BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 3 Sociology 2022-23 Question Paper with Solutions

Sociology of law is the branch of sociology that studies law as a social institution: how law arises out of society, how it works in practice as against how it reads on paper, and how it shapes and is shaped by social change.

It asks questions the law books do not: who actually gets the benefit of a right, why a statute that is validly enacted is widely disobeyed, how custom hardens into law, and how law can be used as an instrument of planned social change.

Its founding figures are Montesquieu, Emile Durkheim (who read the movement from repressive to restitutive law as a measure of social solidarity), Max Weber (who traced the rise of rational legal authority), Karl Marx (who treated law as part of the superstructure serving the dominant class) and Roscoe Pound (law as social engineering).

A community is a group of people who live together in a definite locality and share a common way of life, with a consciousness of belonging together that is not confined to any single interest.

MacIver and Page define it as "any area of common life, village, or town, or district, or country, or even wider area." The two essential elements they identify are:

1. Locality, a definite territorial base in which the group lives; and
2. Community sentiment, a "we feeling", a sense of belonging, common living and interdependence.

Examples are a village, a tribe, a town or a city. Community differs from association, which is organised for one specific purpose (a college, a trade union, a company); community covers the whole of life, association only a part of it.

Competition is the impersonal, unconscious and continuous struggle between individuals or groups for a scarce reward, in which the aim is to obtain the reward rather than to harm the rival. Its main forms are:

1. Economic competition, for wealth, employment, markets and customers. It is the most widespread form.
2. Social competition, for status, prestige, membership and recognition.
3. Political competition, for power and office, as between parties at an election.
4. Cultural competition, between cultures, religions or languages for adherents and influence.
5. Racial and ethnic competition, between racial or ethnic groups for advantage and position.

Competition is also classed as personal (the rivals know one another, as in two candidates for one post) and impersonal (the rivals never meet, as candidates in a public examination).

Power is the capacity to impose one's will on the behaviour of others even against their resistance, by whatever means, including force. Max Weber defined it as the probability that an actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance. Power may be legitimate or illegitimate.

Authority is legitimate power: power that those subject to it accept as rightful, so that obedience is voluntary rather than compelled. Authority is therefore a species of power, distinguished by consent and by the sense of obligation to obey.

Weber's three types of authority are:

1. Traditional, resting on the sanctity of immemorial custom, as with a hereditary king or a caste elder.
2. Charismatic, resting on the exceptional personal qualities of a leader.
3. Legal rational, resting on impersonal rules and the office rather than the person, as with a civil servant or a judge.

Society is not a collection of people but the web of social relationships in which people stand to one another. It is the whole system of usages, procedures, authority and mutual aid by which men live together.

MacIver and Page: "Society is a system of usages and procedures, of authority and mutual aid, of many groupings and divisions, of controls of human behaviour and of liberties. This ever changing complex system we call society."

Its essential characteristics are likeness and difference among its members, interdependence, cooperation and conflict, and the fact that it is abstract: society is a network of relations, and cannot be seen or touched.

For full marks, cover: the meaning of social change, then the four main theories, evolutionary, cyclical, functional and conflict, each with its leading exponents and its central claim, and close with a short assessment.

Social change means a change in the structure and functioning of society: in its institutions, its patterns of relationship, its norms and its values. It is universal, continuous, and mostly the product of many causes rather than one.

1. Evolutionary theory (linear). Society moves in a single direction, from simple to complex, through fixed stages.

• Auguste Comte's Law of Three Stages: the human mind, and with it society, passes from the theological stage (explanation by gods) to the metaphysical (explanation by abstract forces) to the positive or scientific (explanation by observed law).
• Herbert Spencer applied biological evolution to society: change is a movement from incoherent homogeneity to coherent heterogeneity, and societies evolve from militant to industrial types. Spencer's doctrine of the survival of the fittest is Social Darwinism.

• Pitirim Sorokin's principle of immanent change: societies oscillate between an ideational culture (reality is spiritual), a sensate culture (reality is what the senses report) and an intermediate idealistic culture, and the cause of change lies within the system itself, not outside it.
• Vilfredo Pareto's circulation of elites: history is a graveyard of aristocracies, and elites succeed one another in an endless cycle of lions and foxes.

3. Functional or equilibrium theory. Talcott Parsons treated society as a system that tends towards equilibrium. Change is a disturbance that the system absorbs, adjusting its parts until a new balance is reached. Change is therefore gradual, adaptive and orderly, and revolution is abnormal.

4. Conflict theory. Karl Marx held that change is driven by the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production, working itself out as class struggle. History moves through primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism and finally socialism and communism. Change is neither gradual nor consensual: it is produced by conflict and, at the decisive moments, by revolution. Ralf Dahrendorf restated conflict theory around authority rather than property.

For full marks, cover: the definition and the fact that marriage is an institution rather than a contract alone, its characteristics, forms, functions, and the changes visible in it today.

Definition. Marriage is the socially approved union of a man and a woman which establishes a family, regulates sexual relations and confers on the partners and their children a defined set of rights and duties. Westermarck: "Marriage is a relation of one or more men to one or more women which is recognised by custom or law."

Characteristics.

1. It is a universal social institution, found in every known society.
2. It is a socially approved union; approval is what distinguishes marriage from cohabitation.
3. It creates reciprocal rights and obligations between the spouses and towards children.
4. It is accompanied by ritual or ceremony, religious or civil.

Functions. Regulation of sexual behaviour; provision of a stable setting for procreation and the rearing of children; assignment of legitimacy and descent; economic cooperation and division of labour; emotional security and companionship; transmission of property and culture across generations.

Changing trends. Rising age at marriage; growth of self choice and love marriage; decline of caste endogamy in cities; rising divorce and remarriage; dual income households; late marriage and voluntary childlessness; live in relationships; and a legal framework, the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the Special Marriage Act, 1954, the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, that has steadily replaced custom with statute.

1. Primary and secondary (Charles Horton Cooley). A primary group is small, face to face, intimate, enduring and an end in itself: the family, the play group, the neighbourhood. Cooley called these the "nursery of human nature", where the self is formed. A secondary group is large, impersonal, formal and a means to an end: a political party, a trade union, a company.
2. In group and out group (W. G. Sumner). The in group is the "we" group, marked by loyalty and cooperation; the out group is the "they" group, viewed with indifference or hostility. This distinction generates ethnocentrism, the judging of other groups by the standards of one's own.
3. Formal and informal. Formal groups have written rules, defined offices and prescribed procedure; informal groups arise spontaneously from personal liking.
4. Reference group (Robert Merton). A group whose standards a person adopts as a frame of reference, whether or not he belongs to it. It explains anticipatory socialisation, and, in India, much of what Srinivas called Sanskritisation.
5. Voluntary and involuntary. One joins a club; one does not join a caste or a family of birth.

For full marks, cover: the definition, its characteristics, the stages, the agencies, the theories of self, and its importance.

Definition. Socialisation is the lifelong process by which an individual learns the norms, values, language, skills and roles of his society and is thereby converted from a biological organism into a social person. It is the process by which culture is transmitted and personality is formed.

Characteristics. It is a continuous, lifelong process, not confined to childhood; it is learned, not inherited; it is both conscious and unconscious; it makes the individual a functioning member of society and simultaneously makes society continuous across generations.

5. Mass media and social media, increasingly powerful and largely uncontrolled.
6. The workplace, which socialises the adult into occupational roles.

Theories of the self.

• Charles Horton Cooley's looking glass self: we see ourselves as we imagine others see us. It has three elements: our imagination of how we appear to another, our imagination of that person's judgment, and the resulting feeling of pride or shame.
• George Herbert Mead: the self arises in interaction through language, developing from play (taking one role at a time) to the game (coordinating many roles at once) to the generalised other (the internalised attitude of the community as a whole). Mead distinguishes the spontaneous I from the socialised me.
• Sigmund Freud: the personality is a struggle between the id (instinctual demand), the superego (internalised social morality) and the ego (the realistic mediator).

2. Poor infrastructure and unequal access to facilities. Grounds, coaching, fitness support, physiotherapy and travel arrangements are routinely inferior for women's teams, particularly at the district and state level where careers are actually made.
3. Low visibility and media neglect. Women's events receive a small fraction of broadcast time and column space. This is self reinforcing: low coverage produces low sponsorship, which produces low investment, which produces low coverage.
4. Family and social discouragement. Sport is still treated in many households as an unsuitable or unserious pursuit for a girl, especially after puberty. Pressure to marry early ends careers at the age at which male careers begin.
5. Sexual harassment and unsafe environments, including harassment by coaches and officials, aggravated by dependence on those same officials for selection. The protests by Indian wrestlers made the scale of this public.
6. The double burden and the short career. Women carry domestic and caring responsibilities alongside training, and face a career interrupted by marriage and childbirth with little institutional support such as maternity provision in contracts.

4. A functioning safeguarding regime: mandatory Internal Committees in every federation and academy under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, with independent members and a complaint route that does not run through the selectors.
5. Representation in administration: reserved places for women on federation boards and selection committees, so that decisions about women's sport are not made entirely by men.
6. Maternity and career break protection in central contracts, following the model adopted by several cricket boards.
7. Legal enforcement of the equality guarantees: Articles 14, 15 and 16 of the Constitution, Article 15(3) which permits special provision for women, the Equal Remuneration guarantee now contained in the Code on Wages, 2019, and Article 21 read as a right to live with dignity.
8. Changing attitudes through socialisation: school curricula, parental awareness and the deliberate promotion of role models, because law can remove the formal barrier but only socialisation removes the belief behind it.

The essential religious practices test settles the question. A practice is protected under Article 25 only if it is essential and integral to the religion, such that removing it would change the religion's character. The Supreme Court in Arjun Gopal v. Union of India held that bursting firecrackers is not an essential religious practice of Diwali. Diwali is the festival of lights; the lighting of lamps is its practice, and fireworks are a comparatively recent commercial accretion.

What the courts have actually done is regulate, not abolish. The Supreme Court has permitted only green crackers with reduced emission, banned series or joined crackers (laris) and barium salts, and confined bursting to two hours, generally 8 pm to 10 pm on Diwali. Sale is restricted to licensed traders. In Noise Pollution (V), In Re, the Court laid down decibel limits and a general prohibition on loudspeakers between 10 pm and 6 am.

2. Educational institutions. Environmental Studies is a compulsory subject at the undergraduate level in India by direction of the Supreme Court in M. C. Mehta v. Union of India. Beyond the syllabus, eco clubs, tree planting, cracker free Diwali pledges and NSS and NCC activity turn knowledge into practice.
3. Religious institutions. Powerful, because they command belief rather than mere assent. Temples, mosques, churches and gurudwaras that adopt idol immersion in artificial tanks, ban plastic offerings or preach against noise reach people no government advertisement can. Indian traditions already contain the material: reverence for rivers, trees and animals.
4. Mass media and social media. Sets the agenda by deciding what is discussed. Air Quality Index reporting after Diwali did more to change urban behaviour than any circular. Social media allows campaigns to spread without cost, though it equally spreads misinformation and communal framing of the issue.

(A) Is the definition of marriage changing with changing times

Yes. The core remains, but almost everything around it has moved.

What has not changed is the sociological core: marriage is still a socially approved union creating a family, assigning legitimacy to children, and generating reciprocal rights and duties. That definition still holds.

What has changed:

1. From sacrament to contract, and now to companionship. Classical Hindu law treated marriage as an indissoluble sacrament performed for religious duty, progeny and pleasure. The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, admitted divorce under Section 13 and made it a statutory relationship. The dominant expectation today is neither sacrament nor bargain but companionship: emotional satisfaction is treated as the purpose, and its absence as a reason to end the marriage.

6. New forms have appeared alongside it. Live in relationships were recognised by the Supreme Court in Indra Sarma v. V. K. V. Sarma and D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal as capable of amounting to a relationship in the nature of marriage under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. Marriages under the Special Marriage Act, 1954 cross religion without conversion.
7. The parties themselves have been redefined. Restrictions of caste and religion have weakened; the law has moved on the question of same sex unions, with Navtej Singh Johar decriminalising consensual same sex relations, though Supriyo v. Union of India (2023) declined to read marriage equality into the existing statutes and left it to Parliament.

Conclusion. The function of marriage has narrowed, from an alliance between families that organised property, labour and descent, to a relationship between two individuals for companionship. Its form has diversified accordingly.

(B) Is there a clash between culture and individual choice in marriage decisions

Yes, and in India it is one of the sharpest points of social conflict.

Where the clash appears:

5. Choosing not to marry at all, which meets a different kind of pressure: constant questioning, the assumption that something has gone wrong, and, for women, the stigma of remaining single.
6. Cultural lag within the family. Parents socialised in one set of norms confront children socialised in another, and the conflict is between generations rather than between individuals and an abstraction.

How the clash is resolved or managed.

• Constitutional and statutory protection: Article 21 (autonomy and choice of partner), Articles 19 and 25, the Special Marriage Act, 1954, which supplies a route to marriage without conversion, and the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.
• Judicial protection: Lata Singh, Shakti Vahini, Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K. M. (the Hadiya case, 2018), in which the Supreme Court restored a marriage annulled by the High Court and held that the choice of a partner lies within the core of dignity and privacy.

A note on the premise. This paper was set on 10 February 2023, roughly a year after the invasion of February 2022, which is what the phrase "going on for months" refers to. The answer below treats the question sociologically, as the paper intends, rather than as a question of international politics.

(A) Failure of political institutions or of leaders

The honest answer is that both are involved, and that a sociologist would put more weight on the institutions.

The case for failure of leaders. Personal decisions of identifiable individuals began and continued the war; the choice to invade was made by a small circle; nationalist rhetoric and personal conceptions of history and destiny shaped it. Max Weber's charismatic authority is relevant here: where authority rests on the extraordinary qualities of a person rather than on rules, there is no institutional brake on that person's judgment, and the leader's miscalculation becomes the nation's.

Sociological conclusion. Leaders act, but they act within structures that permit or restrain them. A society whose institutions are strong survives a bad leader; a society whose institutions are weak is at the mercy of one. The war is therefore better explained as an institutional failure that a leader exploited than as the act of one man. Both national institutions, which failed to restrain, and international institutions, which failed to deter, are implicated.

(B) Role of the UN during times of conflict

Its constitutional purpose. The Charter of 1945 was made, in its own words, to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. Article 2(4) prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of any state. Chapter VI provides for pacific settlement, Chapter VII for enforcement action.

What it does in conflict:

1. Prevention and mediation. Good offices, negotiation, enquiry, conciliation and mediation by the Secretary General and by special envoys under Chapter VI.
2. Collective security. Under Chapter VII the Security Council may determine a threat to the peace and impose sanctions under Article 41 or authorise force under Article 42.

Its limitations, which must be stated. The veto of the five permanent members disables the Council whenever a great power is a party. It has no standing army and depends on member states for troops and money. Its resolutions bind only under Chapter VII, and enforcement depends on the political will of the same states. It cannot act against the wishes of a great power, which is why the demand for Security Council reform, including India's claim to a permanent seat, has grown out of exactly such episodes.

Conclusion. The UN's realistic role in a conflict of this kind is not to stop it but to contain, relieve and record: humanitarian corridors, refugee protection, grain agreements, documentation of violations, and a forum in which the aggression is named. That is a real function, and it is far less than the Charter promised.

For full marks, cover: what science means, the arguments that sociology is a science, the arguments against, a reasoned conclusion, then the two schools on scope, and finally the methods with their strengths and weaknesses.

Is sociology a science

What science means. A science is a body of systematic knowledge acquired by objective observation, classification, experiment where possible, and the formulation of general laws that permit prediction. The test is the method, not the subject matter.

Arguments that sociology is a science:

1. It uses scientific methods: the social survey, the case study, controlled comparison, statistical analysis, sampling and the interview schedule.
2. It is systematic and cumulative: knowledge is organised into theories, tested and revised, and later work builds on earlier work.

4. Prediction is unreliable, because human behaviour is voluntary and reflexive: people change their behaviour when they learn what is predicted of them.
5. Terminology is imprecise. Terms such as community, culture and society are used differently by different writers.
6. Universal laws are hard to find, because social phenomena are bound to time and place.

Conclusion. Sociology is a science, but a social science, not a natural one. It satisfies the definition of science on the ground that matters, which is method: it observes systematically, verifies, generalises and revises. It does not attain the precision, the experimental control or the predictive power of physics, and it cannot, because its subject matter is conscious, variable and self aware. It is best described as a developing or young science. Auguste Comte, who named it, called it social physics and placed it at the top of his hierarchy of sciences precisely because it is the most complex and therefore the last to mature.

Scope of sociology

There are two schools.

• Emile Durkheim divided it into social morphology (the territorial and population base and its structure), social physiology (the specialised sociologies of religion, law, economy, morals) and general sociology (which formulates the general laws).
• Sorokin: the relationships between different classes of social phenomena, and their general characteristics.
• Ginsberg divided it into social morphology, social control, social processes and social pathology.
• Criticism: the field becomes so wide that sociology risks becoming a superficial survey of everything.

A reasonable position. The synthetic view has largely prevailed. Sociology studies society as a whole, but works through specialised branches: sociology of law, family, religion, education, industry, medicine, crime and so on.

Methods of sociology

1. The social survey. Collection of data from a defined population by questionnaire or schedule, usually on a sample. Strength: covers large numbers and yields quantitative data. Weakness: superficial, and depends on the honesty and understanding of the respondent.

8. The functional method. Explaining an institution by the contribution it makes to the working of the whole.
9. The ideal type (Weber). A deliberately constructed pure model, such as bureaucracy, which no real case matches exactly, used as a yardstick against which real cases are measured.

Causes. Individual differences in interest and attitude; differences of culture, religion, language and caste; conflict of interests, especially economic; rapid social change producing a gap between generations and between groups; and inequality in the distribution of wealth, status and power.

Forms.

1. Personal or individual conflict, between two persons, arising from personal enmity.
2. Group conflict, between organised groups.
3. Class conflict, between social classes over the distribution of wealth and power. Marx treated this as the motor of history.
4. Racial conflict, based on perceived racial difference.
5. Caste conflict, in India, over status, resources, reservation and social precedence.
6. Communal or religious conflict, between religious communities.
7. Political conflict, between parties and ideologies for power.
8. Industrial conflict, between labour and management, expressed in strikes and lockouts.
9. International conflict or war, between states.

Disintegrative or negative effects:

• It destroys life, property and order.
• It disrupts social unity and produces hatred between groups.
• It diverts resources from production to destruction.
• It damages personality, producing fear, insecurity and hostility.
• It can lead to the disintegration of the group itself.

Social control

Meaning. Social control is the sum of the ways in which a society secures conformity to its norms and regulates the behaviour of its members. Mannheim: "Social control is the sum of those methods by which a society tries to influence human behaviour to maintain a given order."

Nature of social control. It is universal, found in every society; it is exercised by the group over the individual, and by society over the group; it is pervasive, operating in every sphere of life; it may be conscious or unconscious; it is both positive, through rewards, and negative, through punishment; and it is necessary for order, since without it social life would be unpredictable.

Informal control is effective in small, stable, face to face communities where everyone is known.

2. Formal social control. Deliberately created, written, and enforced by specialised agencies with defined penalties. Its means are:

• Law, the principal instrument, backed by the coercive power of the state.
• Police, courts and prisons.
• Administration and bureaucracy.
• Education, which is formal in its organisation and informal in much of its effect.
• Coercion, both physical and non violent.
• Constitution and codified rules of organisations.

Formal control becomes necessary as societies grow large, heterogeneous and anonymous, and informal control loses its grip.

For full marks, cover: the definition, the material and non material division, the characteristics, the elements, the related concepts of cultural lag, ethnocentrism and cultural relativism, and the importance of culture, ending with the relation between culture and law.

Definition

Culture is the entire social heritage of a people: everything they have learned as members of society, and everything they transmit to the next generation.

E. B. Tylor, in Primitive Culture (1871), gave the classical definition: "Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."

MacIver and Page: "Culture is the expression of our nature in our modes of living and thinking, in our everyday intercourse, in art, in literature, in religion, in recreation and enjoyment."

7. Culture is gratifying. It provides the means of satisfying human needs, biological and social.
8. Culture is variable. It differs from society to society; there is no single universal content.
9. Culture is integrated. Its parts hang together as a system, so a change in one part produces change in others.
10. Culture is idealistic and normative. It embodies the ideals and norms of a group, telling members not only what is but what ought to be.
11. Culture is superorganic and man made. It is above the organic, created by man, and outlives any individual.

Elements of culture

Norms (rules of behaviour, comprising folkways, mores, laws and taboos); values (conceptions of what is desirable); beliefs; language, which is the vehicle of the whole; symbols; customs; technology and artefacts; and institutions.

Related concepts

• Sub culture and counter culture. A sub culture is a distinct culture within a larger one, as of a region, caste or occupation; a counter culture opposes the dominant one.
• Cultural diffusion, assimilation and acculturation: the spread of traits, the fusion of groups, and the change produced in a culture by prolonged contact with another.

Importance of culture

1. Culture makes man human. Without it the human infant is only an organism. The distinctively human capacities, language, morality, self awareness, appear only through it.
2. It completes the deficiency of instinct. Man has few reliable instincts; culture supplies ready made solutions to the problems of living, so each generation need not begin again.
3. It provides the meaning of situations. Culture tells a person what a gesture, a word or an event means, and so makes interaction possible.
4. It is the basis of social solidarity. Shared culture creates the we feeling on which every group depends.

For full marks, cover: the definition and characteristics of marriage, the full classification by number of partners, the rules of mate selection, the forms by residence and descent, the functions of marriage, then the changes and challenges of the modern period and a reasoned view of its continuing relevance.

Definition and characteristics

Marriage is the socially approved union of a man and a woman which establishes a family and regulates sexual relations, descent, inheritance and mutual obligation. Westermarck: "Marriage is a relation of one or more men to one or more women which is recognised by custom or law." Malinowski: "Marriage is a contract for the production and maintenance of children."

Its characteristics are that it is universal, socially approved, enduring in intention, accompanied by ceremony, productive of reciprocal rights and duties, and regulated by rules of endogamy, exogamy and prohibited degrees.

Types of marriage

A. By number of partners.

• Polyandry: one woman with two or more husbands. Fraternal or adelphic, where the husbands are brothers, as among the Todas and Khasas; non fraternal, where they are not, as among the Nairs. Causes: scarcity of women, poverty, the desire to keep landholdings undivided, and heavy bride price. The Todas resolve paternity by the putrahutha or bow and arrow ceremony.
• Group marriage: several men married collectively to several women. Reported among the Toda and the Marquesan islanders, but the evidence is thin and most sociologists doubt that it has existed as a regular institution.

B. By rules of mate selection.

• Endogamy: the rule that one must marry within one's own group, whether caste, sub caste, tribe, religion or class. It preserves group purity, property and identity, and it is the mechanism by which caste reproduces itself.
• Exogamy: the rule that one must marry outside a defined group. Indian forms include gotra exogamy, pravara exogamy, sapinda exogamy (Section 5(v) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, unless custom permits) and village exogamy in parts of north India.

Relevance in modern times

Changes visible today:

1. Rising age at marriage, in law and in practice, with the minimum at 18 for women and 21 for men under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006.
2. Free choice of partner displacing family arrangement, assisted by education, employment and matrimonial platforms.
3. Decline of caste and community endogamy in cities, though it remains dominant nationally.
4. Marriage as companionship rather than duty, with emotional satisfaction treated as its purpose.
5. Rising divorce and remarriage, and the social survivability of both.
6. Working women and dual income households, altering the internal division of labour and the balance of power.
7. Nuclear households replacing the joint family as the residential unit.
8. Later childbearing and smaller families, and voluntary childlessness.

Is marriage still relevant? A reasoned view. Marriage is changing, not disappearing. The evidence is that the great majority of Indians still marry, and that the alternatives to it are, in absolute terms, small. What has changed is its basis and its content: it rests on individual choice rather than family arrangement, it is expected to deliver companionship rather than only progeny and property, and it is dissoluble. Its indispensable functions, the legitimation of children, the assignment of descent and inheritance, and the provision of a stable setting for rearing the next generation, have not been taken over by any other institution. Marriage therefore remains relevant, but as a partnership between equals rather than as a hierarchy, and the law has moved steadily in that direction.