Jones v. Hallahan
| Decision Date | 09 November 1973 |
| Citation | 63 A.L.R.3d 1195,501 S.W.2d 588 |
| Parties | Marjorie JONES et al., Appellants, v. James HALLAHAN, Clerk of the Jefferson County Court, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky |
David Kaplan, Stuart L. Lyon, Louisville, for appellants.
J. Bruce Miller, Louisville, for appellee.
VANCE, Commissioner.
The appellants, each of whom is a female person, seek review of a judgment of the Jefferson Circuit Court which held that they were not entitled to have issued to them a license to marry each other.
Appellants contend that the failure of the clerk to issue the license deprived them of three basic constitutional rights, namely, the right to marry; the right of association; and the right to free exercise of religion. They also contend that the refusal subjects them to cruel and unusual punishment.
The sections of Kentucky statutes relating to marriage do not include a definition of that term. It must therefore be defined according to common usage.
Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, defines marriage as follows:
'A state of being married, or being united to a person or persons of the opposite sex as husband or wife; also, the mutual relation of husband and wife; wedlock; abstractly, the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence, for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family.'
The Century Dictionary and Encyclopedia defines marriage as:
'The legal union of a man with a woman for life; the state or condition of being married; the legal relation of spouses to each other; wedlock; the formal declaration or contract by which a man and a woman join in wedlock.'
Black's Law Dictionary, Fourth Edition, defines marriage as:
'The civil status, condition or relation of one man and one woman united in law for life, for the discharge to each other and the community of the duties legally incumbent upon those whose association is founded on the distinction of sex.'
Kentucky statutes do not specifically prohibit marriage between persons of the same sex 1 nor do they authorize the issuance of a marriage license to such persons.
Marriage was a custom long before the state commenced to issue licenses for that purpose. For a time the records of marriage were kept by the church. Some states even now recognize a common-law marriage which has neither the benefit of license nor clergy. In all cases, however, marriage has always been considered as the union of a man and a woman and we have been presented with no authority to the contrary.
It appears to us that appellants are prevented from marrying, not by the statutes of Kentucky or the refusal of the County Court Clerk of Jefferson County to...
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