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Full-Text Articles in Law
For The Title Ix Civil Rights Movement: Congratulations And Cautions, Nancy Chi Cantalupo
For The Title Ix Civil Rights Movement: Congratulations And Cautions, Nancy Chi Cantalupo
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
When Pregnancy Is An Injury: Rape, Law, And Culture, Khiara M. Bridges
When Pregnancy Is An Injury: Rape, Law, And Culture, Khiara M. Bridges
Faculty Scholarship
This Article examines criminal statutes that grade more severely sexual assaults that result in pregnancy. These laws, which define pregnancy as a “substantial bodily injury,” run directly counter to positive constructions of pregnancy within culture. The fact that the criminal law, in this instance, reflects this negative, subversive understanding of pregnancy creates the possibility that this idea may be received within culture as a construction of pregnancy that is as legitimate as positive understandings. In this way, these laws create possibilities for the reimagining of pregnancy within law and society. Moreover, these laws recall the argumentation that proponents of abortion …
[Including But Not Limited To] Violence Against Women, Giovanna Shay
[Including But Not Limited To] Violence Against Women, Giovanna Shay
Faculty Scholarship
This Article highlights three developments in criminal justice in 2012 that marked the move toward more gender-inclusive anti-violence movements: the FBI’s adoption of a gender-neutral definition of rape; the debate regarding the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA); and the promulgation of new Department of Justice (DOJ) regulations under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA). These recent developments reveal a growing movement towards more gender-inclusive conceptions of rape and intimate partner violence. The change to a more gender-inclusive approach will have many implications for criminal justice policy and institutions. One critical project is to ensure that …
A Witness To Justice, Jessica Silbey
A Witness To Justice, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
In the 1988 film The Accused, a young woman named Sarah Tobias is gang raped on a pinball machine by three men while a crowded bar watches. The rapists cut a deal with the prosecutor. Sarah's outrage at the deal convinces the assistant district attorney to prosecute members of the crowd that cheered on and encouraged the rape. This film shows how Sarah Tobias, a woman with little means and less experience, intuits that according to the law rape victims are incredible witnesses to their own victimization. The film goes on to critique what the right kind of witness would …
The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda As The Theater: The Social Negotiation Of The Moral Authority Of International Law, Maya Steinitz
The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda As The Theater: The Social Negotiation Of The Moral Authority Of International Law, Maya Steinitz
Faculty Scholarship
The international criminal courts (ICCs) - the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals for the Former-Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, the recently-established permanent International Criminal Court, and hybrid internationalized tribunals such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone - are the international community's attempt to address the worst of the criminal manifestations of racism, nationalism and large-scale xenophobia. Based on five months of ethnographic research at the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), analyzed using Erving Goffman's dramaturgical framework, this article examines the means through which moral authority is constructed and communicated by the ICTR. Specifically, the article advances the argument that …
"No Provincial Or Transient Notion": The Need For A Mistake Of Age Defense In Child Rape Prosecutions, Jarrod F. Reich
"No Provincial Or Transient Notion": The Need For A Mistake Of Age Defense In Child Rape Prosecutions, Jarrod F. Reich
Faculty Scholarship
Suppose a state legislature enacted a law making any theft a crime punishable by twenty years' imprisonment. Within this law was a provision precluding an accused from introducing evidence that he unwittingly took property to which he was not entitled. Suppose further that after this law was enacted, an elderly woman hung her black coat in a restaurant's lobby and, upon leaving, mistakenly retrieved another's black coat.1 Under the hypothetical statute, her mistake could neither hinder the prosecution's case against her nor be asserted by her as a defense. By inadvertently taking another's coat from a crowded restaurant, the woman …
Why The Model Penal Code's Sexual Offense Provisions Should Be Pulled And Replaced, Deborah W. Denno
Why The Model Penal Code's Sexual Offense Provisions Should Be Pulled And Replaced, Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
By all accounts, the Model Penal Code is enormously respected and influential. Yet, relatively soon after the Code's 1962 publication, the Code's sexual offense provisions and even its 1980 revised Commentaries were already considered outdated. The rapid onslaught of the sexual and feminist revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s brought an intense momentum to change rape laws that the Code had, in part, either mirrored or inspired. Only because of the passage of time, the Code's sexual offense provisions and Commentaries now misrepresent the progressive thinking of the Code's reporters. For these reasons, I think the Model Penal Code's sexual …
The International Court Of Justices Decision In Congo V Belgium How Has It Affected The Development Of A Principle Of Universal Jurisdiction That Would Obligate All States To Prosecute War Criminals, Mark A. Summers
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Evolutionary Biology And Rape, Deborah W. Denno
Evolutionary Biology And Rape, Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
This article queries whether an evolutionary analysis of rape may be more compelling in explaining a rape victim's fear than a defendant's sexual aggression. Such a victim-oriented approach could help legal decisionmakers assess the reasonableness of the victim's fear when determining whether sex was forced or threatened. These ideas are explored in the context of two well-known rape trials, State v. Rusk and State v. Smith. This article concludes that evolutionary biology can contribute to an understanding of rape. However, the supposed evolutionary underpinnings of male sexual aggression should not justify such behavior or render it acceptable as a criminal …
Life Before The Modern Sex Offender Statutes , Deborah W. Denno
Life Before The Modern Sex Offender Statutes , Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
This Article examines the social and legal developments that fueled the origins and recurring problems of sex offender laws. Part I of this Article discusses the primary precursors of the sexual psychopath statutes that encouraged the public's and politicians' acceptance of the concept of sexual psychopathy: the increasing sexualization of American society, changes in gender roles and relations, the valuation of children and the family unit, and the influx of psychiatry. Part II describes how the diagnosis of sexual psychopathy slowly developed as a result of the criminal justice system's growing tendency to explain criminal behavior in psychoanalytic terms. Part …
Sexuality, Rape, And Mental Retardation, Deborah W. Denno
Sexuality, Rape, And Mental Retardation, Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
In this article, Professor Denno addresses the question of when sexual relations with a mentally retarded individual should be considered nonconsensual and therefore criminal. The article first explores the early treatment of mental retardation. It next demonstrates how old stereotypes influence the moralism inherent in modern conceptions of consent in rape determinations. Illustrating the point with reference to the Glen Ridge rape case, the article shows how courts applying contemporary rape statutes typically hold mentally retarded individuals to a higher standard of consent than nonretarded individuals. As a result, courts are hurting the very people they are supposed to protect …