1. INTRODUCTION

Writing in 2013, under the ironic title of ‘Marriage: A Modest Proposal’, John Eekelaar advanced what he acknowledged was in fact a ‘truly radical’ solution for the reform of marriage law. In it he advocated that the law should allow a legal marriage to take place anywhere within England and Wales, and in any form, the only legal requirements being that it be ‘attested by two witnesses’ and preceded by rigorous formalities designed to ensure that the parties were eligible to marry. As he noted:

It was an imaginative and sensitive way of dealing with the variety of beliefs that exist in England and Wales today, and the corresponding variety of ways in which couples might wish to express their consent to marry. This sensitivity to both the religious context and individual preferences reflected other aspects of his scholarship, including his work on multiculturalism and his long history of empirical research.

At the same time, his suggested solution also acknowledged the need for both legal certainty and a somewhat simpler set of rules than exists at present, which he quite fairly described as ‘bizarre’ and ‘confused’. While, as he acknowledged, it is ‘not dishonourable’ that the law governing entry into marriage ‘has developed by making a series of accommodations with various groups and points of view’, such accommodations have certainly done little for its coherence.

In this contribution, I would like to explore four different aspects of the argument advanced by Eekelaar in his article.