Overview

How the privileged legal status of marriage survived decades of constitutional struggle and social change The United States is unusual among wealthy western nations in the degree to which the law channels public benefits and private economic resources through marriage. This remains so despite seismic changes in American family life in the last several decades. During this period, marriage rates declined while divorce and nonmarital childbearing soared. Social movements for racial and economic justice, women's and gay rights and liberation, civil liberties and reproductive freedom transformed the legal landscape. In Marital Privilege, Serena Mayeri tells the stories of partners and parents, activists and lawyers, who challenged the legal primacy of marriage. They made innovative constitutional claims in courts and launched grassroots efforts to change laws and practices that penalized nonmarital relationships. But even though reforms eliminated the most visible discrimination against women, people of color, children born to unmarried parents—and, eventually, gay and lesbian Americans—marriage's privileged status endured. Because marriage increasingly correlated with education and wealth, marital primacy intensified racial and economic inequality. Marital Privilege explains how, as American law selectively incorporated principles of liberty and equality, the benefits of marriage became increasingly unavailable to those who needed them most.

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9780300279443

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Reviews

“Serena Mayeri’s hugely ambitious project is to map the changing legal status of marriage from the perspective of single women of color, gays and lesbians, feminists who wanted to reform (or even abolish) marriage, alternative family units, unmarried fathers, among so many others. While the history of marriage looks different when considered from its edges, Mayeri ultimately demonstrates the resilience of an institution that so many labored to change over decades and decades.  This astonishingly comprehensive and organically intersectional book is a masterpiece that will be influential for years to come.” —Margot Canaday, author of Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America “Mayeri masterfully shows how legal challenges to marriage over the past several decades made marriage itself more egalitarian but left intact marriage’s dominant legal status and preserved marital status as an engine of inequality.”—Douglas NeJaime, Anne Urowsky Professor of Law, Yale Law School “‘Marriage is everywhere in American law.’ What often goes unnoticed by those who enjoy its manifold benefits and privileges, is painfully written on the lives in its shadow. In this brilliant history, Serena Mayeri explains how despite a half century of challenges, marriage remains a key engine in the reproduction of inequality today.”—Barbara Young Welke, University of Minnesota

Author Information

Serena Mayeri is Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History (by courtesy) at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She is the author of numerous articles and a prizewinning book, Reasoning from Race: Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights Revolution.

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