Law Commons^™

Reconfiguring Sex, Gender, And The Law Of Marriage, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article brings together legal, historical, and social science research to analyze how couples allocate income-producing and domestic responsibilities. It develops a framework—what I call the marriage equation—that shows how sex-based classifications, (non-sex-specific) substantive marriage law, and gender norms interrelate to shape these choices. Constitutional decisions in the 1970s ended legal distinctions between the duties of husbands and wives but left largely in place both gender norms and substantive rights within marriage, tax, and benefits law that encourage specialization into breadwinning and caregiving roles. By permitting disaggregation of the marriage equation, the new reality of same-sex marriage can serve as …

The Constitutional Right To (Keep Your) Same-Sex Marriage, Steve Sanders

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Same-sex marriage is legal in six states, and nearly 50,000 same-sex couples have already married. Yet 43 states have adopted statutes or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage (typically called mini defense of marriage acts, or “mini-DOMAs”), and the vast majority of these measures not only forbid the creation of same-sex marriages, they also purport to void or deny recognition to the perfectly valid same-sex marriages of couples who migrate from states where such marriages are legal. These non-recognition laws effectively transform the marital parties into complete legal strangers to each other, with none of the customary rights or incidents of …

Changing The Marriage Equation, Deborah A. Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article brings together legal, historical, and social science research to analyze how couples allocate income-producing and domestic responsibilities. It develops a framework—what I call the “marriage equation”—that shows how sex-based classifications, (non-sex-specific) substantive marriage law, and gender norms interrelate to shape these choices. The marriage equation has changed over time, both reflecting and engendering societal preferences regarding the optimal allocation of breadwinning and caretaking responsibilities.

Until fifty years ago, sex-based classifications in family and employment law aligned with gender norms to enforce an ideology of separate spheres for men and women. The groundbreaking sex discrimination cases of the 1970s …