Digital Commons Network^™

Democratizing Abolition, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

When abolitionists discuss remedies for past and present injustices, they are frequently met with apparently pragmatic objections to the viability of such bold remedies in U.S. legislatures and courts held captive by reactionary forces. Previous movements have seen their lesser reforms dashed by the white supremacist capitalist order that retains its grip on power in America. While such objectors contend that abolitionists should not ask for so much justice, abolitionists should in fact demand significantly more.

Remedying our country’s history of subordination will not be complete without establishing abolition democracy. While our classical conception of a liberal republic asks us …

The New Jim And Jane Crow Intersect: Challenges To Defending The Parental Rights Of Mothers During Incarceration, Carla Laroche

Scholarly Articles

Family law scholars and advocates have expressed the importance of providing counsel to parents in the family regulation system, especially parents who are incarcerated, because of the system’s complexities. This article establishes, however, that when mothers must navigate both the family regulation and criminal legal systems, the protections appointed parents’ counsel are supposed to provide are weakened. These harms are heightened especially for Black mothers within the carceral state. As this article shows, appointed lawyers in family regulation cases cannot properly protect the due process rights of mothers who are incarcerated because of the added challenges both mothers and their …

Black Women And Voter Suppression, Carla Laroche

Scholarly Articles

Black women who are eligible to vote do so at consistently high rates during elections in the United States. For thousands of Black women, however, racism, sexism, and criminal convictions intersect to require them to navigate a maze of laws and policies that keep them from voting. With the alarming rate of convictions and incarceration of Black women, criminal law intersects with civil rights to bar their involvement in the electoral process. This voting ban is known as felony disenfranchisement, but it amounts to voter suppression.

By reconceptualizing voter suppression based on criminal convictions through the experiences of Black women’s …

The Many Harms Of Forced Marriage: Insights For Law From Ethnography In Northern Uganda, Myriam S. Denov, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Harnessing an interdisciplinary framework that merges elements of law and social science, this article aims to recast the crime of forced marriage, and thereby enhance accountability, in light of knowledge acquired through ethnographic fieldwork in northern Uganda. More specifically, we draw upon the perspectives and experiences of 20 men who were "bush husbands" in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). These men were abducted by the LRA between the ages of 10 and 38 and spent between 6 and 24 years in captivity. During their time in the LRA, these men became ‘bush husbands’ with each man fathering between 1 and …

Is The #Metoo Movement For Real? The Implications For Jurors’ Biases In Sexual Assault Cases, Mary Graw Leary

Scholarly Articles

This Article examines the emerging research on the #MeToo movement and its potential effects on the population of potential jurors, exploring the possibility of improving the jury pool in sexual assault cases. Part I discusses the current problem of attrition in sexual assault cases. Part II examines the substantial body of literature surrounding this attrition and the potential reasons for it. Part III explores the #MeToo movement and reviews the emerging body of research regarding it. Part III also considers whether the movement will impact juries positively or whether the attrition rates based on rape myths, misogyny, and rape culture …

Sentencing Inequality Versus Sentencing Injustice, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

Women lag behind men in pay for equal work and in positions of prestigious employment, such as chief executive officers at Fortune 500 companies and presidents of colleges and universities. Women also suffer conscious and subconscious negative bias from both men and women in positions to evaluate an applicant's capabilities and potential, making it less likely that an employer or mentor will choose a woman instead of a man. In contrast to these and many other contexts, our federal criminal justice system regularly favors women over men. Empirical studies show that this lenient treatment begins with prosecutors and law enforcement …

Gender And Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Lyman P.Q. Johnson, Michelle Harner, Jason A. Cantone

Scholarly Articles

The 2010 appointment of Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court meant that, for the first time, three female justices would serve together on that court. Less clear is whether Justice Kagan’s gender will really matter in how she votes as a justice. This question is an especially visible aspect of a larger issue: do female judges display gendered voting patterns in the cases that come before them?

This article makes a novel contribution to the growing literature on female voting patterns. We investigated whether female justices on the United States Supreme Court voted differently than, or otherwise influenced, …

Clinton, Ginsburg, And Centrist Federalism, Russell A. Miller

Scholarly Articles

Politics' and pathology have converged to heighten speculation that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's tenure on the Supreme Court is nearing its end. Even if the imminence of her retirement is greatly exaggerated, the time to reflect on Justice Ginsburg's lasting contribution to American constitutional law has arrived. Justice Ginsburg is best known for her long campaign to promote gender equality. Her successful advocacy on that issue before the Supreme Court throughout the 1970s led President Clinton to conclude, when announcing her nomination to fill Justice Byron White's vacated seat on the high court, that she is to the women's movement …

Full Faith And Credit: Interstate Enforcement Of Protection Orders Under The Violence Against Women Act Of 1994, Catherine F. Klein

Scholarly Articles

This article focuses on Title II, Safe Homes for Women, specifically, interstate enforcement of protection orders. Prior to the enactment of VAWA, the majority of states did not afford full faith and credit to protection orders issued in sister states! This was a serious breach in the protection afforded victims of domestic violence. Without full faith and credit statutes, a state only has the power to protect victims of domestic violence within its boundaries, limiting the protection afforded to victims if they are forced to move or flee to another state.

Prior to the VAWA, in order to receive protection …

Providing Legal Protection For Battered Women: An Analysis Of State Statutes And Case Law, Catherine F. Klein, Leslye E. Orloff

Scholarly Articles

This Article presents a comprehensive survey of civil protection order statutes and state appellate opinions in all fifty jurisdictions, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. We examine recent developments and trends, and highlight innovations. We include recommendations for further legislative reform and for creative development of case law. We have incorporated available social science research, the published policies and recommendations of judicial authorities, and the legal literature written by domestic violence experts. Moreover, our recommendations are based on our experience as domestic violence advocates. Each of us has represented battered women in court for more than a decade.

In …

The Decontextualization Of Domestic Violence, Lisa G. Lerman

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Domestic Violence: The District Of Columbia’S New Mandatory Arrest Law, Catherine F. Klein

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Mediation Of Wife Abuse Cases: The Adverse Impact Of Informal Dispute Resolution On Women, Lisa G. Lerman

Scholarly Articles

This Article articulates a law enforcement critique of domestic violence mediation. It will explain the feminist view that mediation in abuse cases is based on misconceptions about the nature of wife abuse, and that mediation not only fails to protect women from subsequent violence, but also perpetuates their continued victimization.

The Article will recommend that other remedies be preferred over mediation. Recognizing that many programs will persist in mediation of wife abuse cases, however, the Article recommends that those programs should adopt procedures which will offer protection to victims of abuse, will make clear to the abuser that stopping the …