Law and Gender Commons^™

Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber

Publications

McCleskey v. Kemp, the case that upheld the death penalty despite undeniable evidence of its racially disparate impact, is indelibly marked by Justice William Brennan’s phrase, “a fear of too much justice.” The popular interpretation of this phrase is that the Supreme Court harbored what I call a “disparity-claim fear,” dreading a future docket of racial discrimination claims and erecting an impossibly high bar for proving an equal protection violation. A related interpretation is that the majority had a “color-consciousness fear” of remedying discrimination through race-remedial policies. In contrast to these conventional views, I argue that the primary anxiety …

The Violent State: Black Women's Invisible Struggle Against Police Violence, Michelle S. Jacobs

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Violent State: Black Women's Invisible Struggle Against Police Violence, Michelle S. Jacobs

UF Law Faculty Publications

Black women have a very specific history with the state and law enforcement that is not replicated among other women’s communities, and it is that unique situation that is the focus of this Article. Part I of this Article explores the historical roots of Black women’s interaction with the state. Part II of this Article is broken into two sections. The first will cover police killings of Black women. The second part of the section will explore the conditions under which Black women are physically assaulted by the police. Part III of the Article seeks to highlight when the police …

Untangling The Court’S Sovereignty Doctrine To Allow For Greater Respect Of Tribal Authority In Addressing Domestic Violence, Lauren Oppenheimer

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Call For Limiting Absolute Privilege: How Victims Of Domestic Violence, Suffering With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Are Discriminated Against By The U.S. Judicial System, Jerrell Dayton King, Donna J. King

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

The U.S. court system often traumatizes victims of domestic violence (“DV”) through institutional gender discrimination, which has plagued women throughout the United States since colonial American times. In many ways the court system becomes a participant in re-victimizing and continuing the abuse of the DV victim. Abusive power and control of women exposes them to DV in alarming numbers; this causes many DV victims to experience severe trauma that results in psychological injuries such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (“PTSD”). In the court system, the DV abuser enters the legal process with an advantage over his victim who suffers from PTSD. …

Gender Equity Through Human Rights: Local Efforts To Advance The Status Of Women And Girls In The United States, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

Because human rights are experienced close to home, local governments have jurisdiction over a range of human rights issues, including those related to employment, education, housing, and public safety. Indeed, local agencies and officials are essential to the promotion and protection of human rights in the United States. They work every day to create conditions under which individuals and communities can flourish, and they are well-situated to build and advance a culture of human rights, based on dignity, freedom from discrimination, and opportunity.

With a focus on women’s rights, this resource provides an overview of core human rights principles and …

Firearms In The Family, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article considers firearms prohibitions for domestic violence offenders, in light of recent Supreme Court decisions and the larger, national debate about gun control. Unlike other scholarship in the area, it confronts the costs of ratcheting up the scope and enforcement of such firearms bans and argues that the politicization of safety has come at the expense of a sound approach to gun control in the context of intimate-partner abuse. In doing so, it expands scholarly arguments against mandatory, one-size-fits-all criminal justice responses to domestic violence in a direction that other critics have been reluctant to go, perhaps because of …

Exploring The Conflicts Within Carceral Feminism: A Call To Revocalize The Women Who Continue To Suffer, Krishna De La Cruz

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Domestic Violence Victims A Nuisance To Cities, Filomena Gehart

Pepperdine Law Review

Unless municipal nuisance ordinances change, domestic violence victims can face eviction just for calling the police. Nuisance ordinances generally impose fines on a property owner or landlord when the police are called to respond to incidents of crime a certain number of times at the same residence. Many nuisance ordinances also revoke a landlord’s rental license if a property is deemed a nuisance. However, many of these nuisance ordinances do not have an exception for incidents of domestic violence and, consequently, victims are scared to call 911 or request police assistance. This comment surveys the development of nuisance laws and …

The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence And The Failure Of Intervention [Batterer Intervention Program (Bip) Standards Data, As Of 2015], Carolyn B. Ramsey

Research Data

These 19 comparative data tables relating to state and local certification standards for batterer intervention programs (BIPs), as of 2015, are electronic Appendices B-T to Carolyn B. Ramsey, The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence and the Failure of Intervention, 120 Penn. St. L. Rev. 337 (2015), available at http://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/56/. Appendix A is not reproduced here because it simply contains citations to the state and local standards, but it is published with the journal article.

Newsroom: Sack Joins Women's Fund Of Ri Board, Roger Williams University School Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Using The Nfl As A Model? Considering Zero Tolerance In The Workplace For Batterers, Deseriee A. Kennedy

University of Baltimore Law Review

"Domestic abuse is a workplace issue. '

The impact of domestic violence can increasingly be felt in the workplace, and it can adversely affect the safety and productivity of employees. Legislators and employers have begun to recognize the effect of domestic violence on employment, and many have adopted policies to protect the interests of domestic violence survivors. This article suggests that wider adoption of domestic violence policies are needed and these policies should be broadened to directly address batterers in the workplace. The article argues that employer based sanctions would increase batterer accountability and workplace safety. It uses the newly …

Domestic Violence And The Politics Of Self-Help, Elizabeth L. Macdowell

Scholarly Works

Self-help programs are conceptualized as alternatives to attorney representation that can help both courts and unrepresented litigants. The rhetoric of self-help also typically includes empowering unrepresented individuals to help themselves. But how do self-help programs respond to litigants’ efforts at self-advocacy? This Article reports findings from a study of courthouse self-help programs assisting unrepresented litigants applying for protection orders. The central finding is that self-help staff members were not neutral in the provision of services despite a professed ethic of neutrality. Using the sociological concept of demeanor, this Article shows that staff members rewarded protection order applicants who conformed to …

From Victims To Litigants, Elizabeth L. Macdowell

Scholarly Works

This Article reports findings from an ethnographic study of self-help programs in two western states. The study investigated how self-help assistance provided by partnerships between courts and nongovernmental organizations implicates advocacy and access to justice for domestic violence survivors. The primary finding is that self-help programs may inadvertently work to curtail, rather than expand, advocacy resources. Furthermore, problems identified with self-help service delivery and negative impacts on advocacy systems may be explained by the structure of work within self-help programs and the nature of partnerships to provide self-help services. The Author uncovers previously unseen impacts of self-help programs on survivors …

Models Of Invisibility: Rendering Domestic And Other Gendered Violence Visible To Students Through Clinical Law Teaching, Elizabeth L. Macdowell, Ann Cammett

Scholarly Works

The proliferation of university courses about domestic violence includes clinical courses in law schools in which students represent victims in their legal cases. This essay advocates for a broader approach to teaching about the problem. Using examples from their clinic cases, the authors show how teachers can overcome pedagogical challenges and render domestic and other forms of gendered violence, including state and community violence, more visible to students by intentionally raising and placing it within larger frameworks of structural inequality. In this way, students learn to identify and address gendered violence even when it is not the presenting problem.

Debunking The Myth Of Universal Male Privilege, Jamie R. Abrams

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Existing legal responses to sexual assault and harassment in the military have stagnated or failed. Current approaches emphasize the prevalence of sexual assault and highlight the masculine nature of the military’s statistical composition and institutional culture. Current responses do not, however, incorporate masculinities theory to disentangle the experiences of men as a group from men as individuals. Rather, embedded within contestations of the masculine military culture is the unstated assumption that the culture universally privileges or benefits the individual men that operate within it. This myth is harmful because it tethers masculinities to military efficacy, suppresses the costs of male …

Result Inequality In Family Law, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

To the extent that family law is governed by statute, all families are treated as though they are the same. This is of course consistent with the equal protection guarantees of the US Constitution as well as those of the states. However, in our pluralistic society, all families are not alike. At birth, some children are born to wealthy, married parents who will always put the children’s interests first and will never engage in domestic violence. Many laws benefit these children, while, according to some academics, they either further disadvantage other children or at best ignore their needs.

This presentation …

Immigrant Victims, Immigrant Accusers, Michael Kagan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The U visa program provides immigration status to noncitizen victims of crime, ensuring unauthorized immigrants do not become easy prey because they are too afraid to seek help from the police. But under the federal government’s structuring of the U visa program, a victim must also become an accuser to receive immigration benefits. Thus, the U visa implicates the rights of third parties: accused defendants. These defendants are often immigrants themselves who may be deported when U visa recipients level their accusations. Recent state court decisions have created complications in the program by permitting defendants to cross-examine accusers about their …

Anna Moscowitz Kross And The Home Term Part: A Second Look At The Nation's First Criminal Domestic Violence Court, Mae C. Quinn

Akron Law Review

This paper seeks to inform current conversations about dedicated domestic violence courts by shedding light on Kross’s remarkable early efforts to treat domestic violence prosecutions differently from other criminal matters and handle them in a designated court part. The story of Kross’s Home Term Part – the first specialized criminal domestic violence court in New York and perhaps the United States—is an important chapter in the history of intimate violence policies in this country. Recognition of Home Term is crucial to any complete account and understanding of our criminal justice system’s renewed efforts at judicial innovation through specialized “problem-solving” courts. …

Contact That Can Kill: Orders Of Protection, Caller Id Spoofing And Domestic Violence, Gabriella Sneeringer

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The Illinois Domestic Violence Act (IDVA) was created as a means of providing protection and remedies to domestic violence victims through orders of protection. The orders of protection can insulate victims from abusers through a variety of ways such as mandating that the abuser be prohibited from contacting the victim by any means. Under the IDVA, any violation of the order is a crime. As technology advances, abusers begin using more and more technology as a means to circumscribe orders of protection. One such technology, Caller ID spoofing, is particularly problematic. This technology enables abusers to easily contact, stalk and …

Encouraging Victims: Responding To A Recent Study Of Battered Women Who Commit Crimes, Andrea L. Dennis, Carol E. Jordan

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

No abstract provided.

A Legal And Policy Argument For Bail Denial And Preventative Treatment For Batterers In The United States, Dawn Beichner, Robbin Ogle, Anne Garner, Daniel Anderson

Women's and Gender Studies Program: Faculty Publications

Historically, battering has been a culturally and legally acceptable form of social control within the United States. This article provides an examination of how this legacy of social acceptance has influenced the development of laws and social policies related to battering. We provide a critique of our current approach to battering and our historical reliance on private or social helping agencies intended to hide and protect victims. We call for a transformation of our current policies that provides for the removal of the batterer—not the victim and her children—from the family home through a process of bail denial and preventative …

Hands Up At Home: Militarized Masculinity And Police Officers Who Commit Intimate Partner Abuse, Leigh S. Goodmark

Faculty Scholarship

The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and the almost daily news stories about abusive and violent police conduct are currently prompting questions about the appropriate use of force by police officers. Moreover, the history of police brutality directed towards women is well documented. Most of that literature, however, captures the violence that police do in their public capacity, as officers of the state. This article examines the violence and abuse perpetrated by police in their private lives, against their intimate partners, although the public and private overlap significantly to the extent that the power and training provided to …

Domestic Violence And The Confrontation Clause: The Case For A Prompt Post-Arrest Confrontation Hearing, Robert M. Hardaway

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Part I and Part II of this article discuss the consequences of Crawford v. Washington for domestic violence victims and detail the problem of domestic violence in America, including the current prosecution strategies and challenges in domestic violence cases. Part III reviews the evolution of confrontation law jurisprudence. Part IV sets forth a proposed Crawford-compliant procedure that also protects domestic violence victims. Part V addresses anticipated objections to the prompt-post arrest confrontation hearing.

Invisible: My Experiences With The Undocumented And Abused, Anna Paden Carson

VA Engage Journal

As a legal advocate at Tapestri, Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia this summer, I saw many of my immigrant and refugee clients consumed by fear, desperation, and insecurity, and I quickly realized that many of the women I helped only contacted Tapestri because they truly had nowhere else to turn. They were victims of domestic violence and usually living in America undocumented, making the seriousness of their situations that much more intense and pressing. These women were trapped and alone, and Tapestri’s role was to help them in any way we could.

This article explores what I learned throughout my eight-week …

A Postcolonial Theory Of Spousal Rape: The Carribean And Beyond, Stacy-Ann Elvy

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Many postcolonial states in the Caribbean continue to struggle to comply with their international treaty obligations to protect women from sexual violence. Reports from various United Nations programs, including UNICEF, and the annual U.S. State Department Country Reports on Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia (“Commonwealth Countries”), indicate that sexual violence against women, including spousal abuse, is a significant problem in the Caribbean. Despite ratification of various international instruments intended to eliminate sexual violence against women, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Commonwealth Countries have retained the …

Changing Course In The Anti-Domestic Violence Legal Movement: From Safety To Security, Margaret E. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Coercing Pregnancy, A. Rachel Camp

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Intimate partners coerce thousands of women in the United States into pregnancy each year through manipulation, threats of violence, or acts that deliberately interfere with the use of, or access to, contraception or abortion. Although many of these pregnancies occur within the context of otherwise abusive relationships, for others, pregnancy serves as a trigger for intimate partner violence. Beyond violence preceding or resulting from pregnancy, women who experience coerced pregnancies often suffer other physical, financial and emotional harms. Despite its correlation to domestic violence, reproductive coercion fits imperfectly, if at all, within our existing laws designed to combat domestic violence …

The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence And The Failure Of Intervention, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

Scholars and battered women's advocates now recognize that many facets of the legal response to intimate-partner abuse stereotype victims and harm abuse survivors who do not fit commonly accepted paradigms. However, it is less often acknowledged that the feminist analysis of domestic violence also tends to stereotype offenders and that state action, including court-mandated batterer intervention, is premised on these offender stereotypes. The feminist approach can be faulted for minimizing or denying the role of substance abuse, mental illness, childhood trauma, race, culture, and poverty in intimate-partner abuse. Moreover, those arrested for domestic violence crimes now include heterosexual women, lesbians, …

A Provocative Defense, Aya Gruber

Publications

It is common wisdom that the provocation defense is, quite simply, sexist. For decades, there has been a trenchant feminist critique that the doctrine reflects and reinforces masculine norms of violence and shelters brutal domestic killers. The critique is so prominent that it appears alongside the doctrine itself in leading criminal law casebooks. The feminist critique of provocation embodies several claims about provocation's problematically gendered nature, including that the defense is steeped in chauvinist history, treats culpable sexist killers too leniently, discriminates against women, and expresses bad messages. This Article offers a (likely provocative) defense of the provocation doctrine. While …