Law Commons^™

Lessons Learned, Lessons Offered: Creating A Domestic Violence Drug Court, Judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, Dr. Stacy Speedlin Gonzalez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Undocumented: The Need To Further Address The Intersection Of Immigration And Domestic Violence In The United States, Julie Flower

Legislation and Policy Brief

No abstract provided.

Domestic Violence, Gun Possession, And The Importance Of Context, Wesley M. Oliver

Indiana Law Journal

Context is everything.

A federal law prohibits those convicted of committing an act of domestic violence from possessing weapons. 1 This term, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that this statute would apply even to those convicted of crimes that did not necessarily involve violent acts.2 This conclusion strains the ordinary meaning of language, but is quite consistent with a long tradition in criminal cases that favors a pro-government interpretation of a statute when the public welfare is at stake. And domestic violence, Justice Sotomayor stressed in her opinion, has reached epidemic levels, prompting Congress to get guns out of the …

Steps To Alleviating Violence Against Women On Tribal Lands, Anjum Unwala

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

One in three Native American women has been raped or has experienced an attempted rape. Federal officials also failed to prosecute 75% of the alleged sex crimes against women and children living under tribal authority. The Senate bill to reauthorize the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) could provide appropriate recourse for Native American women who are victims of sexual assault. This bill (S. 1925), introduced in 2011, would grant tribal courts the ability to prosecute non-Indians who have sexually assaulted their Native American spouses and domestic partners. Congress has quickly reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act twice before. But …

Coercion's Common Threads: Addressing Vagueness In The Federal Criminal Prohibitions On Torture By Looking To State Domestic Violence Laws, Sarah H. St. Vincent

Michigan Law Review

Under international law, the United States is obligated to criminalize acts of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. However, the federal criminal torture laws employ several terms whose meanings are so indeterminate that they inhibit the statutes' effectiveness and fail to provide adequate guidance regarding precisely which forms of mistreatment may result in prosecution. These ambiguous terms have given rise to serious and prolonged controversies within the executive branch regarding what torture is-controversies that confirm, and may further compound, the uncertainty of liability under the laws in question.

In order to solve this problem of vagueness and provide definitive …

Transnational Families In Crisis: An Analysis Of The Domestic Violence Rule In E.U. Free Movement Law, Adam Weiss

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Essay analyzes a concrete rule of European law that has emerged to address the problem of domestic violence within certain transnational families. The domestic violence rule is found in Article 13 of the European Community Free Movement Directive (the Directive), legislation that governs the rights of E.U. citizens and their family members to enter and reside in other E.U. Member States.6 The rule affects the rights of a discrete group: non-E.U. ("third-country national") family members of migrant E.U. citizens, that is, E.U. citizens who have moved to another E.U. Member State (the "host State") to exercise residence rights there. …

Reconceptualizing Domestic Violence In India: Economic Abuse And The Need For Broad Statutory Interpretation To Promote Women's Fundamental Rights, Pami Vyas

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article explores the reconceptualization of domestic violence in India through an analysis of the economic abuse provision of the recently passed Domestic Violence Act. The author argues that although India has taken a significant step towards advancing women's rights by characterizing economic abuse as a form of domestic violence, effective implementation of the law requires a broad interpretation of the economic abuse provision. To be consistent with the purpose of the statute and India's constitutional and international human rights obligations, "economic abuse" must be interpreted broadly to include the deprivation of a woman's control over her economic resources. Economic …

Covering Women And Violence: Media Treatment Of Vawa's Civil Rights Remedy, Sarah F. Russell

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article analyzes how newspapers described and characterized the civil rights provision over the past decade and shaped the public discourse about the law. The author examines how lower federal courts, and eventually the Supreme Court, categorized the VAWA remedy when deciding whether Congress had acted within its commerce powers. After considering why there may have been resistance in the press and in the courts to VAWA's categorization of violence against women as a civil rights issue, the author concludes by examining the remedies that have been introduced at the state and local level for victims of gender-motivated violence, and …

Protecting Battered Women: A Proposal For Comprehensive Domestic Violence Legislation In New York, Lisa R. Beck

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This note proposes that New York implement a mandatory arrest policy for certain types of domestic violence. The author first examines New York's current methods of addressing domestic violence, including previous attempts at decriminalization, judicial remedies, and the effectiveness of orders of protection. The author then describes the issues of the current discretionary arrest policy. The note examines domestic violence legislation in other states, then proposes a comprehensive statutory scheme to address domestic violence in New York state.