Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
ORCID (Links to author’s additional scholarship at ORCID.org)
Abstract
Serena Mayeri’s Marital Privilege: Marriage, Inequality, and the Transformation of American Law unearths forgotten racial and political battles centered on establishing equal benefits and opportunities for unmarried parents and couples. It is the first book that grapples with the racial motivations of the late twentieth-century United States government withdrawal or manipulation of a host of laws that center the normative White, married, heterosexual couple. Marital Privilege emphasizes how both federal and state governments marginalize poor people to limited spaces within a weak economic safety net, often leaving families at the intersection of poverty and race unable to take advantage of marriage and its intended benefits.
Publication Title
Boston University Law Review Online
Document Type
Book Review
Keywords
marriage, race, marital privilege, family law
Recommended Citation
Jessica Dixon Weaver, The Racial History of Marital Privilege, 105 B.U. L. Rev. Online 59 (2025).
