The Status of Marriage

婚姻的地位

本文著重於婚姻作為一種法律地位所具有的效率優勢，並指出這種地位應該不分性別地向伴侶開放。有別於過往更為人們所熟悉的承認同性婚姻之憲法與人權觀點，本文運用法律和經濟學工具，分析隨著時間不斷變化的婚姻法律制度，並關注包括美國和臺灣，以及香港、日本、法國和荷蘭等國相關法制近期之發展。本文在強調實際面的同時，亦承認象徵性層面在過去數十年間，對關係承認的演變所發揮的重要性。此一觀點係建立於作者早期的工作經驗上，其將婚姻法的發展與商業公司法之演變進行比較，並考察女權主義者對於婚姻所提出之自由與平等的要求是如何帶來法制上之改變。

Focusing chiefly on the efficiency advantages of marriage as a legal status that should be open to couples regardless of sex, rather than on the more familiar constitutional and human rights arguments for same-sex marriage recognition, this article applies the tools of law and economics to an analysis of the legal institution of marriage as it has developed over time and in the recent past in a variety of legal systems, including chiefly the United States and Taiwan, but also, inter alia, Hong Kong, Japan, France, and the Netherlands. While it urges an emphasis on the practical, the article acknowledges and discusses the importance symbolic aspects have played in the evolution of relationship recognition in the last several decades. It builds on the author’s earlier work analogizing the development of the law of marriage to that of business corporations and examining the ways in which feminist claims to liberty and equality in marriage have brought about legal change.