September 24, 2012
“The Legal Person After the Sexual Revolution: Criminal Law, the Church and the Family”
Prof. Ngaire Naffine (University of Adelaide)
12:30pm to 2:00pm, Room 2027, Osgoode Hall Law School
RSVP Required: www.osgoode.yorku.ca/research/rsvp, Event Code: LRST3
Criminal Law, the Family and the Church have worked together as a mutually reinforcing economy, keeping the married woman in her place. All three institutions have prescribed rules for intimate married life, conferring authority on the husband, never the wife. But times are changing. The traditional marital rights of men have been formally curtailed, husbands can be charged with the rape of their wives and the married woman now has at least formal powers to refuse sexual access. The family has loosened its form and the power of the Church over intimate sexual matters has diminished. This paper considers the effects of this modernisaton of the lives of married women and men on the character of the criminal legal person. Are they his undoing?
Ngaire Naffine is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Adelaide. An innovative contributor to debates in jurisprudence, feminist legal theory, criminology, criminal law, and medical law, Professor Naffine is the author of Law’s Meaning of Life: Philosophy, Religion, Darwin and the Legal Person (Hart 2009).