Should Marriage Today Be Viewed as a Private Union or a Public Institution of the State?
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My name is Lucy Flower, I am 24 and from Winchester.
I decided to write my dissertation on a Family Law topic in second year, when I studied the module. It was the most interesting part of law that I had studied and allowed me to engage with legal-history, a field of academic law that I was always keen to explore. Further, centring my argument on whether marriage should be a public or private institution allowed me to develop my thesis from multiple philosophical angles. I utilised a large span of time in order to analyse enough legislation and thus build my argument, ultimately concluding that marriage should return to a more simplified and streamlined form that resembles historical marriage.
The future of the law in this area is uncertain. What we can garner from the recent developments in both divorce and marriage law, the trajectory may indeed prove to be towards modernisation and inclusivity, but this may not be achieved by streamlining legislation in a way that would benefit all parties. Marriage law as it stands is cumbersome and complex, and it might be this complexity that makes it an off-putting area for reform."
-Lucy Flower, Author
Introduction
This dissertation will track the history of marriage to establish when the shift from private to public occurred, before analysing its effects on the institution of marriage. The current law and the applicable Marriage Acts (hereafter referred to as MAs) that constitute this framework will be examined; it will use case law on void and non-marriages to assess the extent to which the law is public in nature, and why this is failing society. The debate has often centred around what marriage is: is it a contract, and what is its function? However, the argument in this dissertation will focus on the status of marriage as a private union or public institution. It will be concluded that current marriage law is in desperate need of reform and restructuring, along a privatised line, with simplified formalities, aiming to creating one uniform marriage law for civil and non-Anglican marriages.
