Academic

Hanna on Coercive Control & Abused Women

By Lawrence Solum

Cheryl Hanna (Vermont Law School) has posted The Paradox of Progress: Translating Evan Stark's Coercive Control into Legal Doctrine for Abused Women (Violence Against Women, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This essay examines Evan Stark's model of coercive control and what this paradigm shift might mean for the law. Coercive control can help redefine both criminal offenses involving domestic violence and defenses available to women who kill their abusers. This redefinition would shift the law away from incident-based violence and towards a more comprehensive and accurate paradigm that accounts for the deprivation of a woman?s autonomy within the context of an abusive relationship. Such a change would likely provide more effective state intervention into what were once considered private relationships. Yet, this approach may also have some unintended consequences, including refocusing the law on a victim?s mental state and complicity in her own abuse rather than on the harm caused by abusive men. Thus, while the law should more fully account for coercive control, it must be cautiously optimistic in implementing Stark?s proposed reforms.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on August 26, 2009 (boomark / email).