NCJ Number
146717
Journal
Journal of Law and Society Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Dated: (Winter 1993) Pages: 427-437
Date Published
1993
Length
11 pages
Annotation
English law and the battered woman syndrome are discussed.
Abstract
This article focuses on the limitations of English law and its rules of evidence and narrative to women's accounts of their experiences as battered women. The paradox presented is this: to limit the detail of narratives presented by the defense, the prosecution, and the judge, the law uses the rules of evidence; what is permitted to be known, therefore, is constrained. Through the use of language such as "reasonable man" or "the ordinary person," however, claims of knowledge are made by the judiciary without any reliance of supporting evidence, empirical or evidentiary. When a woman kills, after having experienced cumulative violence, her actions must be accommodated within the law. The failure to respond to violence with immediate violence, therefore, can lead only to the conclusion that, when action was taken, it was premeditated. Resorting to expert evidence to support pleas based on women's experiences of abuse has proven unsuccessful in England. In England, battered women can be understood as temporarily abnormal under a diminished responsibility theory or semi- permanently abnormal under a battered woman syndrome, but the "language of ordinariness" is not permitted unless the woman kills under circumstances permitted by the traditional common law defenses. The author describes a contest between women's groups and a largely male judiciary with male definitions and understandings of human behavior, claiming to be universal and neutral, i.e., the universality and neutrality problems. The author discusses how the courts in Canada and Australia have dealt with experts and their presentation of the experiences of battered women to judge and jury. The author concludes that the problems of universality and neutrality must be overcome to permit the entry of women's experiences and knowledge into the legal arena. As a cultural artifact, the law is male; to represent effectively all members of society, the law will have to acknowledge difference.