Law Commons^™

Marriage Is On The Decline And Cohabitation Is On The Rise: At What Point, If Ever, Should Unmarried Partners Acquire Marital Rights?, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

This article draws attention to the cultural shift in the formation of families that has been and is taking place in this country: Marriage is on the decline and cohabitation is on the rise. Part II documents this cultural shift by using recent government data to trace the decline of marriage and the rise of cohabitation. Between 2000 and 2010, the population grew by 9.71%, but the husband-and-wife households only grew by 3.7%, while the unmarried-couple households grew by 41.4%. Because of the Supreme Court's decidion in Obergefell v. Hodges, marriage is now universally available to same-sex couples. Part …

Resurrecting Islam Or Cementing Social Hierarchy?: Reexamining The Codification Of 'Islamic' Personal Status Law, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

There is a regrettable tendency to equate social conservatism with religious adherence. Nowhere does this occur more than in the Muslim world, where conservatives are closely associated with adherence to shari’a. The more unyielding the conservative, the “stricter” the supposed adherence to shari’a, or, alternatively, the more “literal” the version of shari’a adhered to.

While almost any social conservative movement in the Muslim world or otherwise professes adherence to religious doctrine as being the core of its ideological commitment, and while there are important ways in which Muslim social conservatives insist on adherence to religious rules in their most traditional …