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3 Law & Pol'y Q. 382 (1981)
The Evolution of Law and Wife Abuse

handle is hein.journals/lawpol3 and id is 384 raw text is: THE EVOLUTION OF LAW AND WIFE ABUSE NAN OPPENLANDER Rhode Island College For over 2000 years, laws have allowed husbands to beat their wives. Until the last century, American law conformed to this tradition. This article traces the roots of American law to English and Roman law, the latter giving husbands life-and-death authority over wives. In the nineteenth century American state courts permitted husbands to beat their wives for miscoriduct. Pioneering women in the temperance, abolitionist, and women's rights movements first attacked the common law of wife-beating -* and restrictive divorce policies. By the 1870s, wife-beating, became. outlawed. Earlier in the nineteenth century, legislatures had expanded the grounds for divorce, opening an. avenue of escape for physically abused wives. But the law still gives limited protection to assaulted spouses, who are more often wives than husbands. A merican law historically condoned wife abuse and in some respects continues to do so today. This study examines the revolution of American law pertaining to spousal violence from colonial .times to the present. The key period of legal reform occurred in the last century. Women Of the nineteenth century initially raised the issue of spouse abuse and condemned the prevailing laws that condoned it. With the achievement of some legal protections for wives by the turn of the century, public con- cern about family violence dwindled. Not until the 1970s did the problem of husbands who attack their wives regain much attention. But most current accounts do AUTHOR'S NOTE: This article was prepaied under a grant (5T32-MH-15222-02)ftom - the National Institute of Mental Health. The author gratefully acknowledges this support. A briefer, preliminary version of this article was prepared for the second National.. Women's Studies Association meetings in Bloomington, Indiana. The author is much LAW AND POLICY QUARTERLY, Vol. 3 No. 4, October 1981 382-405 © 1981 Sage Publications, Inc. 382

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