Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Legal History
An Incomplete Revolution: Reexaming The Law, History, And Politics Of Marital Property, Mary Ziegler
An Incomplete Revolution: Reexaming The Law, History, And Politics Of Marital Property, Mary Ziegler
Scholarly Publications
Did the divorce revolution betray the interests of American women? While there has been considerable disagreement about the impact of divorce reform on women’s standard of living, many agree that judicial practices involving the division of marital property and the allocation of alimony have systematically disadvantaged women. Most often, in the courts and the academy, commentators see these practices as evidence of the need for family law reform.
These conclusions rely on a shared account of the history of divorce reform. According to this account, the transformation of divorce law in the 1970s and 1980s was a “silent revolution,” a …
The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, And Changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims Of Domestic Violence, Carolyn B. Ramsey
The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, And Changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims Of Domestic Violence, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Publications
This Article presents a hypothesis suggesting how and why the criminal justice response to domestic violence changed, over the course of the twentieth century, from sympathy for abused women and a surprising degree of state intervention in intimate relationships to the apathy and discrimination that the battered women' movement exposed. The riddle of declining public sympathy for female victims of intimate-partner violence can only be solved by looking beyond the criminal law to the social and legal changes that created the Exit Myth.
While the situation that gave rise to the battered women's movement in the 1970s is often presumed …