Law Commons^™

A Home With Dignity: Domestic Violence And Property Rights, Margaret E. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the legal system should do more to address intimate partner violence and each party's need for a home for several reasons. First, domestic violence is a leading cause of individual and family homelessness. Second, the struggle over rights to a shared home can increase the violence to which the woman is subjected. And third, a woman who decides to continue to live with the person who abused her receives little or no legal support, despite the evidence that this decision could most effectively reduce the violence. The legal system's current failings result from its limited goals-achieving …

Converge! Reimagining The Movement To End Gender Violence Symposium: Panel On Intersections Of Gender, Economic, Racial, And Indigenous (In) Justice, Margaret E. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

JOHNSON: This presentation envisions what a better domestic violence legal system might look like for persons subjected to domestic abuse who have not had their needs met or who have been harmed by the current legal system. The paper reframes the focus of the civil legal system from a paradigm of safety into a paradigm of security, including economic, housing, health, and relationship security. This reframing permits a focus on the domestic violence legal system and its intersecting systems of oppression such as race, gender, class, and ethnicity.

Currently, the domestic violence legal system targets short-term physical safety of the …