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Can a robot perform a valid marriage ceremony?

By Evan Brown

Mashable has this little story and video of a couple in Japan getting married in a ceremony performed by a robot. Looks like it went off without a hitch. But it’s an interesting harbinger of some of the legal questions that will arise as intelligence based on nonbiological substrates gets more human-like.

Is a marriage ceremony performed by a robot “legal”?

I looked up the Illinois statute that provides the requirements for a marriage ceremony (750 ILCS 5/209). A couple can get married if the marriage is “solemnized” by a judge, a county clerk, or “in accordance with the prescriptions of any religious denomination, Indian Nation or Tribe or Native Group, provided that when such prescriptions require an officiant, the officiant be in good standing with his religious denomination, Indian Nation or Tribe or Native Group.”

I expected the statute to be phrased in a way that would at least strongly imply that the ceremony has to be solemnized by a person. But I’m not sure it’s totally clear. I’m not a family lawyer — so take this with a grain of salt. It looks like a couple can still be validly married in a religious ceremony if the “prescriptions” of that religion do not require an officiant.

So it may not be too hard to work around the robot problem. Just find a church out there to establish some prescriptions that don’t make the officiant an essential part. Then the robot ceremony could ostensibly be a side show, like the cutting of the cake or tossing of the bouquet.

If you think about it, does it really matter whether the officiant is a person? There remains the obligation to get a license, which serves as a vetting process of sorts for the couple. And the psychological effect of “solemnization” is to get the couple to take it seriously. Does anyone care whether the officiant is conscious of what’s going on in the same way a human would?

Full post as published by InternetCases.com on May 17, 2010 (boomark / email).