That Guy's A Batterer!: A Scarlet Letter Approach to Domestic
Violence in the Information Age, 44 Fam. L.Q. 255 (2010).
I return to my roots in domestic violence scholarship and
policymaking with this article. It proposes a new idea that
does not simply react to domestic violence but rather seeks to
preempt it. The tool of preemption is a publicly accessible
domestic violence registry. In this age of Facebook, Twitter
and Google, this registry would enable private individuals to make
better informed intimate choices and would decrease the
perpetration of violence against women. Our current
approach to domestic violence is predominantly reactive and
preserves a dangerous level of anonymity for batterers and in
particular, for serial batterers.
The
Culture Differential in Parental Autonomy, 41 U.C. Davis L.
Rev. 101 (2008). The challenge of diversity is felt
when the composition of the American populace is changing, but the
laws governing the populace are not. When the laws of a community
reflect only one culture while many of its members are from other
cultures, conflict is inevitable and intense. This conflict arises
in numerous legal contexts but when the conflict occurs in criminal
laws regulating the parent-child relationship, the consequences are
tremendous. In this Article, I claim that the parental practices
and decisions of parents from minority cultures are scrutinized,
regulated and punished to a greater degree than the practices and
decisions of parents from the dominant culture. To support this
claim, I critique the criminalization of female genital surgeries
in the US and contrast this aggressive legal stance with the utter
lack of regulation in cosmetic surgery for adolescents and the
administration of growth hormones for non-medical reasons.
Culture
as Justification, Not Excuse, 43 American Crim. L. Rev. 1317
(2006). This article adovcates a new perspective in the
debate on cultural defenses. It proposes that the criminal
law allow defendants to introduce new justification defenses based
on the values and practices of their minority cultures. Often
such defendants commit harmful acts not because they are mentally
disturbed or acting involuntarily; rather they do so because they
believe that their acts are righteous or justified. While
they are free to accoommodate or reject these beliefs of
defendants, decisionmakers in the criminal law should honestly
recognize these claims of justification instead of engaging in the
legal fiction of excuse.
Culture
in Our Midst, 17
U. Fl. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 231 (Summer 2006)
This article describes how the substantive criminal law is infused
with the values and practices of the dominant Anglo-American
culture. This is particularly true of justification defenses. There
is no doctrinal space for the values and beliefs of minority
cultures. A recognition of these truths is a critical first
step in crafting a more fair and equitable criminal law for
the multicultural communities in which we now live.
The
Role of Motive in the Criminal Law, 8
Buff. Crim. L. Rev. 653 (2005)
This article builds on recent discussions among criminal law
scholars on the role that motive should play in the criminal law.
It advocates for greater consideration of a defendant’s motive in
all critical decisions of the criminal justice process and offers
concrete guidelines.
Confronting the Agency in Battered Mothers, 74 S. Cal.
L. Rev. 1223 (July 2001).