Reply to Stevenson and Wolfers
by Norval D. Glenn
January 30th, 2008
I appreciate the fact that Stevenson and Wolfers get down to specifics in their latest post. That is constructive. However, I don’t appreciate their saying that I am an advocate of changes in divorce law. I am not and never have been. In my second set of comments in this exchange, I said that the only proposals for re-regulating marriage that stand a good chance of success–a moderate lengthening of the time between divorce filing and the granting of divorce, and the adding of fault grounds in the states that now have only a no-fault ground for divorce-are unlikely to have the destructive consequences that Stevenson and Wolfers say that re-regulation of marriage would have. My point was that the authors ended their essay with a vague, hyperbolic statement that was not supported by the preceding discussion. My view of the proposed changes that I mentioned is that they would make little difference one way or another, and I neither advocate nor oppose them. The point of my second post in this exchange was not to advocate anything except clearer, more precise communication.
