In nineteenth-century America, the law insisted that marriage was a permanent relationship defined by the husband's authority and the wife's dependence. Yet at

This important new text is the product of several years of research of the family law of fifteen Commonwealth Caribbean jurisdictions. It is the first and only

In this landmark book, the historian Linda K. Kerber opens up this important and neglected subject for the first time. She begins during the Revolution, when ma

Explaining the curious legal doctrine of "coverture," William Blackstone famously declared that "by marriage, husband and wife are one person at law." This "cov