What is the ‘Truth About Marriage’?

...Right-faction powerbroker Joe De Bruyn said marriage had been the union of a man and a woman ''since the dawn of humanity''...

...The Australian Christian Lobby reacted swiftly to the resolution, saying the party - in defiance of Ms Gillard - had chosen to be on the "wrong side of truth".

(The Australian, 3 December, 2011)

These comments by Joe de Bruyn in 2011 piqued my interest.  As I’ve written here before, marriage is, in my view, an institution of the law that seeks to subjugate women.  In a related context, in my view, it is a relationship concerning property.  Yet there is a very strong notion that marriage is so much more than this.

I have no opinion on private or religious views of marriage within the context of religious practice or how one chooses to celebrate it with one’s family and friends.  My interest lies in the legal construction of this private relationship – and de Bruyn’s comments, as with all comments in the same-sex marriage debate, occur in the context of law-making.

So I’ve been doing a little reading into the context of marriage and its regulation by the law.  I’ve a long way to go in learning about this complex institution, but even a preliminary overview provides some interesting contrast to the bluster of the political debate.

Is it true that marriage has been between a man and a woman since the dawn of humanity?  If you consider this as a moral or religious question, it need not enter the legal debate.  In the context of the law, I think that this is the wrong question.  I think that the right question is: since when has the law been so certain about its role in marriage, and in what circumstances?

Bats, Dangerous Creatures & Domain Over Land

Bob Katter has recently called for landowners to have 'control over his (sic) backyard'.

"So if he decides to remove a deadly animal, like this bat up here, or a snake, it's his backyard, not the crown's. 

In Mr Katter's view:

"As a race of people we have moved away from (the idea of) 'this backyard belongs to us'."

What I take his meaning to be is that the state has too much regulatory power over activities undertaken upon freehold land.  That is, he is seeking a more libertarian approach in terms of elevating private property above state intervention.  In other words that a person's home is their castle.

Husband and Wife are Two Souls in the One Flesh...

It hath beene resolved by the Justices that a wife cannot be produced either against or for her husband...[for they are two souls in one flesh], and it might be a cause of implacable discord and dissention betweene the husband and the wife, and a meane of great inconvenience. (Lord Coke, 1628, cited in David Lusty, 2004)

As a result of the Biblical principle that husband and wife are 'two souls in one flesh', there is a common law tradition whereby women may not be obliged to give evidence against their husbands. This principle has apparently extended to apply to men giving evidence against their wives.

There are different bases on which a person may be required to or be excused from giving evidence.  Their competence differs from their compellability which differs from whether privilege attaches to their evidence, once they are giving testimony.  I am not seeking to explore these legal differences - and for the purposes of this post, will refer to these laws by a non-technical use of the term 'privileges'. I recognise that this term in itself has in part created the ambiguity in aspects of the common law in the area of spousal privileges.


The issue of spousal privilege has recently arisen in Australia, in the 2011 High Court decision Australian Crime Commission v Stoddart.  This decision found that (the technical legal) spousal privilege does not exist in Australia.  (Others have discussed the case: eg here and here.) However the case did, particularly in Heydon J's dissenting judgement, discuss the nature, genesis and evolution of spousal privileges (in their generic sense). 


While I have little, if any, expertise in the law or practice of evidence, what interested me about this topic and the High Court's recent decision on it, was the foundation of spousal privilege laws - that husband and wife are 'two souls in the one flesh'. In considering the idea of spousal privilege laws and the Court's approach to them, I am therefore interested in the notion of status-based laws, and their implications.

Unbundling Interests in Land

It used to be that 'a man's house is his castle' and indeed this aphorism is reflected in the common law doctrine of cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos or he who owns the soil is theirs up to heaven and down to hell. Increasingly however this doctrine has been narrowed as interests in land have become unbundled.

I draw a distinction here between the recognition that one cannot literally own 'up to heaven' or 'down to hell' and what is considered to constitute 'land'.  

Originally the only reservation in a grant of land was the royal metals, gold and silver, which were reserved to the Crown.  That is to say, one would own the 'land' except for any gold/silver contained in it.  In Australia, various other minerals and metals were extracted from land over time - not by mining, but through legislative reservation of minerals for the Crown.  This resulted in creation of one subject of property rights - land - and a second subject of property rights - minerals.

Likewise, the common law recognised riparian rights - rights to water that flowed over or adjacent to land.  So water was considered to be part of the land.  This too has become 'unbundled', creating yet another subject of property rights.

The contemporary clash over coal seam gas in Australia represents another dimension of this progressive unbundling whereby the landowner loses control over access to resources under the ground and according to some landowners, also lose control over permissions to access land: they 'don't have a choice' in giving permission for the gas wells.

The result, as reported in The Weekend Australian there is an alliance between environmentalists and farmers both of whom reject coal seam gas as an interference in the farmers' control over farmlands.

The consequence of unbundling of property rights in this context is the creation of another market for private property interests (coal seam gas) that ostensibly directly competes with an existing private property interest (land ownership).  While there may not be anything inherently wrong with a private property interest or market (depending on your ideological persuasion of course) what does need to be considered here is the foundation that justifies the making of laws that allow this direct competition.

If private property interests are to be elevated above all else (a libertarian view of property) then there seems to be an inherent conflict between the pre-existing (private) property rights of the landowner and the subsequent interests of the coal seam gas rights holders.  Perhaps such competition is regarded as putting resources to their highest use (see eg Adam Smith and comparative advantage).  In this case, the law's granting of permission to extract coal seam gas will presumably be based on a public interest argument - that this land is put to more productive use by coal seam gas extraction than from farming.  Coal seam gas extraction seeks to meet global demand for energy production - a pressing public need.

The arguments by farmers and environmentalists challenge this.  These arguments seem to be based not just on protection of pre-existing private property, but are likewise public interest arguments about the utility of food production, land quality and wider environmental protection.  On this basis, not only is there a private property competition, there is also a competition for public goods.

It is my observation that these private/public issues are becoming increasingly prevalent, particularly in the context of the unbundling of property rights in land.  Where globalisation of problems - climate change, environmental degradation, human rights, sustainability, energy production - result in the need for national public responses, it is interesting to note the solutions proposed often, though not always, utilise private property interests and free market mechanisms.