Welcome!
Monte Neil Stewart
It seems fair to say that the most consequential social, political, and legal issue in the English-speaking world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is the definition of marriage, that is, whether civil marriage should continue to be legally defined as the union of a man and a woman or rather should be given the new definition of the union of any two persons
The preeminent importance of this issue results from:
- the central role marriage has always played in civil society and
- the fact that marriage, like all other civil institutions, is constituted by its shared public meanings and hence is fundamentally changed (in ways perhaps unforeseen) by changes in those meanings.
But so far the issue has a narrow rather than a broad locus. In the English-speaking world, no legislature free from coercive judicial edicts on the subject has yet redefined marriage as the union of any two persons; rather, the act of redefinition belongs solely to the courts.
This site is intended as an aid to those persons willing to consider this most consequential issue on a deeper level than television sound bites, bumper stickers, political slogans, and even the columns and letters collected on newspaper op-ed pages.
More specifically, this site gives you direct access to three influential articles. The first surveys and critically analyzes, in the words of its title, judicial redefinition of marriage. The Canadian Journal of Family Law published the article, "Judicial Redefinition of Marriage," in September 2004. The article is a slightly expanded version of an Oxford University thesis, on the basis of which that University awarded the M.St. degree “with distinction.” This site also provides you with a summary of the article.
The second article addresses an argument ubiquitous in the debate over the redefinition of marriage, the argument that a law precluding a same-sex couple from marrying is, for purposes of constitutional analysis, equivalent to a law preventing interracial marriages. The Brigham Young University Law Review published the article, “Marriage and the Betrayal of Perez and Loving,” in June 2005.
The third article sets forth the single strongest argument for retaining as a core meaning of marriage the union of a man and a woman – the “social institutional argument.” The article also demonstrates how the courts mandating the redefinition of marriage have elided the argument. The Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy published the article, "Genderless Marriage, Institutional Realities, and Judicial Elision," in January 2006.
A fourth article, “Eliding in New York,” printed in the July, 2006 Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy applies the social institutional analysis to the New York Court of Appeals dissenting opinion in Hernandez v. Robles.
This site also provides direct access to the key appellate court decisions in the marriage cases from Canada, South Africa, and a growing number of American states; and with a very short biography of me, Monte Neil Stewart, the author of the articles.
I hope that you find this site a helpful resource. I welcome your input.
Monte Neil Stewart