Law Commons^™

Biology For Feminists, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

No abstract provided.

No Women At The Center: The Use Of The Canadian Sentencing Circle In Domestic Violence Cases, Rashmi Goel

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

For Canadian Aboriginal women, domestic violence is pervasive. A report by the Ontario Native Women’s Association indicates that eighty percent of Aboriginal women surveyed had personally experienced family violence. In this context, Rashmi Goel looks at the use of sentencing circles to respond to wrongdoing by Aboriginal people. Current Aboriginal justice initiatives emphasize a return to traditional values and processes, manifested in one way in the sentencing circle. Yet, states Goel, such initiatives fail to restore Aboriginal women to their honored place. Contemporary Canadian sentencing circles exemplify this problem; they further injure victims in several respects. Hence, Goel argues that …

A Matter Of Principle And Consistency: Understanding The Battered Woman And Cultural Defenses, Sharan K. Suri

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

To adequately explain and argue why feminists, as a matter of legal theory, must take both the BWS and cultural defenses seriously, these defenses need further elaboration. Section I details what these defenses are, how they developed, and how they work in the justice system. Section II enlarges the picture by revealing the similarities between the two defenses which share not only the same theoretical and practical goals, but also the same criticisms and flaws highlighted by scholars. Finally, Section III asserts that cultural evidence and evidence of battering must be admitted to show the absence of mens rea. However, …

Sex & Surveillance: Gender, Privacy & The Sexualization Of Power In Prison, Teresa A. Miller

Journal Articles

In prison, surveillance is power and power is sexualized. Sex and surveillance, therefore, are profoundly linked. Whereas numerous penal scholars from Bentham to Foucault have theorized the force inherent in the visual monitoring of prisoners, the sexualization of power and the relationship between sex and surveillance is more academically obscure. This article criticizes the failure of federal courts to consider the strong and complex relationship between sex and surveillance in analyzing the constitutionality of prison searches, specifically, cross-gender searches.

The analysis proceeds in four parts. Part One introduces the issues posed by sex and surveillance. Part Two describes the sexually …