Law and Gender Commons^™

Properly Accounting For Domestic Violence In Child Custody Cases: An Evidence-Based Analysis And Reform Proposal, Debra Pogrund Stark, Jessica M. Choplin, Sarah Elizabeth Wellard

Debra Pogrund Stark

Promoting the best interests of children and protecting their safety and well-being in the context of a divorce or parentage case where domestic violence has been alleged has become highly politicized and highly gendered. There are claims by fathers’ rights groups that mothers often falsely accuse fathers of domestic violence to alienate the fathers from their children and to improve their financial position. They also claim that children do better when fathers are equally involved in their children’s lives, but that judges favor mothers over fathers in custody cases. As a consequence, fathers’ rights groups have engaged in a nationwide …

Debunking The Myth Of Universal Male Privilege, Jamie R. Abrams

Jamie R. Abrams

Existing legal responses to sexual assault and harassment in the military have stagnated or failed. Current approaches emphasize the prevalence of sexual assault and highlight the masculine nature of the military’s statistical composition and institutional culture. Current responses do not, however, incorporate masculinities theory to disentangle the experiences of men as a group from men as individuals. Rather, embedded within contestations of the masculine military culture is the unstated assumption that the culture universally privileges or benefits the individual men that operate within it. This myth is harmful because it tethers masculinities to military efficacy, suppresses the costs of male …

Mulieris Dignitatem, Ephesians 5, And Domestic Violence, Joseph M. Isanga

Joseph Isanga

This Article considers the contribution of Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter On the Dignity and Vocation of Women to the deeper understanding of women’s dignity as it relates to the process of articulating and rearticulating international women’s rights, with particular attention on domestic violence.2 This letter, Mulieris Dignitatem, brings together some of the Catholic Church’s most important teachings on gender equality. This Article delineates norms articulated in Mulieris Dignitatem that can inform international standards regarding the protection of women from domestic violence. To date there are no legally binding global human rights instruments that explicitly recognize the right to …

Professor Breaks Ground With Journal On Sexual Violence And Exploitation, Joseph Essig, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

Uri Professor Launches Online Journal About Sexual Exploitation, Violence, Slavery, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

Result Inequality In Family Law, Margaret Brinig

Margaret F Brinig

To the extent that family law is governed by statute, all families are treated as though they are the same. This is of course consistent with the equal protection guarantees of the US Constitution as well as those of the states. However, in our pluralistic society, all families are not alike. At birth, some children are born to wealthy, married parents who will always put the children’s interests first and will never engage in domestic violence. Many laws benefit these children, while, according to some academics, they either further disadvantage other children or at best ignore their needs.

This presentation …

From Protection To Punishment: Post-Conviction Barriers To Justice For Domestic Violence Survivor-Defendants In New York State, Tamar Kraft-Stolar, Elizabeth Brundige, Sital Kalantry, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Sital Kalantry

No abstract provided.

A Postcolonial Theory Of Spousal Rape: The Carribean And Beyond, Stacy-Ann Elvy

Stacy-Ann Elvy

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 …

Constrained Choice: Mothers, The State, And Domestic Violence, Rona Kaufman Kitchen

Rona Kaufman Kitchen

Mothers who are the victims of domestic violence face unique challenges in their quest for safety. The legal response to domestic violence requires that mothers respond to abuse in specific state-sanctioned manners. However, when mothers respond accordingly, such as by reporting abuse and leaving the abusive relationship, their safety and the safety of their children is not guaranteed. Moreover, by responding in state-sanctioned manners, mothers risk a host of negative consequences including increased threat to their immediate and long-term safety, the loss of their children, undesired financial, health, and social consequences, and criminal prosecution. On the other hand, when mothers …

Women Made Whole: How Tort Law Can Change The Lives Of Domestic Violence And Sexual Assault Victims, Sara L. Crewson

Sara L Crewson

Domestic violence victims do not have the same level of access to the civil justice system that victims of sexual assault do, yet both are gender-linked crimes. A combination of legal, legislative, and social forces have come together to effectively bar recovery for victims of domestic violence, but when examining how these forces serve to help, rather than hinder, sexual violence victims, it is possible to come up with solutions that can tear these barriers down and ensure all victims of violence are equal in the eyes of the justice system. What we know is that domestic violence tort claims …

The Arrest Experiments: A Feminist Critique, Cynthia Grant Bowman

Cynthia Grant Bowman

No abstract provided.

David Peterson Mar, What Trouble I Have Seen: A History Of Violence Against Wives, Cynthia Grant Bowman

Cynthia Grant Bowman

No abstract provided.

Praxis And Pedagogy: Domestic Violence, Cynthia Grant Bowman, Eden Kusmiersky

Cynthia Grant Bowman

No abstract provided.

Penny Wise But Pound Foolish In The Heartland: A Case Study Of Decriminalizing Domestic Violence In Topeka, Kansas, Shelley Santry

Shelley M. Santry

Denying Choice Of Forum: An Interference By The Massachusetts Trial Court With Domestic Violence Victims' Rights, Margaret B. Drew, Marilu E. Gresens

Margaret B Drew

The article discusses the due process denials inherent in the Massachusetts scheme designed to defeat the victim's choice of forum for hearing on a civil protection order petition. The scheme would divert many protection orders to family court even though the statute in question permits filing and hearing of the petitions in district, superior and famiy courts. The diversion would be available whenever there is a related case filed in family court at the time that the petition for protection is filed. More alarmingly, the petition could be diverted to family court if a subsequent action was filed in the …

Addressing Domestic Violence Through The Law: A Guide To - The Protection Of Women From Domestic Violence Act, 2005, Saumya Uma

Dr. Saumya Uma

The Moral Politics Of Social Control: Political Culture And Ordinary Crime In Cuba, Deborah M. Weissman, Marsha R. Weissman

Deborah M. Weissman

The Cuban revolution has been described as “the longest running social experiment” in history, and one not well-received in the United States. The U.S. government responded to the revolution first with suspicion, and then hostility. Even while the current administration has acknowledged the failure of U.S. policy, few substantive changes have been announced and the narrative of Cuba in the United States continues to dwell almost exclusively on political repression and economic failure. The Cuban revolution, however, is a complex process, one that defies facile explanations. This article subscribes to the perspective offered by social scientists who urge “a more …

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.

Gender Equality, Social Values And Provocation Law In Australia, Canada And The United States, Caroline A. Forell

Caroline A Forell

This article examines and compares the partial defense of provocation as it applies to domestic homicide in the United States, Canada and Australia.

Telling Stories, Saving Lives: The Battered Mothers' Testimony Project, Women's Narratives, And Court Reform, Leigh Goodmark

Leigh S. Goodmark

In November 2002, the Wellesley Centers for Women’s Battered Mothers’ Testimony Project released Battered Mothers Speak Out, a report detailing human rights abuses committed against forty battered mothers and their children who had litigated cases in the Massachusetts family court system. Although the report initially generated a great deal of attention, the response from the courts was overwhelmingly negative, and the report prompted no change in the courts. Because the stories of these women resonated with my own experiences representing battered women, I wondered why the report had so little effect on system change. The official response of the courts …

Achieving Batterer Accountability In The Child Protection System, Leigh Goodmark

Leigh S. Goodmark

No abstract provided.

Contradictions, Open Secrets, And Feminist Faith In Enlightenment.Pdf, Heather Hughes

Heather Hughes