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Social History of Medicine Advance Access published online on July 2, 2009
Social History of Medicine, doi:10.1093/shm/hkp046
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. All rights reserved.

Capacity to Marry: Law, Medicine and Conceptions of Insanity

Ezra Hasson*

* School of Law, Law and Social Sciences Building, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. E-mail: Ezra.Hasson{at}nottingham.ac.uk


  Abstract

Summary Historically, English law has not constructed insanity as intrinsic to the individual, but rather as something to be determined by his or her abilities within the context of a particular situation. The courtroom provides the most visible forum within which the discourses of law and medicine interact, and yet the civil law context has been left largely unexamined by historians of madness. This paper seeks to begin to address that gap, through an examination of court cases determining competency in marriage. Using primarily nineteenth-century cases—claiming nullity of marriage on the basis that one party was insane and thus unable to give valid consent to the marriage contract—it explores how this ‘compartment’ of insanity is conceptualised.

Keywords: capacity; marriage; law; medicine; insanity


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