Plenary Session: Violence Against Women

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Session Type: AALS Programs

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The last forty years have witnessed an incredible amount of theorizing and lawmaking on gender-based violence. In the United States, rape law has moved from treating rape complainants as liars and erecting evidentiary barriers to prosecution to endorsing exceptional evidentiary rules that favor rape prosecutions. Additionally, the law on intimate partner violence has experienced a similar radical transformation. The criminal law no longer relegates domestic violence to a private or tolerated act unworthy of intervention. In the face of evidence that violence against women continues to be a pressing problem of global import, scholars and lawmakers continue to propose and refine legal frameworks for addressing it, many of which involve criminal law. Yet, criminal law reform in the United States necessarily occurs upon a backdrop of racialized mass incarceration. For this and other reasons, rape and intimate partner violence law reform in the United States is also the subject of a vocal critique. Participants in this panel are experts on sexual and intimate partner violence and will discuss, among other things, the contested terrain of criminal law reform in the United States, current legal projects to address gender-based violence in the U.S. and abroad, and alternatives to the law.