Law Commons^™

Marital Naming/Naming Marriage: Language And Status In Family Law, Suzanne A. Kim

Indiana Law Journal

What's in a name? Based on current family law and policy debates, the answer would seem to be: a whole lot. Today's discussion of legal prohibitions of same-sex marriage abounds with the assumption that language, in the form of names and labels, is deeply meaningful from a status perspective. Missing from this debate, however, is a careful examination of the role that names and labels play in the construction of the status category of marriage. This Article fills this gap in family law scholarship by providing an explicit account of how language plays a critical role in reflecting and reinforcing …