There's a concept of privity in contract law. Part of that has gone by the wayside, but the part that has always remained is that you can only bind yourself with a contract. If I sign a lease with a landlord and then want to add a felon to my lease, the landlord doesn't have to let the felon be added. If I sign a contract with this felon saying I promise to always add you to my leases, that's between me and the felon. The landlord isn't bound by my contract with said felon.

If I marry this felon, the landlord may legally (and morally) have to add him to the lease. Mere contracts don't have that power, but marriages do.

Thanks. I see what you're saying, but the solution strikes me as being relatively simple: in the original contract with your landlord, you either do or don't specify that others may be added to the lease. E.g.: One marriage partner may be automatically added to the lease, subject to several conditions.

Yes, governments should refuse to enforce certain contracts. Glaring examples would be that if I contract with you to never marry a woman or to never sleep with an Indian or whatever, the government will absolutely refuse to enforce those terms.

Sure, but these contracts seem bad partly because they're taken out of context, and because of their duration. If two people signed a contract which stipulated that, if either of them slept with another person during the next 6 months, the violator would have to donate $1,000 to Medicines Sans Frontieres, I don't think people would bat an eye. At-least, I wouldn't.

How so? It'd simply refuse to aknowledge any marriage that is not written down as a contract. Common-law marriages are great, but surely we won't have common-law polygamous marriages. That'd be insane.

People have not wanted to create their own marriage contracts. People get to vote. Ergo, there is a default contract. I don't contest that this may be silly on some level, perhaps what you suggested should obtain.

Sure, but if you can't rely on the government to have relatively stable marriage laws (at least where they count) then you can't do important marital things like division of labor. I can't quit my career if I don't know I'll be provided for even in a divorce. (or the flipside of child care). Etc. If we are being experimental, be experimental without legal obligationss and see which legal obligations seem to be actually required.

I fully accept that there may be pragmatic arguments in favor of amending laws rarely, etc. My point was that, irrespective of these arguments, Congress is an institution which can amend laws frequently. It's your choice how much you want to trust an institution which has a changeable nature.

When it comes to experimentation, I'm not sure what you're saying? Your thoughts about the stability of marriage don't apply to experimentation, because people know that they're experimenting, therefore they have a relatively good idea of what they can and cannot rely on (e.g.: being provided for in a divorce). I mean, people can read the contracts which they're being offered, and can even hire professionals to do likewise. They can thereby learn if the tendered contract will give them certain things (e.g.: being provided for in a divorce).

I'm not trying to labor the point, I just really don't see why there'd be a problem.