Still want to leave marriage to the courts?

[trumptman]

Still want to leave marriage to the courts? (http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/15/D8I8Q3CO0.html)

A 15-year-old girl can enter into a common-law marriage in Colorado, and younger girls and boys possibly can, too, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.

While the three-judge panel stopped short of setting a specific minimum age for such marriages, it said they could be legal for girls at 12 and boys at 14 under English common law, which Colorado recognizes.

The ruling overturned a lower-court judge's decision that a girl, now older than 18, was too young to marry at 15.

I was going to make a joke about 12 year olds being up for dibs, but I got a slight vomit taste in the back of my throat.

The appeal was filed by Willis Rouse, 38, who is serving time for escape and a parole violation. He argued that he and the girl began living together in April 2002 and applied for a marriage license a year later.

Well...isn't that special.

Nick

[shetline]

It doesn't sound like the courts are the problem here, it's the laws in Colorado at issue. You can't expect judges to invalidate the laws regarding marriage unless there are constitutional grounds to do so, regardless of what they think of the laws.

I don't know anything about the Colorado state constitution, but if Colorado wants to pass laws to explicitly increase the age at which one is allowed to marry, I can't see any US consitutional reason such laws wouldn't be upheld. If the citizens of Colorado make the effort and raise the ages involved, and get the associated laws passed, these judges would likely uphold the age increases too.

[Chris Cuilla]

I agree with shetline on this one. That seems like the path this should/might take (though probably not in actuality).

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the courts in this case appear to be doing exactly what they should do...interpreting (not making) the law. That Colorado's (and possibly others) legislature provided such latitude is not so much the judge's fault as it is their own.

The "activist" model would have been to take an existing law that actually states a minimum age, and then find a "right to marriage" (regardless of age) in the "penumbras" of the constitution and overturned the law. ;)

[hardeeharhar]

Actually Chris, your activists model would have taken a document which said nothing about marriage but indicates a general age of percieved adulthood to be eighteen and set the legal age of marriage at eighteen...

[shetline]

Originally posted by hardeeharhar
Actually Chris, your activists model would have taken a document which said nothing about marriage but indicates a general age of percieved adulthood to be eighteen and set the legal age of marriage at eighteen...
Unless, of course, you bring in "original intent"... which many conservatives, by the way, love. :D

At the time the Constitution was written, girls were generally considered marriageable at age 12, boys, I believe, at 15. If the framers of the Constitution didn't call out marriage in any special way, one would have to assume that their was no intent on their part to change the current practices of the day.

The only stats I could find online about typical marriage ages over time, below, show median age at first marriage back to 1890 (very far back in time at all):

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005061.html

With men is the US typically not marrying until 26 years of age, even back in 1890, it's difficult to imagine when the mythical golden age of virtue, when sex before marriage was unheard of, took place.

Here are some similar (average, not median) stats for countries around the world today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_at_first_marriage

Does anyone who pushes the idea of abstinence vows and "saving yourself" for marriage seriously think that very many humans will ever, on average, remain completely sexually inactive for something like ten years or more after their bodies have reached sexual maturity? Isn't the only vaguely realistic scenario where only a few miscreants have sex before marriage, and everyone else waits, a scenario which takes place in a world with a much, much lower average age of marriage?

At any rate, back on topic more... The US Constitution is pretty bad when it comes to issues of age. Other than ages of eligibility for specific offices, and some stuff dealing with computing representation and voting, the Constitution is mute. The whole idea of adulthood, that one doesn't attain full rights until adulthood, which rights one does and doesn't have before adulthood, is all left to common understanding, common law, and judicial precedent.

[a_greer]

Originally posted by trumptman

I was going to make a joke about 12 year olds being up for dibs, but I got a slight vomit taste in the back of my throat.

If only Michael Jackson was in Co, he wouldnt have had the...legal problems!

[rufusswan]

Absolutely the correct decision by the judge. Unfortunately, this is probably the most common method we have of understanding how 'outdated' some of our state laws may seem. Good public service has been done. Let Colorado take care of it.