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Full-Text Articles in Law
Saving Title Ix: Designing More Equitable And Efficient Investigation Procedures, Emma Ellman-Golan
Saving Title Ix: Designing More Equitable And Efficient Investigation Procedures, Emma Ellman-Golan
Michigan Law Review
In 2011, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued guidance on Title IX compliance. This guidance has resulted in the creation of investigative and adjudicatory tribunals at colleges and universities receiving federal funds to hear claims of sexual assault, harassment, and violence. OCR’s enforcement efforts are a laudable response to an epidemic of sexual violence on college campuses, but they have faced criticism from administrators, law professors, and potential members of the Trump Administration. This Note suggests ways to alter current Title IX enforcement mechanisms to placate critics and to maintain OCR enforcement as a bulwark against …
Victim Participation At The International Criminal Court And The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia: A Feminist Project, Susana Sacouto
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 …
Steps To Alleviating Violence Against Women On Tribal Lands, Anjum Unwala
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 …
The Failure Of Consent: Re-Conceptualizing Rape As Sexual Abuse Of Power, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael
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 …
Welcoming Women: Recent Changes In U.S. Asylum Law, Jillian Blake
Welcoming Women: Recent Changes In U.S. Asylum Law, Jillian Blake
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The Statue of Liberty, which has been called the "Mother of Exiles," stands as a reminder of one of the foundational ideals of U.S. immigration policy-providing refuge to the vulnerable. Women worldwide have new reason to believe in this promise, because victims of domestic violence may now have a better chance of being granted asylum in a U.S. immigration court.
Rape At Rome: Feminist Interventions In The Criminalization Of Sex-Related Violence In Positive International Criminal Law, Janet Halley
Rape At Rome: Feminist Interventions In The Criminalization Of Sex-Related Violence In Positive International Criminal Law, Janet Halley
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article examines the work of organized feminism in the formation of new international criminal tribunals over the course of the 1990s. It focuses on the statutes establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the International Criminal Court (ICC). It offers a description of the evolving organizational style of feminists involved in the legislative processes leading to the establishment of these courts, and a description of their reform agenda read against the outcomes in each court-establishing statute. At each stage, the Article counts up the feminist victories and defeats, …
Roman Rape: An Overview Of Roman Rape Laws From The Republican Period To Justinian's Reign, Nghiem L. Nguyen
Roman Rape: An Overview Of Roman Rape Laws From The Republican Period To Justinian's Reign, Nghiem L. Nguyen
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
The modern Western crime of rape is commonly defined as "[u]nlawful sexual activity (esp. intercourse) with a person (usu. a female) without consent and usu. by force or threat of injury," and it is often seen as an assault of the person's body and a violation of self-autonomy. However, this differs significantly from the conception of rape in ancient Rome. In fact, "there is no single word in... Latin with the same semantic field as the modern English word 'rape.'” For the Romans, the act of rape was covered under a variety of legal terms, but each of those words …
Instructions In Inequality: Development, Human Rights, Capabilities, And Gender Violence In School, Erika George
Instructions In Inequality: Development, Human Rights, Capabilities, And Gender Violence In School, Erika George
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article argues that the international community's gender equality targets will not be realized by 2015 because the problems associated with sexual violence against girls in schools are situated at an intersection of contested conceptual divides between human rights (civil and political liberties) and development aims (social and economic needs). Cracks in the conceptual foundations of both the liberal and utilitarian theories of justice and equality, which support traditional human rights advocacy and economic development plans, respectively render each approach inadequate to fully identify and address the grave danger sexual violence and harassment in schools pose to educational equality. In …
Covering Women And Violence: Media Treatment Of Vawa's Civil Rights Remedy, Sarah F. Russell
Covering Women And Violence: Media Treatment Of Vawa's Civil Rights Remedy, Sarah F. Russell
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Article analyzes how newspapers described and characterized the civil rights provision over the past decade and shaped the public discourse about the law. The author examines how lower federal courts, and eventually the Supreme Court, categorized the VAWA remedy when deciding whether Congress had acted within its commerce powers. After considering why there may have been resistance in the press and in the courts to VAWA's categorization of violence against women as a civil rights issue, the author concludes by examining the remedies that have been introduced at the state and local level for victims of gender-motivated violence, and …
Sexual Violence As Genocide: The Developing Law Of The International Criminal Tribunals And The International Criminal Court, Jonathan M.H. Short
Sexual Violence As Genocide: The Developing Law Of The International Criminal Tribunals And The International Criminal Court, Jonathan M.H. Short
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This note will explore the treatment of the two primary violent sexual acts, rape and forced pregnancy, in modern international criminal law; more specifically in its treatment as genocide. The woman as an individual is the primary sufferer of sexual violence during armed conflict, however sexual violence is a calculated means by which perpetrators seek to destroy an entire ethnic group. Sexual violence is both an attack against the woman and an attack against the ethnic group, and should be prosecuted as such. While crimes against individuals are best prosecuted as crimes against humanity or under domestic law, crimes committed …
Seeking Redress For Gender-Based Bias Crimes- Charting New Ground In Familiar Legal Territory, Julie Goldscheid, Risa E. Kaufman
Seeking Redress For Gender-Based Bias Crimes- Charting New Ground In Familiar Legal Territory, Julie Goldscheid, Risa E. Kaufman
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Essay will analyze how courts have defined gender-motivation, focusing on the Civil Rights Remedy cases decided before the law was struck down, in an attempt to cull from those cases the standards federal courts have used to assess gender-motivation. The article will first provide an overview of existing and proposed laws that offer some form of redress for gender-motivated crimes. It will then analyze cases decided under the Civil Rights Remedy, focusing on two key issues that have arisen as policymakers struggle with whether and how gender-based bias crimes fit in the rubric of hate crimes legislation. The first …
Dowry Deaths: Proposing A Standard For Implementation Of Domestic Legislation In Accordance With Human Rights Obligations, Namratha S. Ravikant
Dowry Deaths: Proposing A Standard For Implementation Of Domestic Legislation In Accordance With Human Rights Obligations, Namratha S. Ravikant
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This article discusses the due diligence standard of governmental responsibility, and measures the adequacy of India's implementation of its national dowry death legislation in accordance with its international human rights obligations. India has enacted legislation designed to combat dowry violence. Although India's laws seem to follow the letter of its international human rights obligations, the country violates the spirit of human rights by lacking an actual commitment to implement this legislation. This Article demonstrates and examines India's breach of its duty of due diligence. Such a breach constitutes government complicity in condoning and perpetuating dowry deaths, which violate women's human …
Be Careful What You Wish For: An Examination Of Arrest And Prosecution Patterns Of Domestic Violence Cases In Two Cities In Michigan, Andrea D. Lyon
Be Careful What You Wish For: An Examination Of Arrest And Prosecution Patterns Of Domestic Violence Cases In Two Cities In Michigan, Andrea D. Lyon
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Article will examine six months of data on arrests for domestic violence in the cities of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. In order to be able to interpret what the data means Lyon did some other research. The results were surprising- for example, although women tend to be injured most severely by domestic violence, they use violence in intimate relationships a little more often than men. Part I of this Article traces a brief history of domestic violence and discusses the issue of who commits domestic violence, Part II discusses the "must arrest" and "should arrest" policies and their history, …
Reproductive Liberty Under The Threat Of Care: Deputizing Private Agents And Deconstructing State Action, Linda Kelly
Reproductive Liberty Under The Threat Of Care: Deputizing Private Agents And Deconstructing State Action, Linda Kelly
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Article uncovers the unsettling parallels between feminism and the recent restrictions on reproductive liberty in order to reveal the threat posed by the feminist ethic of care. By critically reexamining feminism's foundation and direction, the need for greater emphasis on female individuality becomes apparent. Kelly’s contention is that such a perspective, aggressively supported by the state, will ensure feminism's progress and encourage the achievement of gender equality.
The Politics Of Collective Security, Anne Orford
The Politics Of Collective Security, Anne Orford
Michigan Journal of International Law
Part I argues that conventional international legal analyses about Security Council actions do not consider the gender-differentiated effects of those actions. The universality of male interests is taken for granted by international lawyers. The first level of analysis thus involves adding women in; that is, considering the consequences that Security Council actions have had for women in Kuwait, Iraq, Cambodia, Somalia, Mozambique, Bosnia, and the United States. I argue that many women are in fact rendered less secure by actions authorized by the Security Council in the name of collective security. As a result, women must have a voice in …
Rape Discourse In Press Coverage Of Sex Crimes, Peggy Reeves Sanday
Rape Discourse In Press Coverage Of Sex Crimes, Peggy Reeves Sanday
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes
An Imperfect Remedy For Imperfect Violence: The Construction Of Civil Rights In The Violence Against Women Act, David Frazee
An Imperfect Remedy For Imperfect Violence: The Construction Of Civil Rights In The Violence Against Women Act, David Frazee
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
Along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) could be the most significant addition to federal civil rights laws in the last century. While potentially revolutionary, the VAWA's civil rights remedy forges two problematic legal concepts-traditional civil rights jurisprudence and "perfect" violence-into a super-remedy that risks combining the worst aspects of each. Those who utilize and interpret the Act can avoid this outcome by situating individual violent acts in the broader social and historical context of gender-motivated violence.
Legal Images Of Battered Women: Redefining The Issue Of Separation, Martha R. Mahoney
Legal Images Of Battered Women: Redefining The Issue Of Separation, Martha R. Mahoney
Michigan Law Review
Part I of this article discusses violence in the ordinary lives of women, describing individual and societal denial that pretends domestic violence is rare when statistics show it is common, and describing the ways in which motherhood shapes women's experience of violence and choices in response to violence. Part II examines definitions of battering and evaluates their effectiveness at disguising or revealing the struggle for control at the heart of the battering process. I then describe in Part III the pressures that self-defense and custody cases place on legal and cultural images of battered women and contrast the development of …
Reexamining The Law Of Rape, Janet E. Findlater
Reexamining The Law Of Rape, Janet E. Findlater
Michigan Law Review
A Review Real Rape by Susan Estrich
Pornography Is A Civil Rights Issue For Women, Andrea Dworkin
Pornography Is A Civil Rights Issue For Women, Andrea Dworkin
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
My name is Andrea Dworkin. I am a citizen of the United States, and in this country where I live, every year millions and millions of pictures are being made of women with our legs spread. We are called beaver, we are called pussy, our genitals are tied up, they are pasted, makeup is put on them to make them pop out of a page at a male viewer. Millions and millions of pictures are made of us in postures of submission and sexual access so that our vaginas are exposed for penetration, our anuses are exposed for penetration, our …
Legislative Note: Micigan's Criminal Sexual Assault Law, Kenneth A. Cobb, Nancy R. Schauer
Legislative Note: Micigan's Criminal Sexual Assault Law, Kenneth A. Cobb, Nancy R. Schauer
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Under increasing pressure from women's rights groups and other reform organizations, the Michigan legislature has re-evaluated its centenarian rape statute, found it inadequate for the realities of the mid-twentieth century, and enacted a new sexual assault act. While people may refer to the act as "the new rape law," it should be noted at the outset that the statute is intended to prohibit a variety of sexual acts which involve criminal assault. Michigan's new criminal sexual assault law was formulated to distinguish among degrees of violence as motivated by hostility rather than passion; rape, like other crimes, is more heinous …