St. Maximos' Hut

Joel Nicholas, of Pepperdine law school, has an abstract posted on SSRN for a paper entitled "Moving Toward Multi-Tiered Marriage: Ideas and Influences from New York and Louisiana to the International Community".

There's no link to download the paper, unfortunately, since the abstract is very interesting:

This article contends that American society needs to hold a
genuine discussion about alternatives to current conceptions of
marriage and family law jurisdiction. Specifically, the article
suggests that the civil government should consider ceding some
of its jurisdictional authority over marriage and divorce law to
religious communities that are competent and capable of
adjudicating the martial rites and rights of their respective
adherents. There is already preliminary movement in this
direction both within and without the United States, which might
serve as avenues for further discussions.

Within the United States, the relatively new covenant marriage
statutes of Louisiana, Arizona, and Arkansas provide a form of
two-tiered marriage and divorce law. But there is even an
earlier, and potentially more fulsome, example in New York's get
statute. New York's law (first passed in the early 1980's) is a
civil statute that deals with specific problems raised by the
intersection of civil law and Jewish law in marriage and divorce
situations. New York's law implicitly acknowledges that there
are multiple understandings of the marital relationship already
present among members of society. These examples from within the
United States lay the groundwork for a heartier discussion of
the proper role of the state and other groups with respect to
marriage and divorce law.

As part of that discussion, the article contends that the
United States should look outward, to the practices of other
countries. Several other nations - including South Africa,
India, Egypt, and Kenya - have ensconced multiple understandings
of marriage in their own civil law. That is, the state has (to
varying degrees) ceded control and authority of marriage to
other tribunals - or it has reified more than one understanding
of marriage in its civil law. Such multiple understandings are
generally predicated upon religious grounds. These other nations
and their practices could serve as predecessors for new
understandings of a more robust pluralism at American law.

I look forward to seeing it in print sometime soon and getting to read the whole thing.