A law under which the unsuccessful respondent in a divorce proceeding
may be forbidden to marry again during the life of the successful
complainant, the latter being subject to no such disability, is
infamous infinitely. If the disability is intended as a punishment it
is exceptional among legal punishments in that it is inflicted without
conviction, trial or arraignment, the divorce proceedings being quite
another and different matter. It is exceptional in that the period
of its continuance, and therefore the degree of its severity, are
indeterminate; they are dependent on no limiting statute, and on
neither the will of the power inflicting nor the conduct of the person
suffering.
To sentence a person to a punishment that is to be mild or severe
according to chance or--which is even worse--circumstance, which but one
person, and that person not officially connected with administration of
justice, can but partly control, is a monstrous perversion of the main
principles that are supposed to underlie the laws.
In "the case at bar" it can be nothing to the woman--possibly herself
remarried--whether the man remarries or not; that is, can affect only
her feelings, and only such of them as are least creditable to her.
Yet her self-interest is enlisted against him to do him incessant
disservice. By merely caring for her health she increases the sharpness
of his punishment--for punishment it is if he feels it such; every hour
that she wrests from death is added to his "term." The expediency of
preventing a man from marrying, without having the power to prevent him
from making his marriage desirable in the interest of the public and
vital to that of some woman, is not discussable here. If a man is ever
justified in poisoning a woman who is no longer his wife it is when, by
way of making him miserable, the State has given him, or he supposes it
to have given him, a direct and distinct interest in her death.