Law Commons^™

Just Monogamy?, Elizabeth F. Emens

Faculty Scholarship

Right now, marriage and monogamy feature prominently on the public stage. Efforts to lift state and federal prohibitions on same-sex marriage have inspired people across the political spectrum to speak about the virtues of monogamy’s core institution and to express views on who should be included within it. In this brief comment, I want to talk about something else. Like an “unmannerly wedding guest,” I want to invite the reader to pause amidst the whirlwind of marriage talk, to think about alternatives to monogamy. In particular, I want to talk about multiparty relationships, or “polyamory,” as these relationships are called …