Law Commons^™

Partner Notification And The Threat Of Domestic Violence Against Women With Hiv Infection, Karen H. Rothenberg, Richard L. North

Karen H. Rothenberg

No abstract provided.

We Have A "Purpose" Requirement If We Can Keep It, James F. Flanagan

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court in Giles v. California held that a defendant forfeits the right to confront a witness only when he purposefully keeps the witness away. Many see the "purpose" requirement as an unjustified bar to the use of victim hearsay, particularly in domestic violence prosecutions where victims often refuse to appear. The author defends Giles as a correct reading of history, and independently justified by longstanding precedent that constitutional trial rights can only be lost by intentional manipulation of the judicial process. Moreover, the purpose requirement does not prevent prosecutions or convictions because the definition of testimonial hearsay is …

Stop The Killing: Potential Courtroom Use Of A Questionnaire That Predicts The Likelihood That A Victim Of Intimate Partner Violence Will Be Murdered By Her Partner, Amanda Hitt, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

Judges in domestic cases often underestimate the risk to a mother and her children that an angry and abusive father or other intimate partner poses. In a recent Maryland case, for example, two judges refused to deny a father visitation or require that visitation be supervised, despite the fact that the father had threatened suicide. During the father’s unsupervised visitation, he drowned all three of his children, then attempted to kill himself.

The Danger Assessment tool (the D.A.) developed by a Johns Hopkins Nursing professor and validated by herself and other social scientists shows how much the father’s thoughts of …

Her Last Words: Dying Declarations And Modern Confrontation Jurisprudence, Aviva A. Orenstein

Aviva A. Orenstein

Dying declarations have taken on increased importance since the Supreme Court indicated that even if testimonial, they may present a unique exception to its new confrontation jurisprudence. Starting with Crawford v. Washington in 2004, the Court has developed strict rules concerning the use of testimonial statements made by unavailable declarants. Generally, testimonial statements (those made with the expectation that they will be used to prosecute the accused) may be admitted only if they were previously subject to cross examination. The only exceptions appear to be dying declarations and forfeiture by wrongdoing if the accused intentionally rendered the declarant unavailable.

This …

Battered, Broken, Bruised, Or Abandoned: Domestic Strife Presents Foreign Nationals Access To Immigration Relief, Misty Wilson Borkowski

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Examining Orders Of Protection: An Analysis Of The Court System In A Rural Tennessee County., Jaclyn Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To provide safety to domestic violence victims, law reform efforts provided victims with a civil remedy in which a judge orders the abuser to stay away from the victim.

The research uses 1 rural county judicial system data to evaluate protective orders. Findings indicate that 42% of petitions are dismissed by petitioner's request or failure to prosecute. Moreover, court fees are not recouped in 79% of the cases.

Logistic regression analysis indicate that an intimate relationship between the parties and payment of court costs by petitioner increased the probability of dismissal of petition upon petitioner's request; use of a gun …

Autonomy Feminism: An Anti-Essentialist Critique Of Mandatory Interventions In Domestic Violence Cases, Leigh Goodmark

Leigh Goodmark

In the 1970s and 80s, feminists led the way in crafting and advocating for policies to address domestic violence in the United States—and those feminists got it wrong. Desperate to find some way to force police to treat assaults against spouses as they would strangers, the battered women’s movement seized on the idea of mandatory arrest—relieving police of discretion and requiring them to make arrests whenever probable cause existed. But mandatory arrest also removed discretion from the women that the policy purported to serve, a trend that has come to characterize domestic violence law and policy. Later policy choices, like …

Transnational Families In Crisis: An Analysis Of The Domestic Violence Rule In E.U. Free Movement Law, Adam Weiss

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Essay analyzes a concrete rule of European law that has emerged to address the problem of domestic violence within certain transnational families. The domestic violence rule is found in Article 13 of the European Community Free Movement Directive (the Directive), legislation that governs the rights of E.U. citizens and their family members to enter and reside in other E.U. Member States.6 The rule affects the rights of a discrete group: non-E.U. ("third-country national") family members of migrant E.U. citizens, that is, E.U. citizens who have moved to another E.U. Member State (the "host State") to exercise residence rights there. …

Finding Power, Fighting Power (Or The Perpetual Motion Machine), Mae Quinn

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Prisons Must Cease Re-Traumatizing Women: A Call For Gender-Responsive Programs That End The Cycle Of Abuse, Sally Abrahamson

Legal Writing Competition Winners

“They break us out there and then more in here. And they don't do anything to build us back up.” This is a quote from a woman serving thirty-one years for assault and crack-cocaine possession. Like many other incarcerated women, she has a history of being in domestically abusive relationships. Prison, she said, felt like an extension of feeling the same hopelessness she did before entering prison. Using drugs was a means to escape the reality of abuse and poverty. Her time in prison further disempowered her economically and socially, as she received no job-training and lost many of her …

Update On Asylum Law: New Hope For Victims Of Domestic Violence , Sandra A. Grossman, María Mañón

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Seeking Protection From The Law? Exploring Changing Arguments For U.S. Domestic Violence Asylum Claims And Gendered Resistance By Courts , Richael Faithful

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Pulling The Trigger: Separation Violence As A Basis For Refugee Protection For Battered Women, Marisa Cianciarulo, Claudia David

American University Law Review

For over a decade, women seeking asylum from persecution inflicted by their abusive husbands and partners have found little protection in the United States. During that time, domestic violence-based asylum cases have languished in limbo, been denied, or occasionally been granted in unpublished opinions that have not provided a much-needed adjudicative standard. The main case setting forth the pre-Obama approach to domestic violence-based asylum is rife with misunderstanding of the nature of domestic violence and minimization of the role that society plays in the proliferation of domestic violence. Fortunately, however, a recent Obama-administration legal brief indicates that women fleeing countries …

Failure To Arrest: A Pilot Study Of Police Response To Domestic Violence In Rural Illinois , Sara R. Benson

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

A Response To The Sounds Of Silence, Andrew King-Ries

Faculty Law Review Articles

In his article, The Sound of Silence: Holding Batterers Accountable for Silencing Their Victims, Tom Lininger attempts to "facilitate the effective prosecution of domestic violence cases, particularly domestic homicide, while complying with the new requirements announced [for forfeiture by wrongdoing] by the Supreme Court in Giles [v. California]."' In doing so, Lininger tackles a wide array of topics, including analyzing the "theoretical underpinnings" of forfeiture by wrongdoing; explicating the Giles decision, criticizing Justice Scalia's originalist approach for its "selective historical research . . . conflation of evidentiary and constitutional forfeiture theories, and . . . vacillation between objective and subjective …

The Uniform Collaborative Law Act And Intimate Partner Violence: A Roadmap For Collaborative (And Non-Collaborative) Lawyers, Nancy Ver Steegh

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the intimate partner violence provisions of the Uniform Collaborative Law Act “UCLA” and provides an analytical roadmap for collaborative lawyers. The lack of required intimate partner violence training for collaborative lawyers presents a major roadblock for implementation of the Act. Consequently, states adopting the UCLA should take immediate steps to ensure that courts and bodies regulating lawyers require ongoing training. In the meantime, to gain valuable expertise and avoid potential liability, collaborative lawyers should voluntarily seek it.

Domestic Violence Trends And Topics, Patrick D. Costello

Articles

No abstract provided.

When Reading Between The Lines Is Not Enough: Lessons From Media Coverage Of A Domestic Violence Homicide-Suicide, Elizabeth L. Macdowell

Scholarly Works

In October 2008, Karthik Rajaram murdered his wife, mother-in-law, sons and, ultimately, himself, in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb. This Article analyzes media reports about the deaths to illustrate the resilience of patriarchy and significant gaps in research and scholarship about domestic violence, and suggests a strategic approach to building counter-narratives about violence against women.

The Article is composed of five parts. Part I is the Introduction. Part II draws on narrative theory and critical media scholarship to lay the groundwork for analysis, and to show why media coverage of homicide-suicide is implicated in the production of dominant ideology.

Part …

A Shift Toward Gender Equality In Prosecutions: Realizing Legitimate Enforcement Of Crimes Committed Against Women In Municipal And International Criminal Law, Tamara F. Lawson

Articles

A new era of law enforcement has emerged recognizing the importance of punishing gender-specific violence. This first wave of "gender-sensitive prosecutors" has changed the way crimes against women are handled in the criminal justice system. The enactment of gender neutralizing laws and policies has dramatically improved the enforcement of crimes against women and attempts to end the era of impunity. This Article addresses the changes in prosecutions and further considers international human rights treaties that require gender equality in law enforcement.

In criminal law, it is the willingness of a prosecutor to exercise his or her discretionary authority to file …

A Historical Perspective On Parental Alienation Syndrome And Parental Alienation, Joan S. Meier

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Claims of parental alienation syndrome (PAS) and parental alienation have come to dominate custody litigation, especially where abuse is alleged. While much psychological and legal literature has critiqued PAS, and leading researchers as well as most professional institutions have renounced the syndrome concept, alienation as a parental behavior or child’s condition continues to be extensively investigated and credited in research and forensic contexts. This article reviews the history of PAS, both as posited by its inventor, Richard Gardner, and as used and applied in courts, suggesting that it not only lacks empirical basis or objective merit, but that it derives …

Jewish Women Under Siege: The Fight For Survival On The Front Lines Of Love And The Law, Adam H. Koblenz

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Leaving Maryland Workers Behind: A Comparison Of State Employee Leave Statutes, Michael J. Hayes

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Opuz V. Turkey: Europe's Landmark Judgment On Violence Against Women, Tarik Abdel-Monem

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

The Victim-Informed Prosecution Project: A Quasi-Experimental Test Of A Collaborative Model For Cases Of Intimate Partner Violence, Laurie S. Kohn, Laura Bennett Cattaneo, Lisa A. Goodman, Deborah Epstein, Holly A. Zanville

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article describes the Victim-Informed Prosecution Project (VIP), a program that, over its 6-year tenure, aimed to amplify the voice of the victim in the handling of interpersonal violence (IPV) prosecutions in Washington, D.C. The Article discusses the rationale for and design and implementation of VIP and then explores whether it increased the victim’s sense of influence over the justice system response. While some VIP services, including legal advocacy and civil protection order representation, were associated with increased perceived victim voice, the program as a whole reflected more limited levels of perceived victim voice in the area of criminal prosecution. …

Abuse And Discretion: Evaluating Judicial Discretion In Custody Cases Involving Violence Against Women, Dana Harrington Conner

Dana Harrington Conner

This Article is an exploration of the history and creation of the broad power of the custody trial judge, the unsatisfactory standards applied in custody cases involving violence against women, and our system’s inability to adequately review flawed decisions at the appellate level. The Article deconstructs both the process of judicial decision-making at the trial court level in custody cases involving batterers and the standards applied to these cases at the appellate court stage. In addition, the Article also proposes a multi-level approach to resolving the domestic violence dilemma in a custody case.

History confirms that the custody trial judge …