Item Detail
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27401
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0
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0
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English
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Plural Marriage : When One Spouse Is Not Enough
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Journal of Constitutional Law
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January 2017
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19
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Philadelphia, PA
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University of Pennsylvania Law School
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1-11
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Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, the only remaining marital frontier–at least for the Judeo-Christian nations of the West–is polygamy, or "plural marriage" as it is known under its sanitized name. This Article presents a brief history of polygamy, reviews how the courts have responded to legal challenges to monogamous marriage, and examines how the rationale in Obergefell legalizing same-sex marriage, including its constitutional analysis, can be applied to plural marriage. It also references Brown v. Buhman, a federal district court case invalidating the cohabitation prong of Utah’s anti-polygamy statute that was subsequently vacated and remanded, and concludes with the argument that while same-sex marriage merely extended the right to marry to homosexuals without disturbing the "status quo" of heterosexual marriage, plural marriage has the potential to disrupt both heterosexual and same-sex marriage by destroying the exclusivity of the marriage bond.