Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

3-26-2016

SSRN Discipline

PSN Subject Matter eJournals; Legal Anthropology eJournals; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Cultural Anthropology eJournals; Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence & Legal Philosophy eJournals; CJRN Subject Matter eJournals; Political Behavior eJournals; Legal Scholarship Network; Criminal Law & Procedure eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; Law & Society eJournals; Law & Society: Public Law eJournals; AARN Subject Matter eJournals; Criminal Justice Research Network; Political Science Network; Anthropology & Archaeology Research Network

Abstract

Poly families are our national outlaws Despite the expansion of sexual rights and marriage equality in the US polygamy remains a crime Challenging that stigma is the Brown family who star in the reality TV show "Sister Wives" and who practice poly marriage as a tenet of their religion The Browns filed suit against multiple Utah state actors in federal district court challenging Utah's polygamy statute as unconstitutional in violation of their Free Exercise of Religion substantive Due Process and Equal Protection rights The district court agreed and decriminalized informal polygamy in Utah The flaws in the underlying litigation however will likely compel a reversal by the Tenth Circuit on appeal reaffirming outdated misconceptions and leaving prosecutors and polygamists in an uncertain legal position This Article provides much needed clarity on the decriminalization of polygamy to inform future litigation This Article approaches the decriminalization debate by reframing the issue into its three key considerations "” the harm the law and the policy "” that must guide the polygamy debate moving forward The aim is to provide a gloss over which to analyze the Brown litigation as it draws out the harms of polygamy the constitutional arguments and statutory interpretation issues at stake and the transformative legal and theoretical social policies that could ideally result from the polygamy debate at this moment in historyUsing this framework this Article is the first to argue that polygamy bans are unconstitutional under a combination of substantive Due Process and Free Speech grounds as they apply to the private aspects of polygamy and the public aspects of polygamy respectively The Article culminates with an idealized mock opinion from a fictional Tenth Circuit panel in the Brown litigation that approaches the decriminalization of polygamy using a combination of substantive Due Process and Free Speech tenets and not arguments based in Free Exercise of Religion

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