Law Commons^™

The Intersection Of Wrongful Convictions And Gender In Cases Where Women Were Sentenced To Death Or Life In Prison Without Parole, Connor F. Lang

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Note examines National Registry of Exonerations data and discusses the prevalence of false confessions and presence of a child victim in cases of women who were convicted of murder, received a serious sentence, and were later exonerated. After looking at the cases of women exonerated after receiving death sentences or life without parole sentences in light of the prevalence of these factors, this Note argues that examination of the cases reveals that the presence of a false confession or a child victim may have contributed to some of the wrongful convictions where these factors may have led to the …

Criminal Record Relief For Human Trafficking Survivors: Analysis Of Current State Statutes And The Need For A Federal Model Statute, Ashleigh Pelto

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Note defines criminal record relief and analyzes the effectiveness of three state criminal record relief statutes at protecting trafficking survivors. This analysis is based on State Report Cards: Grading Criminal Record Relief Laws for Survivors of Human Trafficking by Polaris, a leading human trafficking nonprofit. It next discusses the absence of federal criminal record relief and how a statute at the federal level could provide relief for survivors with federal convictions while simultaneously providing a model for states to ensure their statutes incorporate best practices for record relief moving forward. This Note then discusses how Polaris’s report stops short …

The Stability Paradox: The Two-Parent Paradigm And The Perpetuation Of Violence Against Women In Termination Of Parental Rights And Custody Cases, Judith Lewis

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Despite changing family compositions, entrenched in family law is the antiquated idea that a two-parent household, or its approximation vis-à-vis a shared custody arrangement, promotes stability and integrity and, thus, is in the best interest of the child. Yet, the concept that the two-parent household (or shared involvement of both parents in the child’s life if the parents separate) promotes stability for the family and is best for the child is a dangerous fallacy. When rape or intimate partner violence (IPV) is present, or the re-occurrence of violence remains a threat, the family unit is far from stable.

This Article …

Increasing Case Traffic: Expanding The International Criminal Court's Focus On Human Trafficking Cases, Nadia Alhadi

Michigan Journal of International Law

Human trafficking falls within the jurisdictional competence of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) as one of the article 7 crimes against humanity, whether committed in an atmosphere of conflict or in times of relative peace. Despite the ICC’s jurisdiction, as well as the globally pervasive nature of peacetime trafficking in particular, the ICC has not yet heard a human trafficking case.

Accountability at the international level, however, is crucial, and the ICC’s oversight has the potential to fill gaps in the current anti-trafficking regime. This note explores this potential, and then examines whether the text of the Rome Statute or …

Me Too? The Invisible Older Victims Of Sexual Violence, Ruthy Lowenstein Lazar

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

A review of legal research on violence against women and elder abuse reveals a disturbing picture. There is hardly any American legal research examining sexual abuse of older women and its conceptualization in legal literature and treatment in the legal system.

This Article attempts to fill the abovementioned gap and to bring the hidden issue of sexual violence against older women to light. Scholars writing on rape, violence against women, and elder abuse tend to analyze age and gendered sexual violence separately from each other, without accounting for their interplay. This Article proposes a conceptual framework of sexual abuse of …

Domestic Violence Convictions And Firearms Possession: The Law As It Stands And As It Moves, Kate E. Britt

Law Librarian Scholarship

Legislatures have attempted to curb instances of gun use in fatal and nonfatal domestic violence by passing statutes restricting possession of firearms for perpetrators of domestic violence. This article explains federal and Michigan law as it stands and discusses current efforts to further limit perpetrators’ access to firearms.

The Incremental Retributive Impact Of A Death Sentence Over Life Without Parole, Michael L. Radelet

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this paper, the author takes a closer look at retribution, which is the primary justification for the death penalty today in the United States and the main component of the additional punishment imposed by the death penalty over and above life imprisonment without parole (LWOP). While all criminal punishments, to varying degrees, punish both the inmate and his or her family, this paper argues that the death penalty’s added punishment over LWOP often punishes the family just as much as the inmate, and after the execution the full brunt of the punishment falls on the family. This added impact …

How Feminist Theory Became (Criminal) Law: Tracing The Path To Mandatory Criminal Intervention In Domestic Violence Cases, Claire Houston

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Our popular understanding of domestic violence has shifted significantly over the past forty years, and with it, our legal response. We have moved from an interpretation of domestic violence as a private relationship problem managed through counseling techniques to an approach that configures domestic violence first and foremost as a public crime. Mandatory criminal intervention policies reflect and reinforce this interpretation. How we arrived at this point, and which understanding of domestic violence facilitated this shift, is the focus of this Article. I argue that the move to intense criminalization has been driven by a distinctly feminist interpretation of domestic …

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 …

Vindicating The Matriarch: A Fair Housing Act Challenge To Federal No-Fault Evictions From Public Housing, Melissa A. Cohen

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Pearlie Rucker, sixty-three years old, had been living in public housing in Oakland, California for thirteen years. Ms. Rucker lived with her mentally disabled adult daughter, Gelinda, as well as two grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Ms. Rucker regularly searched Gelinda's room for signs of drugs, and had warned Gelinda that any drug activity on the premises could result in eviction. Nevertheless, Gelinda was caught with drugs three blocks from the apartment. Despite the fact that Ms. Rucker had no knowledge of Gelinda's drug activity, and in fact had been carefully monitoring what happened in her apartment, the Oakland Housing Authority …

Student Gladiators And Sexual Assault: A New Analysis Of Liability For Injuries Inflicted By College Athletes, Ann Scales

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article will focus on an issue that was probably not on the minds of 19th century educators, nor primarily on the minds of the legions of present-day academic critics of intercollegiate sports. Namely, this Article explores the ways in which big-time athletics- particularly football-normalize and encourage harms to women, including educational and sexual harms. The author’s theses depend upon acknowledging certain open secrets about college football: that it is a celebration of male physical supremacy (measured by male standards); that it is something that society lets males do and have as their sport, for reasons both good and bad; …

Pursuing The Perfect Mother: Why America's Criminalization Of Maternal Substance Abuse Is Not The Answer- A Compartive Legal Analysis, Linda C. Fentiman

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In this Article the author will examine not only the substantive legal differences between the United States, Canada, and France, but will also explore how these legal rules fit within a broader social, political, and religious setting. This Article will pursue four lines of inquiry. First, it will briefly chronicle the history of criminal prosecution of pregnant women in America and show how these prosecutions have become markedly more aggressive over the last twenty years. Second, it will situate these prosecutions in the full context of American law and culture, demonstrating how the fetus has received increasing legal recognition in …

Unusual Suspects: Recognizing And Responding To Female Staff Perpetrators Of Sexual Misconduct In U.S. Prisons, Lauren A. Teichner

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Despite the general public's ignorance of this issue of sexual misconduct perpetrated by female prison staff against male inmates, such stories are remarkably familiar to those who study or work in the world of prisons. The Prison Rape Elimination Act ("PREA") of 2003 mandated that the Bureau of Justice Statistics ("the Bureau") undertake new studies of sexual violence in prisons. Accordingly, the Bureau released a report in July 2006 revealing some groundbreaking data. Of the 344 substantiated allegations of staff-on-inmate sexual violence made in federal, state, and private prisons in 2005, 67% of the overall victims were male inmates and …

Roman Rape: An Overview Of Roman Rape Laws From The Republican Period To Justinian's Reign, Nghiem L. Nguyen

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The modern Western crime of rape is commonly defined as "[u]nlawful sexual activity (esp. intercourse) with a person (usu. a female) without consent and usu. by force or threat of injury," and it is often seen as an assault of the person's body and a violation of self-autonomy. However, this differs significantly from the conception of rape in ancient Rome. In fact, "there is no single word in... Latin with the same semantic field as the modern English word 'rape.'” For the Romans, the act of rape was covered under a variety of legal terms, but each of those words …

Global Sex Trafficking And The Trafficking Victims Protection Act Of 2000: Legislative Responses To The Problem Of Modern Slavery, Rosy Kandathil

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Human trafficking is becoming the fastest growing criminal activity in the world. Generally, trafficking is defined as the transportation of persons across international borders for labor purposes, by means of force, fraud, or coercion. Commerce directly related to human slavery yields approximately $7-$10 billion a year, trailing only behind drugs and weapons trade for international profit. According to recent congressional findings, over 700,000 human beings are trafficked across international borders each year, including approximately 50,000 women and children into the United States. Women and girl children are the primary targets for sexual exploitation into prostitution, pornography, sex tourism, and other …

Pornography As Trafficking, Catharine A. Mackinnon

Michigan Journal of International Law

In material reality, pornography is one way women and children are trafficked for sex. To make visual pornography, the bulk of the industry's products, real women and children, and some men, are rented out for use in commercial sex acts. In the resulting materials, these people are then conveyed and sold for a buyer's sexual use. Obscenity laws, the traditional legal approach to the problem, do not care about these realities at all. The morality of what is said and shown remains their focus and concern. The injuries inflicted on real people to make the materials, or because they are …

Tribal Jurisdiction And Domestic Violence: The Need For Non-Indian Accountability On The Reservation, Amy Radon

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Domestic violence is a severe problem for tribes across the nation, as their female members are victimized at highly disproportionate rates compared to members of dominant society. Many tribes have sophisticated domestic violence codes to combat the problem, but they are powerless to prosecute the majority of those who will abuse Indian women: non-Indian men. In 1978 the Supreme Court stripped tribes of their power to prosecute non-Indians in criminal matters, which not only damaged tribal sovereignty but also meant the difference between a life free from abuse and one with constant fear, intimidation, and pain for Indian women.

The …

Sexual Slavery And The International Criminal Court: Advancing International Law, Valerie Oosterveld

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article explores the advancement of the international crime of sexual slavery, from its initial inclusion in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court through further development in the delineation of the ICC's Elements of Crime document. This Article begins with a detailed exploration of the negotiation process that led to the inclusion of the crime of sexual slavery in the Rome Statute. The first Section describes the decision to include both sexual slavery and enforced prostitution as crimes, as well as the debate on listing sexual slavery as a crime separate from that of enslavement. Next, the Section …

A Matter Of Principle And Consistency: Understanding The Battered Woman And Cultural Defenses, Sharan K. Suri

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

To adequately explain and argue why feminists, as a matter of legal theory, must take both the BWS and cultural defenses seriously, these defenses need further elaboration. Section I details what these defenses are, how they developed, and how they work in the justice system. Section II enlarges the picture by revealing the similarities between the two defenses which share not only the same theoretical and practical goals, but also the same criticisms and flaws highlighted by scholars. Finally, Section III asserts that cultural evidence and evidence of battering must be admitted to show the absence of mens rea. However, …

Traffic Jam: Recommendations For Civil Penalties To Curb The Recent Trafficking Of Women From Post-Cold War Russia, Christopher M. Pilkerton

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article will examine the recent criminal trend of trafficking women from post-Cold War Russia into the United States. First, it will examine the Russian mafia and its development. It will also discuss the system of economic corruption that currently exists in Russia, which facilitates government involvement with this criminal activity. It will further investigate the issues surrounding trafficked women and the international anti-trafficking conventions that have been created by the United Nations. Next, it will go into a deeper discussion of the current status of relevant international law and the issues involving the International Criminal Court. Finally, this Article …

Be Careful What You Wish For: An Examination Of Arrest And Prosecution Patterns Of Domestic Violence Cases In Two Cities In Michigan, Andrea D. Lyon

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article will examine six months of data on arrests for domestic violence in the cities of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. In order to be able to interpret what the data means Lyon did some other research. The results were surprising- for example, although women tend to be injured most severely by domestic violence, they use violence in intimate relationships a little more often than men. Part I of this Article traces a brief history of domestic violence and discusses the issue of who commits domestic violence, Part II discusses the "must arrest" and "should arrest" policies and their history, …

Whose Justice? Which Victims?, Lynne Henderson

Michigan Law Review

A Review of George Fletcher, With Justice for Some: Victim's Rights in Criminal Trials

Putting Women First, Mary Coombs

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Gender, Crime, and Punishment by Kathleen Daly

Rape Discourse In Press Coverage Of Sex Crimes, Peggy Reeves Sanday

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes

Prostitution And Male Supremacy, Andrea Dworkin

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The assumptions of academia can barely begin to imagine the reality of life for women in prostitution. Academic life is premised on the notion that there is a tomorrow and a next day and a next day; or that someone can come inside from the cold for time to study; or that there is some kind of discourse of ideas and a year of freedom in which you can have disagreements that will not cost you your life. These are premises that those who are students here or who teach here act on every day. They are antithetical to the …

Prostitution And Civil Rights, Catharine A. Mackinnon

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The gap between the promise of civil rights and the real lives of prostitutes is an abyss which swallows up prostituted women.' To speak of prostitution and civil rights in one breath moves the two into one world, at once exposing and narrowing the distance between them.

An Analysis Of Individual, Institutional, And Cultural Pimping, Evelina Giobbe

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

A pimp is a man .. .who takes all or a part of the earnings of women who sell their bodies for gain. He may have inveigled her into becoming a prostitute or acquired her after she started the business. Invariably he encourages her to continue in prostitution, and he may be either her lover or her husband, but always he is her supposed protector.

Prostitution: Where Racism & Sexism Intersect, Vednita Nelson

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Black women find themselves in a unique and extremely difficult position in our society. They are forced to deal with the oppression that arises from being Black in a white-supremacist culture and the oppression that arises from being female in a male-supremacist culture. In order to examine the experience of being Black and female, this paper attempts to describe that very difficult, tight space where Black women attempt to survive-that space where racism and sexism intersect.

Strategies Of Connection: Prostitution And Feminist Politics, Margaret A. Baldwin

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

A feminist political approach to prostitution must begin from these strengths and be tested against the standards set by them. I want to address how taking each of these strengths seriously can create sustained resistance against prostitution.

Prostitution Is Cruelty And Abuse To Women And Children, Susan Kay Hunter

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Each day I rise to take up the truly good fight to stop the harm to women in prostitution. I long for complete liberation of all oppressed peoples. I passionately believe that the work I do to end prostitution is revolutionary. No one deserves to be used and abused, and that is the universal experience of prostituted women and children. It is also revolutionary work because my freedom as a woman is meaningless so long as some of us can be bought and sold. The giant sex industry grinds on, exploiting and enslaving women, while sexual liberals are well-paid by …