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Legitimating The Illegitimate: A Comment On 'Beyond Rape', Robin West
Legitimating The Illegitimate: A Comment On 'Beyond Rape', Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Professor Dripps's provocative proposal, as I understand it, is that we think of sex as a commodity and rape as the theft of that commodity. Understood as such, the theft of sex accomplished through violence or the threat of violence is a twofold wrong: it violates our "negative" right to refuse to have sex with anyone for any or no reason, and violence or the threat of violence infringes our right to personal, physical security. Therefore, the violent expropriation of sex should be punished as a major felony, as is violent rape, at least in theory.
Furthermore, according to Dripps, …
Equality Theory, Marital Rape, And The Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West
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 …