In the olden days before most states allowed courts to dissolve marriages the only way for a couple to do so was to petion their state legislature to pass a private act dissolving their marriage and letting them remarry (a legacy from English law). Now today every state has no-fault divorce, but in what states (if any) is it still t theoretically possible for the legislature to pass a law dissolving a specific marriage?
You ask “theoretically”?
All of them.
The legislature can redo the entire system, so they can certainly make specific exceptions in any direction from the existing laws. Even if the law is in their constitution, they usually can get around it for specific legislation, or worst case re-amend their constitution.
At least as recently as 1997, Maryland did not have no-fault divorce. My guess is that there are still a few states that don’t have no-fault divorce.
SC law:
An Act by the legislature dissolving a particular marriage would be special legislation and invalid.
That’s kind of what I meant. Which states have constituions that allow for special legislation like legisltative divorce?
Is your cite from the SC Constitution, or a provison of South Carolina law adopted by the legislature? If it was legislation enacted by the state legislature, wouldn’t any subsequent act by the legislature to grant a specific divorce supercede it?
New York also lacks no-fault divorce.
Only if the SC Constitution – or SC Jurisprudence – allows for “Private Bills” on that subject at all. It may well be they’d first have to legislate to enable themselves to do it.
Where I live, nothing in the Commonwealth Constitution explicitly restricts this, but from precedent, etc., if the legislators were to pass divorce-by-bill for one specific couple, our Supremes would stomp on the bill like it was on fire.