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Marriage Proposals: Questioning a Legal Status New

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  • Format: Book
  • Published: 2005, New York University Press
  • ISBN: 0814799299
  • 288 pages
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When a man and a woman marry, or end a marriage, they acquire a new legal status. The law treats them differently with respect to their contracts, crimes, torts, property holdings, and financial entitlements. Society also treats people differently after marriage or divorce. American law has abandoned or weakened most status labels, such as slavery and race. The labels that survive – felon, corporation, dependent child, even family – relate more clearly to a discernible social goal, if not a good one. What is the reason for the status of legal marriage? Contributors bring to these questions their expertise in law, anthropology, sociology, queer theory, religion, and political science. (Sex, Marriage, and Family Project)

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About the Editor: Anita Bernstein

ANITA BERNSTEIN, the first Sam Nunn Professor of Law at Emory University, is Anita and Stuart Subotnick Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. A nationally recognized scholar in feminist jurisprudence and torts, Bernstein has wide ranging scholarly interests in comparative law, legal education, and the social and cultural aspects of accident law, with particular focus on products liability. She also works in comparative and international law as they shed light on the relationship between social change and law reform. She is the editor of Marriage Proposals: Questioning a Legal Status and many widely-cited articles, including "The Representational Dialectic (With Illustrations from Obscenity, Forfeiture, and Accident Law)," 87 Calif. L. Rev. 305 (1999); "An Old Jurisprudence: Respect in Retrospect," 83 Cornell L. Rev. 1231 (1998); and "Treating Sexual Harassment With Respect," 111 Harv. L. Rev. 445 (1997).

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