Opinion ID: 2488316
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The family preexisted the state.

Text: The family was the first of all human institutions. One man and one woman came together in covenant before God, and they, with the children God gave them, became the first human social structure. As William Blackstone wrote, single families... formed the first natural society, becoming the first though imperfect rudiments of civil or political society. 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Law of England  (1765). There was no state: no one person had been given civil authority over another, to punish evil and to prevent oppression. Nor was there a church to provide structure and order in the worship of the Creator. Both of these necessary institutions would come later indeed, they were prefigured in the discipline and worship of the familybut the sacred relationships, Montgomery v. Hughes, 4 Ala.App. 245, 58 So. 113 (1911), within the family came first.