The first detailed study of the effect of provocation on culpability in morality and law, this book traces the fascinating history of the legal doctrine of provocation, right up to present-day controversies over the scope of the doctrine's application in murder cases.

In this now established text the author presents her analysis of the power of law and argues for a feminist post-structuralist approach. She comments on pornography, as well as discussing recent research on rape trials and abortion legislation.

This article takes up Smart’s suggestion to examine the way the law works in practice. It explores the context of current criminal prosecutions of domestic violence offences in Queensland, Australia. This article argues that legal method is applied outside the higher courts or “judge-oriented” practice and that the obstacles inherent to legal method can be identified in the practices of police, lower court staff, magistrates and lawyers. This article suggests that it may be difficult to deconstruct legal method, even by (...) focussing on law in practice, and as a result it may be difficult to successfully challenge law’s truth claims in this way. The analysis of criminal prosecutions of domestic violence offences reported here supports Smart’s earlier findings that women and children who seek redress through the criminal justice process find the process at best ambivalent and at worst, destructive. However, the article also shows how, in the Queensland context, women sometimes find their way to feminism and personal empowerment by going to law. (shrink)

Domestic violence discourse challenges cultural acceptance of male violence against women, yet it is often constituted by gendered, racialized, and class-based hierarchies.Transformative efforts have not escaped traces of these hierarchies. Emancipatory ideals guiding 1970s feminist activism have collided with conservative impulses to maintain and strengthen family relationships. Crime control discourse undermines critiques of dominance through its focus on individual men. Domestic violence discourse exemplifies both resistance to and replication of hierarchies of power.