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Full-Text Articles in Law and Gender
Domestic Violence And State Intervention In The American West And Australia, 1860-1930, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Domestic Violence And State Intervention In The American West And Australia, 1860-1930, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Publications
This Article calls into question stereotypical assumptions about the presumed lack of state intervention in the family and the patriarchal violence of Anglo-American frontier societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By analyzing previously unexamined cases of domestic assault and homicide in the American West and Australia, Professor Ramsey reveals a sustained (but largely ineffectual) effort to civilize men by punishing violence against women. Husbands in both the American West and Australia were routinely arrested or summoned to court for beating their wives in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Judges, police officers, journalists, and others expressed dismay …
Intimate Homicide: Gender And Crime Control, 1880-1920, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Intimate Homicide: Gender And Crime Control, 1880-1920, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Publications
The received wisdom, among feminists and others, is that historically the criminal justice system tolerated male violence against women. This article dramatically revises feminist understanding of the legal history of public responses to intimate homicide by showing that, in both the eastern and the western United States, men accused of killing their intimates often received stern punishment, including the death penalty, whereas women charged with similar crimes were treated leniently. Although no formal "battered woman's defense" existed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, courts and juries implicitly recognized one--and even extended it to abandoned women who killed their unfaithful …