is published as a monograph and recognized as a highly innovative piece of legal sociology, which has inspired both changes in the tax code and generally scholars in the area of sociology of law. Internationally he is most known for his publications in the field of tax complexity, simplification & usability.

Dr. Frank H. Pedersen has been a senior consultant at the Danish think tank Copenhagen Institute of Future Studies, visiting researcher at Harvard Law School and, over a period of years, Global Fellow/visiting scholar at New York University. He is a member of the editorial board for Fiscal Relations Law Journal, and the cross-disciplinary research cluster  FamLaPP: Family Law, Practices and Policies. He is the leading expert on the Danish regulation of surrogacy.

Current research

• Surrogacy – Danish, European and international perspectives
• The concept of family in law – family as a multitude of legal positions and obligations
• Assisted reproduction – the significance for demography and population development
• The ‘best interest of the child’-principle – The Convention on the Rights of the Child and The European Convention om Human Rights
• Reproductive rights – globalization, market development and human rights
• International Private Law – public policy
• The legal language – legal linguistics
• Parental responsibility and custody – children born abroad and international private law
• Inheritance and estate tax – specifically in relation to non-conforming types of family

Teaching

Teaching and counseling subjects

Frank H. Pedersen supervises bachelor and master students in the following subjects:

• Family Law and Law of Will and Succession
• Legal Sociology
• Health Law and assisted reproduction
• Administrative Law
• Tax Law and Tax Politics
• Large scale administration, administrative burdens, innovation and simplification
• Legal Method and Theory of Scientific Methods

Frank H. Pedersen teaches or has taught the following subjects:

• Family Law and Law of Will and Succession
• Family Sociology
• Tax Law
• Health Law
• Sociology of law
• Law, Morality and Politics