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“While Dangers Gather”: The Bush Preemption Doctrine, Battered Women, Imminence And Anticipatory Self-Defense, Jane Campbell Moriarty

Jane Campbell Moriarty

Since the Bush Administration issued its controversial Preemption Doctrine, which claims to permit the United States to unilaterally and preemptively attack a putative enemy deemed to be a threat to national security, I have been rethinking the concept of self-defense as it applies to battered women who kill their abusers. When President George W. Bush spoke about the peril of not taking action “while dangers gather,” I thought about the thousands of battered women in the grip of domestic terrorists who must also make decisions about when and whether to use violence to save their own lives. This article concludes …