'Equal' on violence against women

'EQUAL'
PART FIVE VIOLENCE (1990-2000)

21. A Challenge for a Young Lawyer

In 1990, Senator Joseph Biden asked a staffer, Victoria Nourse, to figure out what Congress should do to reduce violent crimes against women.
Judges historically had viewed rape cases skeptically, requiring proof of the utmost resistance to the point of enduring additional physical violence before finding that a woman or girl had not consented. The law frequently also required corroboration of the victim's testimony. The machinations of a vengeful, scheming woman were much feared.

But Nourse's reading eventually took her to the Fourteenth Amendment. Section five of the amendment granted Congress the right to pass legislation to achieve the amendment's equal protection goals. She discovered that Professor Robin West had proposed “A Married Woman's Privacy Act” that would guarantee protection against sexual assault to all women and prohibit discrimination against married women in applying rape laws. West's use of the right to privacy was somewhat problematic, since that right had been used against women, as for example, refusal to charge batterers for crimes committed in the home. But Nourse believed that a law could target violence against women as a civil rights violation by giving women a civil cause of action.