Law Students for Reproductive Justice and the Domestic Violence Project Present: "Sex and Guilt and the Law"
4/16
Open to the public
Contemporary rape law emerged from a culture that punished all sex outside marraige. For that reason, the conventional elements of the rape actually put the complainant on trial for having engaged in non-marital sex. Now that consensual non-marital sex has been decriminalized, how should the law define rape? Should we punish sex by fraud as well as sex by force? And what about sex under the influence of alcohol? Who, if anyone, should be punished? Anne M. Coughlin, Lewis F Powell, Jr., Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, will present her work on these questions.