Academic

Hanna on Domestic Abuse

By Lawrence Solum

Cheryl Hanna (Vermont) has posted Behind the Castle Walls: Balancing Privacy and Security in Domestic Abuse Cases (Thomas Jefferson Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In this paper, adapted from the Ruth Bader Ginsburg keynote lecture at the Ninth Annual Women and the Law Conference at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Professor Cheryl Hanna examines the concept that a man's home is his castle as it relates to the historical doctrine of chastisement and modern Supreme Court Cases which implicate domestic violence. She reviews the cases of Myra Bradwell and Tracy Thurman, as well as Georgia v. Randolph, Castle Rock v. Gonzales, and Lawrence v. Texas. She argues that while the Court continues to use this language to support arguments in favor of privacy, Professor Hanna looks skeptically on this rationale for privacy in the context of intimate relationships. Instead, she argues that the law should abandon a man's home is his castle and instead focus on the due process liberty interest in individual autonomy as articulated in the reproductive rights cases and more recently in Lawrence v. Texas.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on July 07, 2009 (boomark / email).