Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss has had an extraordinary career, spanning thirty-five years as a judge in the family courts and rising to be the most senior female judge in the land, as President of the High Court Family Division in 1999. It has not been a career without controversies, and many of the cases over which she’s presided - including the Cleveland Inquiry, which many believe led to the Children Act 1989 - have been highly sensitive. She has often been accused of penalising fathers, but the lack of a consistent track record in judgements makes it difficult to conclude as to her personal opinions. Now, as the newspapers are reporting, she has come out in favour of the traditional family unit and criticised the government’s failure to support it in any way more substantial than rhetoric. ‘It is a sad fact’, she has said, ‘that a government which has published excellent proposals on helping parents and children after the breakdown of relationships has done nothing practical to support married couples.’ There is a good analysis of this in the Daily Telegraph by Jill Kirby, who chairs the Family Policy Group at the Centre for Policy Studies. The voices speaking out for the family are getting louder and more numerous. The time has come for policymakers to respond.