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Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable Apr 2021

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


Pregnancy And The Carceral State, Khiara M. Bridges Apr 2021

Pregnancy And The Carceral State, Khiara M. Bridges

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood. by Michele Goodwin.


Domestic Violence Convictions And Firearms Possession: The Law As It Stands And As It Moves, Kate E. Britt Jul 2019

Domestic Violence Convictions And Firearms Possession: The Law As It Stands And As It Moves, Kate E. Britt

Law Librarian Scholarship

Legislatures have attempted to curb instances of gun use in fatal and nonfatal domestic violence by passing statutes restricting possession of firearms for perpetrators of domestic violence. This article explains federal and Michigan law as it stands and discusses current efforts to further limit perpetrators’ access to firearms.


Removing Camouflaged Barriers To Equality: Overcoming Systemic Sexual Assault And Harassment At The Military Academies, Rebecca Weiant May 2018

Removing Camouflaged Barriers To Equality: Overcoming Systemic Sexual Assault And Harassment At The Military Academies, Rebecca Weiant

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The Education Amendments of 1972 introduced requirements to protect female students from discriminatory policies at post-secondary institutions. A portion of those amendments, commonly known as Title IX, require that no students be subjected to discrimination based on their sex by any educational institution or activity receiving federal financial assistance. An exemption under § 1681(a)(4), however, explicitly prohibits application of Title IX to any educational institution whose primary purpose is to train individuals for military service or the merchant marine. Although those students are still subject to stringent conduct standards, the service academies themselves are tethered to sex discrimination policies only …


A Postcolonial Theory Of Spousal Rape: The Carribean And Beyond, Stacy-Ann Elvy Jul 2015

A Postcolonial Theory Of Spousal Rape: The Carribean And Beyond, Stacy-Ann Elvy

Stacy-Ann Elvy

Many postcolonial states in the Caribbean continue to struggle to comply with their international treaty obligations to protect women from sexual violence. Reports from various United Nations programs, including UNICEF, and the annual U.S. State Department Country Reports on Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia (“Commonwealth Countries”), indicate that sexual violence against women, including spousal abuse, is a significant problem in the Caribbean. Despite ratification of various international instruments intended to eliminate sexual violence against women, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Commonwealth Countries have retained the …


Immigrant Victims, Immigrant Accusers, Michael Kagan Jul 2015

Immigrant Victims, Immigrant Accusers, Michael Kagan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The U visa program provides immigration status to noncitizen victims of crime, ensuring unauthorized immigrants do not become easy prey because they are too afraid to seek help from the police. But under the federal government’s structuring of the U visa program, a victim must also become an accuser to receive immigration benefits. Thus, the U visa implicates the rights of third parties: accused defendants. These defendants are often immigrants themselves who may be deported when U visa recipients level their accusations. Recent state court decisions have created complications in the program by permitting defendants to cross-examine accusers about their …


A Postcolonial Theory Of Spousal Rape: The Carribean And Beyond, Stacy-Ann Elvy Jan 2015

A Postcolonial Theory Of Spousal Rape: The Carribean And Beyond, Stacy-Ann Elvy

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Many postcolonial states in the Caribbean continue to struggle to comply with their international treaty obligations to protect women from sexual violence. Reports from various United Nations programs, including UNICEF, and the annual U.S. State Department Country Reports on Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia (“Commonwealth Countries”), indicate that sexual violence against women, including spousal abuse, is a significant problem in the Caribbean. Despite ratification of various international instruments intended to eliminate sexual violence against women, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Commonwealth Countries have retained the …


Sexual Assault And Rape In The Military: The Invisible Victims Of International Gender Crimes At The Front Lines, Stella Cernak Jan 2015

Sexual Assault And Rape In The Military: The Invisible Victims Of International Gender Crimes At The Front Lines, Stella Cernak

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In the past several years in particular, intra-military sexual assault and rape in the U.S. armed forces have been the focus of frequent media attention and intense congressional debate. Despite reforms, the rate of intra-military sexual crimes continues to remain high, as does soldiers’ wariness to report instances of sexual violence to military commanders. These problems and others have invigorated the position taken by some that outside judicial review of intra- military sexual crimes is necessary to provide justice to victims and lower the rate of intra-military sexual assault and rape. This Note argues that one of the primary contributors …


Widening Our Lens: Incorporating Essential Perspectives In The Fight Against Human Trafficking, Jonathan Todres Oct 2014

Widening Our Lens: Incorporating Essential Perspectives In The Fight Against Human Trafficking, Jonathan Todres

Jonathan Todres

In 2000, the international community formally launched the modern movement to combat human trafficking with the United Nations' adoption of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (Trafficking Protocol). With the Trafficking Protocol, the international community created a new cornerstone upon which to build a global initiative to combat this modem form of slavery. As the first major international treaty on human trafficking in half a century, the Trafficking Protocol represented a significant step forward. One hundred forty-seven countries are now party to the …


How Feminist Theory Became (Criminal) Law: Tracing The Path To Mandatory Criminal Intervention In Domestic Violence Cases, Claire Houston Oct 2014

How Feminist Theory Became (Criminal) Law: Tracing The Path To Mandatory Criminal Intervention In Domestic Violence Cases, Claire Houston

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Our popular understanding of domestic violence has shifted significantly over the past forty years, and with it, our legal response. We have moved from an interpretation of domestic violence as a private relationship problem managed through counseling techniques to an approach that configures domestic violence first and foremost as a public crime. Mandatory criminal intervention policies reflect and reinforce this interpretation. How we arrived at this point, and which understanding of domestic violence facilitated this shift, is the focus of this Article. I argue that the move to intense criminalization has been driven by a distinctly feminist interpretation of domestic …


She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl Sep 2014

She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl

Mark A. Drumbl

In the nearly twenty years since 1994, the international community and the Rwandan government have pushed to hold individual perpetrators accountable for the genocide. Judicialization has occurred at multiple levels. Over ninety persons-those deemed most responsible-have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), an ad hoc institution established by the U.N. Security Council in November 1994. Approximately ten thousand individuals have been prosecuted in specialized chambers of national courts in Rwanda. According to the Rwandan government, nearly two million people have faced neo-traditional gacaca proceedings conducted by elected lay judges throughout the country. Gacaca proceedings concluded in …


Gender-Conscious Confrontation: The Accuser-Obligation Approach Revisited, Michael El-Zein Jan 2014

Gender-Conscious Confrontation: The Accuser-Obligation Approach Revisited, Michael El-Zein

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The Supreme Court’s recent Confrontation Clause decisions have had a dramatic effect on domestic violence prosecution throughout the United States, sparking debate about possible solutions to an increasingly difficult trial process for prosecutors and the survivors they represent. In this Note, I revisit and reinterpret the suggestion by Professor Sherman J. Clark in his article, An Accuser-Obligation Approach to the Confrontation Clause,1 that we should view the Confrontation Clause primarily as an obligation of the accuser rather than a right of the accused. Specifically, I reevaluate Clark’s proposition using a gendered lens, ultimately suggesting a novel solution to the problem …


"Off With His __": Analyzing The Sex Disparity In Chemical Castration Sentences, Zachary Edmonds Oswald Jan 2013

"Off With His __": Analyzing The Sex Disparity In Chemical Castration Sentences, Zachary Edmonds Oswald

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Societies around the world have performed castration, in its various forms, on their male and female members for thousands of years, for numerous reasons. Even within the United States, prisoners have been sentenced to castration (as a form of punishment or crime prevention) since the early twentieth century. In recent years, legislatures have perpetuated this practice but with a modern twist. Now, states use chemical injections to castrate their inmates. It turns out, however, that systemic problems plague the chemical castration sentencing regime. These problems arise from the nature of the crimes eligible for chemical castration sentences, the manner of …


The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, And Changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims Of Domestic Violence, Carolyn B. Ramsey Jan 2013

The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, And Changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims Of Domestic Violence, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article presents a hypothesis suggesting how and why the criminal justice response to domestic violence changed, over the course of the twentieth century, from sympathy for abused women and a surprising degree of state intervention in intimate relationships to the apathy and discrimination that the battered women' movement exposed. The riddle of declining public sympathy for female victims ofintimate-partner violence can only be solved by looking beyond the criminal law to the social and legal changes that created the Exit Myth. While the situation that gave rise to the battered womens movement in the 1970s is often presumed to …


Beyond Seduction: Lessons Learned About Rape, Politics, And Power From Dominique Strauss-Kahn And Moshe Katsav, Hannah Brenner Jan 2013

Beyond Seduction: Lessons Learned About Rape, Politics, And Power From Dominique Strauss-Kahn And Moshe Katsav, Hannah Brenner

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

n the last decade, two influential international political figures, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, and Moshe Katsav, former President of Israel, were accused of engaging in extreme and ongoing patterns of sexual violence. The collection of formal charges against the two men included rape, forcible indecent assault, sexual harassment, and obstruction of justice. The respective narratives surrounding the allegations against Katsav and Strauss-Kahn have their own individual characteristics, and each of the cases unfolded in diverging ways. Yet, the actions of these two men taken together, and the corresponding response of the legal systems in France, …


International Law Weekend, American Branch Of The International Law Association Perspectives On Crimes Of Sexual Violence In International Law, Susana Sacouto Jan 2013

International Law Weekend, American Branch Of The International Law Association Perspectives On Crimes Of Sexual Violence In International Law, Susana Sacouto

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.


She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl Jan 2013

She Makes Me Ashamed To Be A Woman: The Genocide Conviction Of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011, Mark A. Drumbl

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the nearly twenty years since 1994, the international community and the Rwandan government have pushed to hold individual perpetrators accountable for the genocide. Judicialization has occurred at multiple levels. Over ninety persons-those deemed most responsible-have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), an ad hoc institution established by the U.N. Security Council in November 1994. Approximately ten thousand individuals have been prosecuted in specialized chambers of national courts in Rwanda. According to the Rwandan government, nearly two million people have faced neo-traditional gacaca proceedings conducted by elected lay judges throughout the country. Gacaca proceedings concluded in …


Victim Participation At The International Criminal Court And The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia: A Feminist Project, Susana Sacouto Jan 2012

Victim Participation At The International Criminal Court And The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia: A Feminist Project, Susana Sacouto

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The question this Article poses is whether victim participation--one of the most recent developments in international criminal law--has increased the visibility of the actual lived experience of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in the context of war, mass violence, or repression. Under the Rome Statute, victims of the world's most serious crimes were given unprecedented rights to participate in proceedings before the Court. Nearly a decade later, a similar scheme was established to allow victims to participate as civil parties in the proceedings before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC or Extraordinary Chambers), a court created …


Pain, Love, And Voice: The Role Of Domestic Violence Victims In Sentencing, Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg, Dana Pugach Jan 2012

Pain, Love, And Voice: The Role Of Domestic Violence Victims In Sentencing, Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg, Dana Pugach

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Criminal law systems throughout the world have evolved to a stage where they no longer ask, "What is the appropriate role of the victim in a criminal trial?" The questions now relate to the scope of the victim's rights, in which procedures she has independent standing, and at what stage she should be heard. The process of the "prosecution stepping into the victim's shoes," whereby the state controls the entire criminal process, seemingly on behalf of the victim, has been replaced by the recognition that the interests of the prosecution (the State) are not always consistent with those of the …


Steps To Alleviating Violence Against Women On Tribal Lands, Anjum Unwala Jan 2012

Steps To Alleviating Violence Against Women On Tribal Lands, Anjum Unwala

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

One in three Native American women has been raped or has experienced an attempted rape. Federal officials also failed to prosecute 75% of the alleged sex crimes against women and children living under tribal authority. The Senate bill to reauthorize the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) could provide appropriate recourse for Native American women who are victims of sexual assault. This bill (S. 1925), introduced in 2011, would grant tribal courts the ability to prosecute non-Indians who have sexually assaulted their Native American spouses and domestic partners. Congress has quickly reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act twice before. But …


Trafficking In Europe: An Analysis Of The Effectiveness Of European Law, Saadiya Chaudary Oct 2011

Trafficking In Europe: An Analysis Of The Effectiveness Of European Law, Saadiya Chaudary

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Essay looks at the manifestation of various forms of human trafficking within Europe and analyzes the effectiveness of current European law provisions in combating trafficking and protecting victims. The Essay will accomplish this by examining recent and current cases before the European Court of Human Rights and the comparative gap between European standards and domestic procedures in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is a well-known destination state for trafficking victims' and consequently is required to meet obligations under international law toward a significant number of individuals who have been forced into exploitation in the United Kingdom.


Human Rights Legislation In The Arab World: The Case Of Human Trafficking, Mohamed Y. Mattar Oct 2011

Human Rights Legislation In The Arab World: The Case Of Human Trafficking, Mohamed Y. Mattar

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the Arab World, human rights legislation has not always enhanced human rights. In fact, many national laws have been adopted that restrict human rights. Some countries' laws regulating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) do not allow NGOs to receive funding from foreign entities. Media laws impose various limitations on the press. Jordan is the only Arab nation to enforce a comprehensive law on combating violence against women. Jordan is also the only country that has a law on access to information. Despite these gaps in human rights legislation, many Arab countries have passed comprehensive laws to combat human trafficking since the …


Home Is Where The Crime Is, I. Bennett Capers Apr 2011

Home Is Where The Crime Is, I. Bennett Capers

Michigan Law Review

Think of home. Go on. Maybe not your parents' home, which for this reviewer would be enough to induce heavy breathing and general anxiety. Rather, think about the concept of home. Think about the idea of home. Think about Home with a capital letter. Think of home as in The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy's famous "There's no place like home." Think "home sweet home." Or "home is where the heart is." Go on. Of course, there may be other associations that come to mind when one thinks of home. There's security. Safety. Control. Home rule. After all, in the …


The Failure Of Consent: Re-Conceptualizing Rape As Sexual Abuse Of Power, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael Jan 2011

The Failure Of Consent: Re-Conceptualizing Rape As Sexual Abuse Of Power, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article argues that while rape law reform has accomplished significant changes in the past decades, the reform has since stalled. The contemporary focus on the element of consent might account for this stagnation. This move has both failed to effect instrumental change in the courts as well as in social norms, and is conceptually flawed and normatively misguided. The practical result of these deficiencies is that rape, as defined by our criminal justice system, bears little resemblance to the various forms of sexual abuses that are inflicted on victims. While rape law typically criminalizes only the physically violent sexual …


Widening Our Lens: Incorporating Essential Perspectives In The Fight Against Human Trafficking, Jonathan Todres Jan 2011

Widening Our Lens: Incorporating Essential Perspectives In The Fight Against Human Trafficking, Jonathan Todres

Michigan Journal of International Law

In 2000, the international community formally launched the modern movement to combat human trafficking with the United Nations' adoption of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (Trafficking Protocol). With the Trafficking Protocol, the international community created a new cornerstone upon which to build a global initiative to combat this modem form of slavery. As the first major international treaty on human trafficking in half a century, the Trafficking Protocol represented a significant step forward. One hundred forty-seven countries are now party to the …


Section 2259 Restitution Claims And Child Pornography Possession, Dina Mcleod Jan 2011

Section 2259 Restitution Claims And Child Pornography Possession, Dina Mcleod

Michigan Law Review

In 2009, a child pornography victim brought a criminal restitution claim against a defendant who possessed images of her abuse. The statutory provision authorizing restitution, 18 U.S.C. § 2259, had never before been used to bring a claim against a defendant who had only possessed, rather than produced or distributed, child pornography ("child pornography possession defendants"). The federal courts have not developed a consistent approach to resolving Section 2259 claims involving such defendants. This Note argues that two conceptions of traditional proximate cause doctrine can provide a framework for analyzing such claims. It examines Section 2259 claims using both a …


Rethinking Consent In A Big Love Way, Cheryl Hanna Jan 2010

Rethinking Consent In A Big Love Way, Cheryl Hanna

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article is based on a presentation at the Michigan Journal of Gender and Law as part of their symposium "Rhetoric & Relevance: An Investigation into the Present & Future of Feminist Legal Theory." In it, I explore the problem of categorical exclusions to the consent doctrine in private intimate relationships through the lens of the HBO series Big Love, which is about modern polygamy. There remains the normative question both after Lawrence v. Texas and in feminist legal theory of under what circumstances individuals should be able to consent to activity that takes place within the context of a …


Left Out In The Cold: Trafficking Victims, Gender, And Misinterpretation Of The Refugee Convention's "Nexus" Requirement, Martina Pomeroy Jan 2010

Left Out In The Cold: Trafficking Victims, Gender, And Misinterpretation Of The Refugee Convention's "Nexus" Requirement, Martina Pomeroy

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Victims of human trafficking who seek international protection in their country of destination face a steep uphill battle. Special visa programs designed to regularize their status are often riddled with conditions that make them inaccessible to all but a very few victims. Despite widespread international agreement that the manifold harms inflicted upon the majority of trafficked persons generally rise to the level of persecution, and therefore that victims should be eligible to apply for asylum, many national courts misinterpret international refugee law standards and routinely deny refugee status to deserving applicants. Courts often refuse to recognize persecution on the basis …


The Women's Protocol To The African Charter And Sexual Violence In The Context Of Armed Conflict Or Other Mass Atrocity, Susana Sacouto, Katherine A. Cleary Jan 2009

The Women's Protocol To The African Charter And Sexual Violence In The Context Of Armed Conflict Or Other Mass Atrocity, Susana Sacouto, Katherine A. Cleary

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.


Student Gladiators And Sexual Assault: A New Analysis Of Liability For Injuries Inflicted By College Athletes, Ann Scales Jan 2009

Student Gladiators And Sexual Assault: A New Analysis Of Liability For Injuries Inflicted By College Athletes, Ann Scales

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article will focus on an issue that was probably not on the minds of 19th century educators, nor primarily on the minds of the legions of present-day academic critics of intercollegiate sports. Namely, this Article explores the ways in which big-time athletics- particularly football-normalize and encourage harms to women, including educational and sexual harms. The author’s theses depend upon acknowledging certain open secrets about college football: that it is a celebration of male physical supremacy (measured by male standards); that it is something that society lets males do and have as their sport, for reasons both good and bad; …