Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T23:46:54.616Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Not in Our Right Minds: The Implications of Reason and Passion in the Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2011

Catherine Warrick
Catherine Warrick
Affiliation:
Villanova University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this study, an examination of the legal treatment of “crimes of passion” points to important gendered aspects of the construction of both reason and passion in the law. In crimes of passion, criminal responsibility is mitigated because the perpetrator was in the grip of a strong emotion – in other words, not in his or her right mind. The legal concept of passion is, therefore, society's formal recognition of the limits of reason as a basis for social behavior.

Feminist scholarship has long argued that reason in law is not neutral but reflects dominant social interests. Less attention has been given to passion as reason's recognized opposite. It might be expected that the law's partial toleration of passion would privilege different interests. But this is not the case; in effect, although passion is reason's opposite, its construction in law reflects the same dominant values. Recent efforts to eradicate gender disparities in criminal law have led to some reconsideration of the construction of reason and the recognition of passion in some systems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 2011 , pp. 166 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Augustine. [5th century] 1984. City of God. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Avineri, Schlomo. 1973. “The Instrumentality of Passion in the World of Reason: Hegel and Marx.” Political Theory 1 (4): 388–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartlett, Katharine T. 1993. Gender and Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Beever, Allan. 2004. “Aristotle on Equity, Law and Justice.” Legal Theory 10: 33–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackstone, William. [1765–69] 1979. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Book 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Nathan. 1997. The Rule of Law in the Arab World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Candeub, Adam. 1994. “Motive Crimes and Other Minds.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 142 (6): 2071–2124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Christina Pei-Lin. 2000. “Provocation's Privileged Desire: The Provocation Doctrine, “Homosexual Panic,” and the Non-Violent Unwanted Sexual Advance Defense.” Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy 10: 195–235.Google Scholar
Childers, Jolynn. 1993. “Is There a Place for a Reasonable Woman in the Law? A Discussion of Recent Developments in Hostile Environment Sexual Harassment.” Duke Law Journal 42 (4): 854–904.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Criminal Law. 2002. 3d ed.London: Cavendish.Google Scholar
Director of Public Prosecutions v. Camplin, [1978] AC 705, [1978] 2 All ER 168, [1978] 2 WLR 679, 67 Cr. App. Rep 14, 142 JP 320, 6 April 1978.Google Scholar
Dressler, Joshua. 1982. “Rethinking the Heat of Passion: A Defense in Search of a Rationale.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 73 (2): 429–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dressler, Joshua. 1988. “Provocation: Partial Justification or Partial Excuse?” Modern Law Review 51 (4): 467–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dressler, Joshua. 1995. “When ‘Heterosexual’ Men Kill ‘Homosexual’ Men: Reflections on Provocation Law, Sexual Advances, and the ‘Reasonable Man’ Standard.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 85 (3): 726–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finley, Lucinda. 1989. “A Break in the Silence: Including Women's Issues in a Torts Course.” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 1 (41): 63–64.Google Scholar
Fiora-Gormally, Nancy. 1978. “Battered Wives Who Kill: Double Standard Out of Court, Single Standard In?” Law and Human Behavior 2 (2): 133–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, H. L. A. 1961. The Concept of Law. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W .F. [1821] 1967. Philosophy of Right. Trans. Knox, T. M.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hubin, Donald C., and Haely, Karen. 1999. “Rape and the Reasonable Man.” Law and Philosophy 18 (2): 113–39.Google Scholar
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. 1998. Report on the Status of Women in the Americas. OEA/Ser.L/V/II.100, Doc. 17, 13 October 1998. http://www.cidh.org/countryrep/Mujeres98-en/TableofContents.htm.Google Scholar
Isedonmwen, E. O. 1988. “A Requiem for Provocation?” Journal of African Law 32 (2): 194–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, James B., and Potter, Kimberly. 1998. Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordanian Penal Code. 1961. Article 340 and Article 98.Google Scholar
Keller, Wendy. 1996. “Disparate Treatment of Spouse Murder Defendants.” Southern California Review of Law and Women's Studies 255 (6): 255–86.Google Scholar
Korobkin, Laura Hanft. 1998. Criminal Conversations: Sentimentality and Nineteenth-Century Legal Stories of Adultery. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
MacGuigan, Mark R. 1961. “Law, Morals and Positivism.” University of Toronto Law Journal 14 (1): 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maguigan, Holly. 1991. “Battered Women and Self-Defense: Myths and Misconceptions in Current Reform Proposals.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 140 (2): 379–486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merryman, John Henry, and Pérez-Perdomo, Rogelio. 2007. The Civil Law Tradition: An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Europe and Latin America. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miccio, G. Kristian. 2000. “Notes from the Underground: Battered Women, the State, and Conceptions of Accountability.” Harvard Women's Law Journal 23: 133–72.Google Scholar
Nourse, Victoria. 1997. “Passion's Progress: Modern Law Reform and the Provocation Defense.” Yale Law Journal 106 (5): 1331–1448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Recent Important Decisions.” 1923. Michigan Law Review 21 (5): 594–95.Google Scholar
Regina v. Duffy [1949] 1 All ER 932.Google Scholar
Ritter, Gretchen. 2002. “Jury Service and Women's Citizenship Before and After the Nineteenth Amendment.” Law and History Review 20: 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Song, Sarah. 2005. “Majority Norms, Multiculturalism, and Gender Equality.” American Political Science Review 99 (4): 473–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Speranza, Gino C. 1900. “The Coefficients of Impunity (Being an Inquiry into the Social Defence Against Crime).” American Law Register 48 (11): 647–55.Google Scholar
Steiker, Carol S. 1999. “Punishing Hateful Motives: Old Wine in a New Bottle Revives Calls for Prohibition,” Michigan Law Review 97: 6 (1999), 1857–1873.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
U. S. Department of State. 2003. Country Reports on Human Rights [Haiti]. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27902.htm.Google Scholar
Warrick, Catherine. 2005. “The Vanishing Victim: Gender and Criminal Law in Jordan.” Law and Society Review 39 (2): 315–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinstein, Jeremy D. 1986. “Adultery, Law and the State: A History.” Hastings International Law Journal 38 (1): 195–238.Google Scholar
Welke, Barbara Y. 1994. “Unreasonable Women: Gender and the Law of Accidental Injury, 1870–1920.” Law and Social Inquiry 19 (2): 369–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yeo, Stanley M. H. 1992. “Lessons on Provocation from the Indian Penal Code.” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 41 (3): 615–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar