view
Abstract: One of the enduring problems identifi ed by feminist legal scholars is the diffi culty of implementing feminist legislative reforms in practice. In part, this occurs because myths and stereotypes about issues such as ‘“real rape’” and domestic violence continue to be refl ected and sustained by some barristers and judges in trials and other court procedures. In this context, Christine Boyle speculated, over twenty years ago, on what difference a feminist judge might be able to make in a sexual assault case. Boyle’s question has been taken up and extended to other areas of law in feminist scholarship and feminist judgments projects in recent years. Interviews conducted as part of the Australian Feminist Judgments Project provide an opportunity to further explore the question of what difference a feminist judge might be able to make in a criminal case. Forty-one judges agreed to be interviewed on the basis of their identifi cation as feminists. Many discussed the challenges they face in cases involving issues such as sexual assault and domestic violence and how they have responded to these challenges. This article considers how they perceive that their feminist worldview infl uences their approach to decision-making. Drawing on the interviewees’ comments, the article identifi es feminist approaches to understanding key legal concepts, managing the courtroom, controlling the admissibility of evidence and crossexamination, and approaches to language.
Keywords: Australian Feminist Judgments Project; domestic abuse; feminist perspectives; sexual violence; feminist judge
JICL welcomes full length articles (generally not exceeding 13,000 words inclusive of footnotes), shorter contributions in the form of notes and comments (generally not exceeding 8,000 words inclusive of footnotes) and book review articles of not more than 6,000 words.
We accept contributions for consideration on an exclusive submission basis. When submitting an article please certify that it is an unpublished article (that is, it has not been previously published in substantially similar form or with substantially similar content) and that it is not under consideration by any other journal.
To facilitate anonymous review, please give the names of authors and their short biographical information and acknowledgments in a separate page.
Authors retain copyright in the words used, but upon submission of material for publication, grant Sweet & Maxwell a licence to publish the submission in print and/or digital formats. Sweet & Maxwell retains copyright in the design, format and layout of all material published in JICL.
Once submissions are published, authors are entitled to one copy of the issue, 10 offprint copies and a PDF version of the submission.
Authors who send articles published in JICL to other publishers or media must include a reference to the publication of the article by JICL and Sweet & Maxwell.
Contributions and book reviews should be submitted in Microsoft Word format by way of email attachment to Professor Anton Cooray at Anton.cooray.1@city.ac.uk.
Authors should follow the OSCOLA citation system (http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/publications/oscola.php), except that we prefer authors to use indenting sparingly.
JICL uses the following heading levels: Main headings are in bold and preceded by a Roman numeral; second-level headings are in bold and italics and preceded by an uppercase alphabet; third-level headings are preceded by an Arabic numeral; and fourth-level headings are in italics and preceded by a lowercase alphabet.