Essay Sample on Marriage From Status to Contract

Introduction

The idea of the legal evolution from status to contract was firmly held; this thesis is based on Sir. Henry Maine who wrote about the ancient law. The movement of liberal societies has become more uniform. Maine's generalization of the progression of the societies from status organization to contract organization is strongly and widely accepted as a maxim of legal and social evolution in U.S the meaning of the statement is very critic and that the duties and the rights, incapacities, and capacities of an individual are not fixed by the law anymore. Former incidents of status are more dependent on their nature and its reality among the affected individual, its remedy is becoming more contractual. Status is used to define legal capacity which compost three attributes: status liberty, the position of the head of the household and the status for civil rights. The restricted legal capacity is the loss of all of the status attributes or one of them. The objective of this essay is to discuss the archaic legal structure to classical, i.e., how the society has moved status to contractual nature in respect to Maine's thesis regarding marriage relationship.

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Henry Maine characterizes the ancient law progress of evolution towards society the have embraced progression as the passage from status which is referred to as an inscribed position to a voluntary organization(contract). The nature of status law has disparaged the institution of marriage, according to Maine it has been a fundamental tool for women oppression. Status is a condition of consistent and institutional organization differing from the position of the law of the ordinary person. Women who are married have limited independent rights; this is associated with the gender division of labor and property with women taking a smaller share. Interestingly, the change of status to contractual law was of great significance in marriage. This change was a period of welfare state reflect and awareness of an individual's social and economic rights.

The Contractual organization of social life in the United States has considerably brought a significant change. Through all of its transformation course, it has identified by the dynamic resolution of the family dependency together with the development of personal obligation in its place. A person is substituted to the family; this happens where a person is regarded as the unit of which civ9il law take account. The advances have been experienced on different levels by married couples. There are societies which are not stationary in which the end of the ancient organization (status organization) is only perceived through careful study of the phenomenon that they do present. The change has to be exposed to recoil or reaction, and the apparent obstruction will be found to have been evident by the absorption of archaic thoughts and customs originating from the foreign source. The notion of status and contract present a considerable paradox in American jurisprudence, the contract originates from individuals while status is imposed publicly. Although there is a different area of the law dealing with the problem of marriage, it has remained part of social fabrics in the United States for centuries. Traditionally, the contract was viewed as common law, and the extent in which the state hinders in the area of privacy is likely to reflect the current prevailing attitude on the significance of public law in the ordinary society.

As from a terminus of history, it is contracted from a situation of society where all the relations of people have added up in the family relations. In the U.S, organizations seemed to have transformed towards a stage of social order where all the relationships arise from the individual's agreement. The status of the slave has completely disappeared; this has been suppressed by the contractual organization between the married couple. The relationship between married couples was referred to as cognatic, and it was recognized by the archaic law.

This progression in lifestyles and laws have greatly positively affected women. Archaic systems extremely undermined their rights. The periods of inferiority in society came to an end. In ancient law, women were regarded as the inferior, husband owned everything. All the belongings of a woman became his on marriage. As a result of contractual relations, the status of the female or married woman under the Tutelage is understood a person with rights other than the husband, all the relations that might form are the relations of contract. Suppression and denial of their right began to stop.

Conclusion

The status and contract ideas of Maine are used to create all the ideal types of archaic and modern societies. Women were suppressed and enslaved in ancient times, but contractual organization helped to awaken them. All the forms of status in the law of a person are obtained from, and to some limits, they are still colored by the strengths and privilege that exist in the family anciently. Therefore, it may be said that the movement of the dynamic society has been a movement that originated from status to contract based organization.