This volume brings together the best of contemporary scholarship on marriage from a variety of disciplines, history, ethics, economics, law and public policy, philosophy, sociology, psychiatry, political science, to inform, and reform, public debate. These studies aim to rethink and re-present the case for marriage as a positive institution and ideal that is in the public interest and serves the common good. The essays in this volume were presented to an audience of scholars, journalists, public policy experts, and other professionals, at a conference sponsored by the Witherspoon Institute.