Family Law
In the Shadow of Marriage: Single Women and the Legal Construction of the Family and the State
112 Yale L.J. 1641 (2003) This Article argues that the law has constructed marriage as an institution capable of regulating the rights and responsibilities of even unmarried women. In various ways, the law has constructed the rights of certain groups of unmarried women "in the shadow of marriage": That is, the law--its imagination bounded by the dominant, normative paradigm of private, heterosexual relations--has defined an unmarried woman's legal status by virtue of her contiguous relationship (real or imagined) to marriage. By analyzing the shifting legal construction of widows' rights--particularly, the move away from widows' common-law dower rights--this Article explores the powers and limitations of marriage's shadow. It argues that even as lawmakers have sought to extend marriage's reach to women living outside marriage, they have simultaneously looked to the space outside of marriage's borders in order to define the meaning of marriage proper. A revised history of dower reveals the dynamic relationship between marriage's center and its shadow as the contested sociolegal terrain in which politicians and feminist advocates have--historically and today--debated the meaning of sex equality, as well as the proper relationship among women, the family, and the state.