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Full-Text Articles in Law
Reconstructing Liberty, Robin West
Reconstructing Liberty, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
It is commonly and rightly understood in this country that our constitutional system ensures, or seeks to ensure, that individuals are accorded the greatest degree of personal, political, social, and economic liberty possible, consistent with a like amount of liberty given to others, the duty and right of the community to establish the conditions for a moral and secure collective life, and the responsibility of the state to provide for the common defense of the community against outside aggression. Our distinctive cultural and constitutional commitment to individual liberty places very real restraints on what our elected representatives can do, even …
Equality Theory, Marital Rape, And The Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West
Equality Theory, Marital Rape, And The Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
During the 1980s a handful of state judges either held or opined in dicta what must be incontrovertible to the feminist community, as well as to most progressive legal advocates and academics: the so-called marital rape exemption, whether statutory or common law in origin, constitutes a denial of a married woman's constitutional right to equal protection under the law. Indeed, a more obvious denial of equal protection is difficult to imagine: the marital rape exemption denies married women protection against violent crime solely on the basis of gender and marital status. What possibly could be less rational than a statute …