Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/848

812 8i2 HARVARD LAW REVIEW them if domiciled elsewhere, even applying the law of Y, their domicile. If they are to have a divorce they must go to Y to get it. A declaration of nullity is a more delicate matter than divorce, because of its effect on events between marriage and decree. The jurisdiction governing the marriage and no other should pronounce it annulled. The determination of the original validity of a marriage may in- volve two laws, if the contracting parties are married in a state other than that of their domicile. It is said generally, especially by Ameri- can authorities, that a marriage good where contracted is good everywhere.^^ And there are many extreme examples in the Ameri- can cases where a marriage contracted out of the state has been declared valid, though expressly forbidden by the law of the con- tracting parties' domicile.^^ If the law of the state where people go through a marriage form is not complied with, the first essential to the creation of a marriage status is lacking. If the lex loci celebra- tionis demands certain forms, declares certain people unfit to marry, or makes other requirements, it has jurisdiction to declare that the failure of parties to comply with what it deems essential prevented them from becoming husband and wife, and to declare their attempt null and void. But the place where a man and woman happen casually to be at the time of a marriage ceremony cannot have a final determina- tion of this matter of marriage. The marriage status both in its creation and destruction is of great importance not only to the indi- vidual, but also to the state where he makes his home.^^ With the insistence of the law upon vigorous adherence to the right of domi- cile in ending the status, is it to be ignored entirely in the equal important creation? It is believed that the beginning of the marital relation is really a matter for the domiciliary law. But following a ^^ Minor, Conflict of Laws, § 77; Story, Conflict of Laws, § 113. " Dudley v. Dudley, 151 Iowa, 142, 130 N. W. 785 (1911); Commonwealth v. Lane, 113 Mass. 458 (1873); Medway v. Needham, 16 Mass. 157 (1819); Stevenson v. Gray, 17 B. Mon. (Ky.) 193 (1856); In re Wood's Estate, 137 Cal. 129, 69 Pac. 900 (1902); State V. Shattuck, 69 Vt. 403, 38 Atl. 81 (1897); Ex parte Chace, 26 R. I. 351, 58 Atl. 978 (1904). ^ That marriage relations are of consequence to the state has not always been the rule. In his interesting discussion on Marriage and Divorce, Lord Bryce shows how under the Roman law the entering and the leaving of the marriage relation was treated as the sole business of the parties themselves. 3 Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, 782.