ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the nature of sexual intercourse which is considered necessary to constitute consummation of marriage. It sometimes seems to the non-lawyer that the law has an obsession with sexual intercourse and its definition. But, so far as family law is concerned, this is no more than a legacy of ecclesiastical law which regarded sexual intercourse as the crowning expression of marriage, particularly in the Middle Ages when marriages could be contracted validly without either religious or civil ceremonial. The criminal law related to sexual intercourse is, however, unconcerned with satisfactory union – it is there to protect women, and especially young women, against sexual harassment; thus the definition of what constitutes sexual intercourse in the criminal field is far less exacting than is that in family law. The two extremes meet in the definition of adultery, which is an ecclesiastical offence but which is a matter of aggrievement only in secular law.