Saturday, April 11, 2015

Saturday Link Dump, Mostly Sexual Assault/Due Process Edition

More links for your Saturday enjoyment:
  • Added to the sidebar in a new section on legal matters: Community Of The Wrongly Accused, opening with a piece on the University of Illinois' remarkable discovery that it's much easier on the accuser if no hearing at all takes place:
    The University of Illinois is taking college sex hearings to the next level in order to protect rape victims. The school is "moving toward an investigation process that may not require a hearing so an assault victim doesn't have to testify in front of a large committee."

    Finally! A school with the courage to cut through the bullshit! This ingenious plan will spare rape victims the indignity of having impartial adjudicators consider their accusations with an open mind. It will also spare schools the bother of introducing evidence to actually prove the young rapists are guilty. And it will spare the young rapists the bother of putting on a defense to avoid a life-altering expulsion.
    I'm sure that this won't result in more lawsuits against the University...
  • A bit of good news from Scott Greenfield's Simple Justice blog comes in the news that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has taken down a sentence repeating the false-but-frequently-cited 1-in-5 rape victimization statistic. You may recall that Gillibrand was pleased to have the liar Emma Sulkowicz as her guest at the presidential State of the Union address in January. Sit down, Emma, you've had your fifteen minutes.
  • Leslie Loftis at The Federalist makes the case that Phi Kappa Psi has a good case for libel against Rolling Stone. There's a lot there, but the big takeaway seem to be that Phi Psi is suing mainly for honor, not monetary damages, which are capped at a very low $350,000 under Virginia law. I really hope they open a suit in New York, which does not offer such protections.
  • Here's another roundup of campus rapes that were less than they seemed, including several I've previously written about in this space, if only in passing (h/t @Anneeliz1).
  • And finally, another piece of good news from Mr. Greenfield: a woman refuses to act like a victim when discussing a (female!) law professor inadvertently pasting a porn site link into a mass email to her students.
    It may be that Tabo is still being a bit overly forgiving, in that it might not matter whether “he meant to do it,” as intent is a courtesy no longer in favor.  As I recently quipped on the twitters, “there’s a reason why they call it ‘mens’ rea.”  This was immediately misunderstood and seized upon as demonstrable proof of the patriarchy, rather than a joke.

    And that’s where Tabo’s refusal to condemn others, even though she has long enough blond hair to justify it, betrays her failure to appreciate her victimhood.  Does she not get it?  Is she a disgrace to her gender, a traitor to the cause?

    Or does Tamara Tabo just have a sense of humor, an appreciation of irony, an ability to laugh off a theoretical harm done by mistake, by dumb chance, rather than leap up to the podium and demand that we burn the witch?

No comments:

Post a Comment