Law, Social Movements, and the Political Economy of Domestic Violence

This article uses the occasion of the 2013 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to review the circumstances by which legal theory and social movement discourse have circumscribed the scope of VAWA and the dominant approach to domestic violence. This article seeks to explore the relationship between domestic violence advocacy and feminist theory, which has functioned as "the ideological reflection of one's own place in society" with insufficient attention to superstructures. Additionally, it argues for a reexamination of the current domestic violence/criminal justice paradigm and calls for the consideration of economic uncertainty and inequality as a context for gender-based violence. As an epistemology, domestic violence scholarship has fallen behind other fields of study due to its failure to address the structural context of gender-based violence. This article proposes a redefinition of the parameters of domestic violence law and presents new (and provocative) ways to think about law-related interventions to ameliorate gender violence. INTRODUCTION The year 2013 marks nearly two decades since the enactment of the historic Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). (1) The passage of VAWA in 1994 signaled Congressional recognition of the relationship between gender-based violence and women's equality, and more: VAWA's passage acknowledged that state legal structures had failed to provide an adequate remedy to battered women. VAWA authorized victims of gender-based violence to bring civil rights actions in federal judicial forums--that is, to seek remedy in forums traditionally "reserved for issues where important national interests predominate." (2) The reauthorization of VAWA in 2013 provides an occasion to reexamine the legal premises that have shaped and continue to inform conventional wisdom about the nature of and responses to domestic violence. (3) Notably, this civil rights remedy--designed to address gender-based violence as a form of discrimination and considered to be essential to eradicating domestic violence was nullified in United States v Morrison. (4) The provisions that subsequently remain the most "usable"--and certainly the most available--favor the law enforcement and prosecutorial strategies funded by the Act. (5) VAWA 2013 extends funding for important victim services. It also includes new reforms relating to the jurisdictional complexities important for Native American victims of gender-based violence, whose circumstances have been neglected as a result of historical matters of sovereignty and conflicting federal and state statutes. (6) However, VAWA reauthorization will no doubt remain very much a product of the prevailing criminal justice paradigm from which the original statute emerged. It is to this issue and its consequences that this article responds. Despite mounting evidence that points to deviant behavior--including domestic violence--as a socially-conditioned outcome, Congress failed to reauthorize a version of VAWA that responds to structural theories of criminal behavior. When proponents of VAWA address structural theories, the discourse has been limited principally to the failure of law enforcement agencies to arrest and of the courts to punish perpetrators. The underlying premise that appears to drive the current legal response is consistent with Rational Choice Theory: criminals make rational choices among alternative courses of actions (i.e., "crime is a decision, not a disease"). (7) Noticeably missing from discussions about domestic violence are social theories that focus on the macro political conditions and economic circumstances that contribute to crime, including domestic violence, and the development of social policies that focus on poverty prevention, economic assistance, and the distribution of services as a response. (8) Under current economic conditions, including chronic under- and unemployment, declining wages, and diminishing benefits, consideration of these circumstances is vital to a fuller understanding of domestic violence. …