Marriage Laws - Comparison

[Deanna Wiist]

Reading the article on The Marriage Law of 1950 and exploring the text of China’s Marriage Law of 1981 made me realize that I really wanted to go back and examine marriage laws in the United States in 1950 to get a better sense of how the individual states compared to China. Article 36 of the Chinese Marriage Law of 1981 also gave the people’s congresses of national autonomous regions the ability to adapt the law to their local nationalities is long as those adaptations were in keeping with the principles of the law. I’d be curious to know what those adaptations were and how they differed. 

I think that an examination of marriage laws from different countries with different types of governments would be an interesting and valuable exercise for my students. It could spark some great conversation about government regulation, ideology, and the impact on ordinary citizens. The article on The Marriage Law of 1950 would also be a good excercise in language, motivation, and perspective. Nice historical example written at a time of intense anti-communist sentiment.