Digital Commons Network^™

Domestic Violence And Legal Reforms In Nigeria: Prospects And Challenges, Itoro Eze-Anaba

ExpressO

The article focuses on the challenges for women’s rights activists attempting to provide a better legal regime for victims of domestic violence in Nigeria. It is my desire to provide a resource material on the issue of domestic violence for activists, policy makers, legislators and law reformers who are engaged in providing a better legal framework for the protection and promotion of women’s rights in a developing country like Nigeria. Having worked extensively on this issue, the article documents my experience on law reform advocacy in Nigeria.

Fear Of Acquaintance Versus Stranger Rape As A "Master Status": Towards Refinement Of The "Shadow Of Sexual Assault", Pamela Wilcox, Carol E. Jordan, Adam J. Pritchard

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

Using a sample of 1,010 women from a southeastern state university, we explore whether associations between fear of sexual assault and other crime-specific fears vary based on presumed victim-offender relationship. More specifically, we assess the extent to which fear of stranger- and acquaintance-perpetrated sexual assaults differ in the extent to which they are correlated with fear of other crime victimizations. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that both fear of stranger-perpetrated sexual assault and fear of acquaintance- perpetrated sexual assault were positively associated with nearly all other crimespecific fears under examination. However, associations were particularly strong between fear of sexual assault …

Pregnancy & Policing: Are They Compatible?, Karen J. Kruger

ExpressO

A paper advocating that law enforcement agencies provide adequate accommodations and legal protections to women officers who become pregnant.

To Catch A Sex Thief: The Burden Of Performance In Rape And Sexual Assault Trials, Corey Rayburn Yung

ExpressO

Despite decades of efforts to reform American rape law, prosecution and conviction rates remain low compared to similar crimes. While activists led legislatures to adopt important statutory changes for rape and sexual assault, only modest effects in the levels of sexual violence have been observed. Nonetheless, reform-minded scholars continue to focus on statutory and rule tinkering as a means to quell sexual violence.

This article argues against the commonly-held belief that the crucial factors in determining the outcome of rape trials are substantive and procedural in nature. Rather, the issues of performance, representation, and language often pre-determine the outcomes of …

Conceptualizing Violence Against Pregnant Women, Deborah Tuerkheimer

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

He Said-She Said: On Credibility And The New Reason, Nancy Rourke

ExpressO

The traditional wisdom in the field of evidence holds that, if there is a direct contradiction in the testimony of two witnesses, one of them must be lying. The jury is to discover which version is more credible. The traditional wisdom is wrong. This article uses an actual criminal case to establish that a direct contradiction in testimony can arise from another source - a fundamental difference of conceptual frame. In this case, both witnesses were telling the truth as they knew it, but were talking past one another. Words that were 100% true in the victim's conceptual frame were …

In The Best Interest Of The Child, Ellen L. Buckwalter

ExpressO

Each year more than 200,000 children in the United States are abducted by family members. When a child is abducted across international borders, the difficulties are compounded. Since the late 1970s, The Department of State’s Office of Children’s Issues has been contacted in approximately 16,000 cases involving children who were either abducted from the United States or prevented from returning to the U.S. by one of their parents.

The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (“the Convention”) adopted on October 24, 1980, reflects a worldwide concern about the harmful effects that parental kidnapping has on children …

The Punishment Of Dixie Shanahan: Is There Justice For Battered Women Who Kill?, Leigh Goodmark

ExpressO

The article explores the prevailing theories justifying criminal punishment in the United States through the lens of the case of Dixie Shanahan, an Iowa woman who was sentenced to fifty years imprisonment for killing her abusive spouse after nineteen years of battering. The article begins with a detailed examination of the life of Dixie Shanahan and places her within the context of the literature on battered women who kill. The piece then looks at both retributivist and utilitarian justifications for punishment and concludes that only a retributivist rationale justifies the punishment of Ms. Shanahan and other battered women who kill, …

To Protect Or To Serve: Confidentiality, Client Protection And Domestic Violence, Dana Harrington-Conner

ExpressO

This article addresses the ethical dilemma of whether and when the attorney for an adult victim of domestic violence can or should disclose confidential communications for the protection of his or her own client.

Advocates maintain that domestic violence is the single major cause of injury to women in the United States. The risks are undeniable. An attorney representing a client who remains in or voluntarily returns to a violent relationship may confront conflicting ethical duties because it is difficult, if not impossible, for the attorney to determine which cases will end in further violence and which will not.

This …

Loyalty's Reward — A Felony Conviction: Recent Prosecutions Of High-Status Female Offenders, Michelle S. Jacobs

UF Law Faculty Publications

Between 2001 and 2004, six high-status women were charged with crimes in connection with corporate criminal cases. The public is familiar with some of them, although not all of their cases have been covered equally in the press. With the exception of an occasional article now and then mentioning the exploding rates of female incarceration, women's crime tends to be invisible to the public eye. The statistical data the government collects and analyzes on women and crime will be discussed. This article will focus on the prosecution of the individual cases of Lea Fastow, Betty Vinson, and Martha Stewart. Their …

This Bridge Called Our Backs: An Introduction To “The Future Of Critical Race Feminism”, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

On April 1, 2005, the U.C. Davis Law Review hosted in its annual symposium an extremely distinguished group of scholars, who addressed central theories of Critical Race Feminism (“CRF”) in a daylong series of inspiring, thought-provoking, cutting-edge, and captivating presentations. The panelists at the symposium — in front of a packed room of students, professors, and local residents — delved into issues as diverse as the unique role of immigrant women in community economic development, societal failure to deal with domestic violence from a multidimensional perspective, the proposal of a contractual good faith claim based on Professors Devon Carbado and …

Girl Talk--Examining Racial And Gender Lines In Juvenile Justice, Kim Taylor-Thompson

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Gender Equality, Social Values And Provocation Law In The United States, Canada And Australia, Caroline A. Forell

ExpressO

In this article I examine and compare the partial defense of provocation as it applies to domestic homicide in Australia, Canada, and the United States on both the gendered-male basis of jealous rage and gendered-female basis of fear. I explain why substantive equality, prevalent under Canadian constitutional law, has not resulted in woman-friendly provocation rules in Canada and the United States and why Australia is the leader in incorporating substantive equality into its provocation doctrine. I conclude that the main reason why some Australian jurisdictions have abolished provocation and others have female-friendly versions of the doctrine is that, unlike Canada …

Women In Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Dilemmas And Directions, Naomi R. Cahn

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Superstition-Based Injustice In Africa And The United States: The Use Of Provocation As A Defense For Killing Witches And Homosexuals, Jennifer Dumin

ExpressO

This Article examines two different instances where strong cultural and religious beliefs suggest that an individual is justified in taking another’s life. Focusing primarily on South Africa and the United States, it argues that the rationale used to defend those who kill suspected witches and those who kill suspected homosexuals is the same – merely because a criminal holds a belief that the victim is evil, the criminal is somehow entitled to a lesser punishment. In the United States, those who readily recognize the absurdity of the witchcraft defense may have some difficulty in recognizing the same level of absurdity …

The Trial Of Bigger Thomas: Race, Gender, And Trespass, Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Gender, Persecution, And The International Criminal Court: Refugee Law’S Relevance To The Crime Against Humanity Of Gender-Based Persecution, Valerie Oosterveld

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

The Intimacy Discount: Prosecutorial Discretion, Privacy, And Equality In The Statutory Rape Caseload, Kay L. Levine

Faculty Articles

This Article proceeds as follows. It begins in Part I by presenting the structural and case-based factors that scholars have identified as relevant to prosecutorial decision-making in the United States. Part II considers the existing social science research documenting the relationship between intimacy and criminal Justice treatment. Part III explains the empirical study of California prosecutors on which this Article's data and conclusions are based. After introducing California's statutory rape prosecution program in Part IV, the Article describes in Part V how the program's underlying rationale led to the development and deployment of prosecutorial assessments of intimacy and exploitation in …

I Am Certain He Is The Man...I Think, Tim Harris

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

The Gang-Rape Of Mukhtar Mai And Pakistan's Opportunity To Regain Its Lost Honor, Tina Karkera

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Lessons Unlearned: Women Offenders, The Ethics Of Care, And The Promise Of Restorative Justice, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

The steep rise in female offenders since the 1960s has finally caused criminologists, lawyers, judges, and others to consider why they have not learned more about women offenders’ lives, in order to better understand and explain why they enter, and how they proceed through the criminal system. This article focuses on the reality that women’s relationality, and particularly their relationships with men in their lives, profoundly affect the behavior that lands them in the criminal justice system. This article argues that restorative justice, which is essentially grounded on an ethical understanding of crime and treats the offender as an interacting …

On Justitia, Race, Gender, And Blindness, I. Bennett Capers

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay focuses on Justitia's more problematic attributes. Like Justitia's blindfold, which has been described as "the most enigmatic" of her traits. Is the blindfold merely emblematic of Justitia's purported impartiality, her claim to algorithmic justice? As law professor Costas Douzinas and art historian Lynda Nead have asked, does the blindfold enable Justitia "to avoid the temptation to see the face that comes to the law and put the unique characteristics of the concrete person before the abstract logic of the institution"? Or does the blindfold signify something more, a second sight of sorts? Maybe that Justitia, unable to see, …

Comments: Who Turned Out The Lights?: How Maryland Laws Fail To Protect Victims Of Domestic Violence From Third-Party Abuse, Anique Drouin

University of Baltimore Law Review

No abstract provided.

Blue Mourning: Postpartum Psychosis And The Criminal Insanity Defense, Waking To The Reality Of Women Who Kill Their Children, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 515 (2006), Jessica Butterfield

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Intimate Homicide: Gender And Crime Control, 1880-1920, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

The received wisdom, among feminists and others, is that historically the criminal justice system tolerated male violence against women. This article dramatically revises feminist understanding of the legal history of public responses to intimate homicide by showing that, in both the eastern and the western United States, men accused of killing their intimates often received stern punishment, including the death penalty, whereas women charged with similar crimes were treated leniently. Although no formal "battered woman's defense" existed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, courts and juries implicitly recognized one--and even extended it to abandoned women who killed their unfaithful …

Beyond A Snapshot: Preventing Human Trafficking In The Global Economy, Janie Chuang

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Current legal responses to the problem of human trafficking often reflect a deep reluctance to address the socio-economic root causes of the problem. Because they approach trafficking as an act (or series of acts) of violence, most responses focus predominantly on prosecuting traffickers, and to a lesser extent, protecting trafficked persons. While such approaches might account for the consequences of trafficking, they tend to overlook the broader socioeconomic reality that drives trafficking in human beings. Against this backdrop, this article seeks to reframe trafficking as a migratory response to current globalizing socioeconomic trends. It argues that, to be effective, counter-trafficking …

Manson V. Brathwaite: The Supreme Court's Misunderstanding Of Eyewitness Identification, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 539 (2006), Ruth Yacona

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Against Bipolar Black Masculinity: Intersectionality, Assimilation, Identity Performance, And Hierarchy, Frank Rudy Cooper

Scholarly Works

In this article, Professor Frank Rudy Cooper contends that popular representations of heterosexual black men are bipolar. Those images alternate between a Bad Black Man who is crime-prone and hypersexual and a Good Black Man who distances himself from blackness and associates with white norms. The threat of the Bad Black Man label provides heterosexual black men with an assimilationist incentive to perform our identities consistent with the Good Black Man image.

The reason for bipolar black masculinity is that it helps resolve the white mainstream's post-civil rights anxiety. That anxiety results from the conflict between the nation's relatively recent …

Incarcerated Men And Women, The Equal Protection Clause, And The Requirement Of “Similarly Situated”, Natasha L. Carroll-Ferrary

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Getting Away With Murder: Guatemala's Failure To Protect Women And Rodi Alvarado's Quest For Safety, Angélica Cházaro

Articles

This report examines the underlying conditions that cause women like Rodi to flee their home countries and seek protection elsewhere. The report starts with a description of the circumstances that led Rodi to leave Guatemala. It then analyzes the widespread violence against and murders of women in Guatemala, specifically focusing on the number of murders, the victims, the brutality of the crimes, the context in which they occur, and the theories behind the murders. It next looks to the aspects of the Guatemalan legal and judicial systems that render women vulnerable to violence and then fail to protect them. It …