The research of Assistant Professor of Law Melissa Murray sheds light on a powerful controversy in the United States today: the legal definition of marriage. Murray is investigating how marriage has influenced the criminal justice system, and how criminal law has dictated the patterns of intimate life in the U.S. since the 19th century. Combining legal and social history, her project "Marriage as Punishment: The Intersection of Criminal Law" and Family Law looks closely at sexual practices legitimized by family law as the entry to marriage. To reinforce the social norms underlying these practices, criminal law prohibited bigamy, incest, sodomy, and other acts deemed a threat to marriage. In turn, marriage served as a defense against specific sex crimes. As Murray explains, family and criminal codes worked together to "protect marriage as the licensed site of sexual activity and to characterize sexual relationships outside of marriage as non-normative, deviant, and socially destructive."