About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

70 Duke L.J. 1321 (2020-2021)
Criminalizing Coercive Control within the Limits of Due Process

handle is hein.journals/duklr70 and id is 1318 raw text is: CRIMINALIZING COERCIVE CONTROL WITHIN THE LIMITS OF DUE PROCESS ERIN SHELEYT ABSTRACT The sociological literature on domestic abuse shows that it is more complex than a series of physical assaults. Abusers use coercive control to subjugate their partners through a web of threats, humiliation, isolation, and demands. The presence of coercive control is highly predictive of future physical violence and is, in and of itself, also a violation of the victim's liberty and dignity. In response to these new understandings the United Kingdom has recently criminalized nonviolent coercive control, making it illegal to, on two or more occasions, cause serious alarm or distress to an intimate partner that has a substantial effect on their day-to-day activities. Such a vaguely drafted criminal statute would raise insurmountable due process problems under the U.S. Constitution. Should the states wish to address the gravity of the harms of coercive control, however, this Article proposes an alternative statutory approach. It argues that a state legislature could combine the due process limits of traditionally enterprise-related offenses such as fraud and conspiracy with the goals of domestic abuse prevention to create a new offense based upon the fraud-like nature of coercively controlling behavior. It argues that the most useful legal framework for defining coercive control is similar to that of common law fraud, and that legislatures should adapt the scienter requirements of fraud to the actus reus of coercive control. In so doing, this Article also argues that it is risky for legislatures to punish gender-correlated offenses with specialized legal solutions, rather than recognizing the interrelationship between such offenses and other well-established crimes. Copyright © 2021 Erin Sheley. t Associate Professor, California Western School of Law. Many thanks to Caroline Davidson, James Lindgren, and Jenia Iontcheva Turner for their immensely helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most