An English court in 1736 described rape as an accusation“easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defendedby the party accused, though never so innocent. ”To prove thecrime, the law required a woman to physically resist, to put up a“hue and cry,” as evidence of her unwillingness. Beginning in the1970s, however, feminist and victim-advocacy groups began changingattitudes toward rape so the crime is now seen as violent initself: the legal definition of rape now includes everything fromthe sadistic serial rapist to the eighteen-year-old who hasconsensual sex with a fourteen-year-old. This inclusiveness means there are now more rapists among us. Andmore of rape’s camp followers: the prison-makers, the communitywatchdogs, law-and-order politicians, and the real-crime/real-timeentertainment industry. Vanessa Place examines the ambiguity ofrape law by presenting cases where guilt lies, but lies uneasily,and leads into larger ethical questions of what defines guilt, whatis justice, and wh
The Religious Right has dedicated much of the last thirty years to molding the federal judiciary, always with an eye toward casting the Supreme Court in its image. Through broad political work that has involved grassroots campaigns as much as aggressive lobbying, and a welltended career path for conservative law students and attorneys, the Right has been incredibly effective in influencing major Court decisions on everything from laws banning prayer in school to women's secure access to abortion and birth control. How will the courts set in place in recent decades confront stem cell research, gay rights, or euthanasia in a new era? In The Court and the Cross, attorney and legal journalist Frederick Lane draws on legal history and savvy political analysis to expose, in layperson's terms, the Religious Right's unrelenting efforts to declare the United States a Christian nation.
An examination of privacy and the evolution of communication,from broken sealing wax to high-tech wiretapping A sweeping story of the right to privacy as it sped alongcolonial postal routes, telegraph wires, and even today’sfiber-optic cables, American Privacy traces the lineage of culturalnorms and legal mandates that have swirled around the FourthAmendment since its adoption. Legally, technologically, andhistorically grounded, Frederick Lane’s book presents a vivid andpenetrating exploration that, in the words of people’s historianHoward Zinn, “challenges us to defendour most basic rights.”--Fromthe Trade Paperback edition.
