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Full-Text Articles in Family Law

Equality Theory, Marital Rape, And The Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West Jan 1990

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 …


A Re-Evaluation Of The Privilege Against Adverse Spousal Testimony In The Light Of Its Purpose, Paul F. Rothstein Jan 1963

A Re-Evaluation Of The Privilege Against Adverse Spousal Testimony In The Light Of Its Purpose, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The recent development in American federal criminal evidence law to be examined and compared with English law in this paper, is a new evolutionary turn taken by the husband-wife privilege against adverse spousal testimony, manifest in the Supreme Court decision of Wyatt v. United States. The House of Lords, in Rumping v. D.P.P., just decided, suggests that the English spousal privileges might be susceptible of similar development.