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Full-Text Articles in Law

Family Violence-Investigating Child Abuse And Learning From British Mistakes, Alastair Bissett-Johnson Apr 1993

Family Violence-Investigating Child Abuse And Learning From British Mistakes, Alastair Bissett-Johnson

Dalhousie Law Journal

It seems appropriate at the onset to set out something of what the disciplines of law, medicine and social work know about family violence and when, during recent years, this knowledge came to the attention of professionals, the public and legislature. We can then, perhaps, judge whether our existing laws, rules of evidence and procedure take this information adequately into account in dealing with cases of violence within the family. Whilst solving these problems takes time, and law often lags behind the behavioural sciences, the question arises whether the lag is too long and whether differences between experts in the …


Battered But Not Beaten: Women Who Kill In Self Defence, Ian D. Leader-Elliott Professor Dec 1992

Battered But Not Beaten: Women Who Kill In Self Defence, Ian D. Leader-Elliott Professor

Ian D Leader-Elliott Professor

This essay commences with a critical evaluation of the battered woman syndrome. It continues with an illustrative biographical fragment, before discussing the polemics of excuse and justification in American criminal law. The concluding section provides an account of the law of self defence and provocation in their application to defensive homicides against attack by an intimate aggressor. The argument of the essay is that Australian common law is capable of discriminating and compassionate justice, in cases of self defence against intimate aggressors and provocation by intimate aggressors. Recourse to the dubious theory that the victims of domestic violence are characterised …