Abstract

This paper analyzes the implications that the linguistic formulation of the marriage provision of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 had for securing the passage in 2005 of Law 13/2005, which legalized same-sex marriage. By claiming that a semantic omission in the original legal text was a marker of distributiveness, SSM supporters aimed to avoid a constitutional amendment, and succeeded in doing so. This linguistic argument, based on implicitness, was instrumental as a subsidiary argument of political moral argumentation. Linguistic meaning therefore contributed decisively to both the legal meaning of the marriage provision and the content of the law. I argue, against some assumptions in the literature stating otherwise, that linguistic meaning should not be dismissed in constitutional interpretation and adjudication.