The Monogamist Bigamist (in Arkansas)
There was some noise this week about a revision to an Arkansas law (9-11-102(b)(1)), passed last March, that — on its face — allowed children of any age to get a marriage license, just so long as they had their parents’ permission. The law contained the following:
In order for a person who is younger than eighteen (18) years of age and who is not pregnant to obtain a marriage license, the person must provide the county clerk with evidence of parental consent to the marriage.
What the author of the bill intended was a law prohibiting people younger than 18 from getting married in Arkansas, with an exception for pregnant girls. They could get married if their parents consented. Somehow (and no one seems to know how it happened) the phrase “who is pregnant” was changed to “who is not pregnant.”
After the law was passed, a code revision commission deleted the unintended not. Last September, a judge ruled that the commission overstepped its authority to fix “typographical and technical errors” in state statutes. Deleting the not changed the meaning of the law, and the commission had no authority to do that.
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This raises a few questions. Didn’t those who voted FOR the law bother to read it first? Didn’t they discuss it? Didn’t they submit it for public review? What other odd laws might there be in Arkansas, seeing as the state’s legislators don’t always read what they approve?
How about Arkansas’s law against bigamy (5-26-201)? That’s an odd one. In other states, you have to be married to more than one person to be guilty of bigamy. Not in Arkansas.
