Criminal Law and the Man Problem

Men have always dominated the most basic precepts of the criminal legal world – its norms, its priorities and its character. Men have been the regulators and the regulated: the main subjects and objects of criminal law and by far the more dangerous sex. And yet men, as men, are still hardly talked about as the determining force within criminal law or in its exegesis. This book brings men into sharp focus, as the pervasively powerful interest group, whose wants and preoccupations have shaped the discipline. This constitutes the 'man problem' of criminal law. This new analysis probes the unacknowledged thinking of generations of influential legal men, which includes the psychological and legal techniques that have obscured the operation of bias, even to the legal experts themselves. It explains how men's interests have influenced the most cherished legal norms, especially the rules of human contact, which were designed to protect men from other men, while specifically securing lawful sexual access to at least one woman. The aim is to test the discipline's broadest commitments to civility, and its trajectory towards the final resolution, when men and women were declared to be equal and equivalent legal persons. In the process it exposes the morally and intellectually limiting consequences of male power.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1a Introduction Chapter 1 Problem Illustrated: The landmark marital rape case of DPP v Morgan and its mixed significance for the men of law Chapter 2 The Criminal World: The landmark marital rape case of DPP v Morgan and its mixed significance for the men of law Chapter 3 Hale, Blackstone and the Character of Men: The importance of personal border control Chapter 4 JS Mill, Stephen and the Victorian Mentality Chapter 5 The Cast of Men: The Bounded Man, the Domestic Monarch and the Sexual Master Chapter 6 From Supremacy to Euphemism: Good Men Trapped in their Own Assumptions Chapter 7 Modernisation Or Men Assuming Responsibility without Taking Responsibility Chapter 8 The Invisible Man: Why the men of law cannot see the men of law Chapter 9 The Modern Individual of Criminal Law Chapter 10 Men, Women, and Civil Society: Male civility in the twenty first century Chapter 11 Recapitulation

About the Author :
Ngaire Naffine is Bonython Professor of Law at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

Review :
This ground-breaking and readable treatise belongs in every predominantly English law library in the world. In this erudite and powerfully argued book, Ngaire Naffine adds to her already distinguished contributions to feminist legal scholarship with a trenchant critique of the persistent patriarchy of criminal law. [A] hard-hitting, no-holds-barred critique of the pervasive maleness of criminal law, particularly, though far from exclusively, as it has operated, and continues to operate, in the sphere of sexual violence ... Naffine's book is a hugely significant achievement, likely to be devoured and debated, celebrated and critiqued, in equal measure. Most importantly, Criminal Law and the Man Problem issues a serious challenge, not just to criminal legal scholars but to legal scholars in general, to confront the continuing legacy of a deeply patriarchal past in the context of a discursive tradition in which history and authority have long been naturally aligned. I found myself at times marvelling that, after decades of feminist work in this area, the point continues to need to be made that the criminal law and associated disciplines have a 'man problem'. However, on reflection, it seemed to me another plank in Naffine's argument that demonstrates both the deep-seated nature of law's masculine bias, and also the difficulty, as Naffine so eloquently argues, in making the 'men of law' recognise the problem. I can only hope that Naffine's challenge to the discipline is recognised and acted upon so that it can be an important step in confronting as well as analysing the 'man problem'. This is an important book … that challenges many of the things that we take for granted about the criminal law. A powerful and provocative addition to literatures of criminal legal history, gender and the law and critical approaches to criminal law. It can function as a valuable teaching tool.