Sunday, January 22, 2012

Review 1: Constitutional Barriers to Civil and Criminal Restrictions on Pre- and Extramarital Sex

Author's Note:

First review, inaugurating with one of the oldest pieces in my reference collection. Unfortunately finding full citation on this piece is a major royal pain in the ass, but it's still a good piece!

My postings of my literature reviews will be more erratic than what I was doing with the state reviews, as the disparity between each piece is a LOT bigger than with the state reviews. At least one every two weeks, that's my promise.

- Jason

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Review 1
Constitutional Barriers to Civil and Criminal Restrictions on Pre- and Extramarital Sex.
Harvard Law Review, 1991.
Author's Unknown


This is an older piece, but gives the same kind of depthful analysis of more modern works on non-monogamy. The primary thesis is that fornication and adultery laws should be seriously scaled back and consist of primarily civil-only legislation. The current state of affairs for these laws is discriminatory and advances state hegemony on heterosexual monogamous marriage without showing anywhere enough compelling interest to do so.

Though the work does show a great deal of insight in connecting sexuality to privacy issues, it stops it’s argument short in providing some legitimacy for the state to intrude on situations tat involve violation of trust and adverse affect on others. It cites the common cultural assumptions on adultery as a foundation of this, which seems shaky ground to support such an intrusion into the private sexual lives of married individuals.

In total, the strongest part of this piece is the connection between legislation and state controlled hegemony on sexuality, thus demonstrating a critical importance of legislation in allowing or controlling individual’s sexual lives.

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