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Beyond Crime And Commitment: Justifying Liberty Deprivations Of The Dangerous And Responsible, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
Beyond Crime And Commitment: Justifying Liberty Deprivations Of The Dangerous And Responsible, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
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The traditional approaches to dangerous persons have been crime and commitment. The criminal law punishes responsible actors, and the civil law confines the mentally ill. These approaches leave a gap: The state cannot substantially restrict the liberty of responsible actors until they have committed a crime. In response to this gap, the criminal law’s boundaries have expanded to include preparatory offenses and early inchoate conduct that are deserving of only minimal, if any, punishment in attempt to incarcerate the dangerous. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s effort to articulate a test of mental disease warranting involuntary confinement of sexual predators has failed …
A Diva Defends Herself: Gender And Domestic Violence In An Early Twentieth-Century Headline Trial, Carolyn B. Ramsey
A Diva Defends Herself: Gender And Domestic Violence In An Early Twentieth-Century Headline Trial, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Publications
This short article was presented as part of a symposium on headline criminal trials, organized by St. Louis University School of Law in honor of Lawrence Friedman. It describes and analyzes the self-defense acquittal of opera singer Mae Talbot in Nevada in 1910 on charges of murdering her abusive husband. Based on extensive research into archival trial records and newspaper reports, the article discusses how the press, the court, and trial lawyers on both sides depicted the killing and Mae’s possible defenses. Without discounting the sensationalism and entertainment value, to a scandal-hungry public, of stories about violent marriages, I contend …
Domestic Violence And State Intervention In The American West And Australia, 1860-1930, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Domestic Violence And State Intervention In The American West And Australia, 1860-1930, Carolyn B. Ramsey
Publications
This Article calls into question stereotypical assumptions about the presumed lack of state intervention in the family and the patriarchal violence of Anglo-American frontier societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By analyzing previously unexamined cases of domestic assault and homicide in the American West and Australia, Professor Ramsey reveals a sustained (but largely ineffectual) effort to civilize men by punishing violence against women. Husbands in both the American West and Australia were routinely arrested or summoned to court for beating their wives in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Judges, police officers, journalists, and others expressed dismay …
Self-Defense, Permissions, And The Means Principle: A Reply To Quong, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
Self-Defense, Permissions, And The Means Principle: A Reply To Quong, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan
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In “Killing in Self-Defense” (119 Ethics 507 (2009)), Jonathan Quong claims that one may kill innocent aggressors and threats in self-defense, but he denies that it follows from his position that innocent bystanders may also be killed when one acts defensively. Quong argues that defenders have an agent-relative permission to favor their own lives over others’. However, there are moral constraints, including that one may not “use someone as a mere means,” and Quong claims that it is this constraint that prohibits the killing of innocent bystanders. To reach this conclusion, Quong construes the “means principle” quite broadly to include …