Law and Gender Commons^™

Transformative Justice: Anti-Subordination Processes In Cases Of Domestic Violence, Donna K. Coker

Books and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Contradictions, Open Secrets, And Feminist Faith In Enlightenment, Heather Hughes

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

INTRODUCTION: Judges often malign exception making as the erosion of legal rules, yet in the same breath sanction the territory that exceptions have eclipsed to date. Judges may embrace as precedent the course of exceptions that has shaped doctrine so far, but then cite the importance of enforcing common law rules to refuse exceptions that would redress violence against women. This paradoxical stance prompts many feminists to target ignorance of violence in women's lives as the source of judicial resistance to establishing exceptions to rules that prevent recovery for women's harms. These feminists call for education, for increased awareness, to …

Dealing With Complex Evidence Of Domestic Violence: A Primer For The Civil Bench, Jane C. Murphy, Jane H. Aiken

All Faculty Scholarship

New laws and policies aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence have been adopted across the country throughout the last twenty years. The legal approaches taken to protect battered women and control family violence have brought about significant changes in family law. New laws include statutes permitting civil protection or restraining orders, and laws requiring that domestic violence be considered in custody and visitation decisions. Both of these types of statutory reforms can provide protection to adult victims of domestic violence and their children. Evaluating a parent’s fitness by considering past acts of violence to other family members results in …

Lifesaving Welfare Safety Net Access For Battered Immigrant Women And Children: Accomplishments And Next Steps, Leslye Orloff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The United States is currently experiencing one of the largest waves of immigration in its history. Contrary to common assumptions, more than half of new immigrants are women. Despite this fact, U.S. immigration policy and most agencies serving immigrants have remained blind to gender differences and have treated all immigrants alike.

Reconsidering The Abuse That Dare Not Speak Its Name: A Criticism Of Recent Legal Scholarship Regarding Same-Gender Domestic Violence, Ryiah Lilith

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article argues that while recent legal scholarship effectively disputes the applicability of a gendered model of domestic violence to same-gender abuse, it goes too far in embracing a completely gender-neutral model. Part I explains the theoretical problems with the non-gendered model of domestic violence by examining in detail the research which is most often cited in legal writings in support of this model. Part II briefly explores the pragmatic implications for lesbian and gay male victims of domestic violence when law enforcement policies such as mandatory arrest are based on a model of domestic violence which ignores contexts such …

Crime Control And Feminist Law Reform In Domestic Violence Law: A Critical Review, Donna Coker

Articles

No abstract provided.

Confronting The Agency In Battered Mothers, Elaine M. Chiu

Faculty Publications

Despite the progress of the last three decades, the American public and even feminists remain caught in a web of ambivalence and contradictory attitudes and beliefs about battered women. Are battered women traumatized victims who suffer at the hands of their individual abusers and from the systemic failures of a male-dominated culture? Are they, therefore, unable to save themselves or their children? In contrast, are these women survivors who manage to protect themselves as best they can under uniquely difficult circumstances? Do they deserve recognition for their efforts, or do battered women somehow contribute to or exacerbate their own abuse …

Theorizing Yes: An Essay On Feminism, Law, And Desire, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, Professor Franke observes that, unlike feminists from other disciplines, feminist legal theorists have neglected to formulate a positive theory of female sexuality. Instead, discussions of female sexuality have been framed as either a matter of dependency or danger. Professor Franke begins her challenge to this scheme by asking why legal feminism has accepted unquestionably the fact that most women reproduce in their lifetimes. Why have not social forces that incentivize motherhood – a dynamic she terms repronormativity – been exposed to as exacting a feminist critique as have heteronormative forces that normalize heterosexuality? Furthermore, she continues by …

David Peterson Mar, What Trouble I Have Seen: A History Of Violence Against Wives, Cynthia Grant Bowman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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, …

The "Normal" Successes And Failures Of Feminism And The Criminal Law, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

To write of feminist reform in the criminal law is to write of simultaneous success and failure. We have seen marked changes in the doctrines and the practice of rape law, domestic violence law, and the law of self-defense. There is not a criminal law casebook in America today, nor a state statute book, that does not tell this story. Yet for all of this success, we also live in a world in which reform seems to suffer routine failures. Many believe, for example, that feminist reforms have rid rape law of the resistance requirement; however, recent scholarship makes it …

Ending Male Privilege: Beyond The Reasonable Woman, Stephanie M. Wildman

Michigan Law Review

A Law of Her Own: The Reasonable Woman as a Measure of Man by Caroline A. Forell and Donna M. Matthews aspires to provide a solution for an enigmatic jurisprudential problem - the systemic failure of the legal order to recognize and to redress the injuries that women experience. Feminist scholars have agreed that, for women, the legal separation of public and private spheres often insulates from legal review behavior that harms women. But even in the so-called public sphere, women suffer harms that remain invisible and unnamed. The authors identify four legal arenas in which the "spectrum of violence …

Praxis And Pedagogy: Domestic Violence, Cynthia Grant Bowman, Eden Kusmiersky

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

About The Conference, Journal Of Gender, Social Policy & The Law

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Getting Ahead With Washington's Workfirst Program: Are Battered Women Left Behind?, Wendy Davis

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment will suggest that although the structure of Washington's WorkFirst Act could help victims become self-sufficient, the current implementation of the Act does not adequately address the particular needs of victims. As a result, a victim's chances of achieving financial independence from either the state or her abuser are minimal. Part II of this Comment will give a brief summary of the federal guidelines under which Washington's WorkFirst Act was developed. Part III will outline the requirements of the WorkFirst Act, and in particular, the Act's provisions that address or affect domestic violence victims. Included in this section will …

Enhancing Autonomy For Battered Women: Lessons From Navajo Peacemaking, Donna Coker

Articles

In this Article, Professor Donna Coker employs original empirical research to investigate the use of Navajo Peacemaking in cases involving domestic violence. Her analysis includes an examination of Navajo women's status and the impact of internal colonization. Many advocates for battered women worry that informal adjudication methods such as Peacemaking ignore domestic hierarchies of power and thus facilitate the batterer's ongoing violence against the victim. Those who endorse the use of Navajo Peacemaking and other systems of restorative justice believe that such processes are better equipped to cut through the batterer's denial and victim blaming and are more likely to …

The New Normativity: The Abuse Excuse And The Resurgence Of Judgment In The Criminal Law, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article reviews Moral Judgment: Does the Abuse Excuse Threaten Our Legal System? by James Q. Wilson (1997).

There is growing interest within the academy in reviving the "normative" in criminal law scholarship. Enter a recent book, Moral Judgment, by the distinguished criminologist James Q. Wilson. Professor Wilson's work prompts the question: What is meant by the term ''judgment"? Considering three different models--judgment as community, judgment as character, and judgment as critique--this review argues that Professor Wilson's idea of judgment both departs from the "new normativity" in existing scholarship and shows how easily ''judgment" may stand in for partial …

Assembly Bill To Speed Divorce After Abuse Will Save Many Lives, Bring Needed Reform, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Negative Effects Of Expert Testimony On The Battered Women's Syndrome, Pamela Posch

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Passion's Progress: Modern Law Reform And The Provocation Defense, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Based on a systematic study of fifteen years of passion murder cases, this article concludes that reform challenges our conventional ideas of a "crime of passion" and, in the process, leads to a murder law that is both illiberal and often perverse. If life tells us that crimes of passion are the stuff of sordid affairs and bedside confrontations, reform tells us that the law's passion may be something quite different. A significant number of the reform cases the author has studied involve no sexual infidelity whatsoever, but only the desire of the killer's victim to leave a miserable relationship. …

Lessons For The United States: A Greek Cypriot Model For Domestic Violence Law, Joan L. Neisser

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The purpose of this Article is twofold: to view the problem of domestic violence victims not wishing to testify against their abusers through the lenses of different feminist perspectives; and to use the Greek Cypriot experience as a model to test the value of these theories when developing legal policies addressing this issue.

Political Lawyering, One Person At A Time: The Challenge Of Legal Work Against Domestic Violence For The Impact Litigation/Client Service Debate, Peter Margulies

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The premise of this Article is that, in his assertion that client service work is political lawyering, Ralph Reed is right. Indeed, Gary Bellow made a similar point about the political content of both impact litigation and client service work in a classic article written almost twenty years ago. Of course, Reed and Bellow are hardly ideological soulmates. Reed disapproves of the political content of service work, while Bellow heartily endorses it. On that point, this Article sides with Bellow. It employs the example of domestic violence lawyering to demonstrate why Bellow and Reed are correct that client service work …

The Violence Against Women Act After United States V. Lopez: Will Domestic Violence Jurisdiction Be Returned To The States, Stacey L. Mckinley

Cleveland State Law Review

Recent judiciary and media events have put a national focus on the overlooked problem of domestic violence. Federal lawmakers admirably responded to this attention in an aggressive manner when Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Although little doubt exists that this country needs to reduce domestic violence, this sweeping federal legislation may not be the most effective means. The hasty response by federal lawmakers is unconstitutional in consideration of the Supreme Court's recent holding in Lopez. Although initial court challenges to the VAWA on Lopez grounds have resulted in split decisions, this Note argues that portions of the …

Introduction: O.J. Simpson And The Criminal Justice System On Trial, Christopher B. Mueller

Publications

No abstract provided.

Important Steps And Instructive Models In The Fight To Eliminate Violence Against Women, Elizabeth M. Misiaveg

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Battered Woman's Syndrome Does Not Go Far Enough: The Battered Woman As Vigilante, Elizabeth Ayyildiz

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Legal Protection For Victims Of Domestic Violence: A Guide For The Treating Physician, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Prosecutors And Domestic Violence: Local Leadership Makes A Difference, Janet E. Findlater, Dawn Van Hoek

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Guidelines For Handling Domestic Violence Cases In Community Mental Health Centers, Carol E. Jordan, Robert Walker

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

Community mental health centers are becoming increasingly involved in the delivery of services to victims and perpetrators of domestic violence. To help centers plan a domestic violence program and address the risk of liability in treating clients who may be dangerous, the authors suggest principles to guide clinical decisions, standards for service delivery, and standards for staff development.

Partner Notification And The Threat Of Domestic Violence Against Women With Hiv Infection, Karen H. Rothenberg, Richard L. North

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.