Marital Privilege

“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, and 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, 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

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.