marriage
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 388 U.S. 1 - Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia · 1967Most cited · 3,691 citing opinions
Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes... is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
How the Supreme Court has restated “marriage”
Each Supreme Court definition of “marriage,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “marriage”
Court decisions citing the 3 opinions that defined “marriage” — 6,574 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 3 definitions, chronological · 1850–1967
- ORIGINAL
The law of marriage as contained in the Partidas is the same as that which we have stated to be the general law of Europe antecedent to the council; namely, 'that consent alone, joined with the will to marry, constitutes marriage.
under the Partidas
The common understanding of a marriage, which Congress must have had in mind when it made provision for 'alien spouses' in the War Brides Act, is that the two parties have undertaken to establish a life together and assume certain duties and obligations.
War Brides Act