Law Commons^™

Constructing Race And Gender In Modern Rape Law: The Abandoned Category Of Black Female Victims, Jacqueline Pittman

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Despite the successes of the 1960s Anti-Rape Movement, modern state rape statutes continue to prioritize white male perspectives and perceptions of race, ultimately ignoring the intersectional identity of Black women and leaving these victims without legal protection. This Note examines rape law’s history of allocating agency along gendered and racialized lines through statutory construction and other discursive techniques. Such legal constructions both uphold and cultivate the white victim/Black assailant rape dyad primarily by making the Black male the “ultimate” and most feared assailant. Rape law’s adherence to a white baseline sustains stereotypes of Black men as criminals and predators, which …

Resolutions Without Resolve: Turning Away From Un Security Council Resolutions To Address Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, Emma K. Macfarlane

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In 2008, the United Nations first recognized rape as a war crime with the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1820. Since then, the fight against conflict-related sexual violence has become a frequent subject of Security Council Resolutions. But what, if anything, has changed? Wartime sexual violence is still prevalent today and shows no signs of slowing down. This Note argues that Security Council Resolutions are not an effective method to prevent conflict-related sexual violence. The procedural weaknesses in passing Security Council Resolutions and the structure of the Security Council itself may do more harm than good to the efforts …

The Stability Paradox: The Two-Parent Paradigm And The Perpetuation Of Violence Against Women In Termination Of Parental Rights And Custody Cases, Judith Lewis

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Despite changing family compositions, entrenched in family law is the antiquated idea that a two-parent household, or its approximation vis-à-vis a shared custody arrangement, promotes stability and integrity and, thus, is in the best interest of the child. Yet, the concept that the two-parent household (or shared involvement of both parents in the child’s life if the parents separate) promotes stability for the family and is best for the child is a dangerous fallacy. When rape or intimate partner violence (IPV) is present, or the re-occurrence of violence remains a threat, the family unit is far from stable.

This Article …

Me Too? The Invisible Older Victims Of Sexual Violence, Ruthy Lowenstein Lazar

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

A review of legal research on violence against women and elder abuse reveals a disturbing picture. There is hardly any American legal research examining sexual abuse of older women and its conceptualization in legal literature and treatment in the legal system.

This Article attempts to fill the abovementioned gap and to bring the hidden issue of sexual violence against older women to light. Scholars writing on rape, violence against women, and elder abuse tend to analyze age and gendered sexual violence separately from each other, without accounting for their interplay. This Article proposes a conceptual framework of sexual abuse of …

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

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 …

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, …

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 …

Unusual Suspects: Recognizing And Responding To Female Staff Perpetrators Of Sexual Misconduct In U.S. Prisons, Lauren A. Teichner

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Despite the general public's ignorance of this issue of sexual misconduct perpetrated by female prison staff against male inmates, such stories are remarkably familiar to those who study or work in the world of prisons. The Prison Rape Elimination Act ("PREA") of 2003 mandated that the Bureau of Justice Statistics ("the Bureau") undertake new studies of sexual violence in prisons. Accordingly, the Bureau released a report in July 2006 revealing some groundbreaking data. Of the 344 substantiated allegations of staff-on-inmate sexual violence made in federal, state, and private prisons in 2005, 67% of the overall victims were male inmates and …