Pollard on Intentional Sex Torts

As the Drudge Report would say, this is a developing story.  Yesterday, my friend Deana Pollard Sacks of Texas Southern University blogged at feministlawprofs about her article "Intentional Sex Torts," which is forthcoming in the Fordham Law Review.  (Her earlier article on negligent sex torts appeared in the Minnesota Law Review.)

Deana says of the emerging trend to recognize a tort of misappropriation of sex:

Since 2005, four states have finally recognized that fraudulent inducement of sex is rape. Not just immoral, not just “boys being boys” behavior, but misappropriation of a woman’s personal right to choose who invades her body. Perhaps surprisingly, the first state to recognize fraudulent inducement of sex as a basis for rape was Alabama in 2005. California, Michigan, and Tennessee followed suit the following two years, and Peter Koutoujian of Massachusetts filed a similar bill in February, 2008, which, when passed, will make Massachusetts the fifth state to recognize the crime of “stealing” another’s sexual prerogative.

You can read the full post here, including a revealing quotation from a New York court in 1975.  That led to a post here, which is disturbing for the cavalier way it deals with this important issue, to say the least.  Abovethelaw then picked up the thread. 

I'm pretty sure I'm on safe ground in saying, we haven't heard the last of this.

Comments

[Ann Bartow]

Yep, the response has been a real misogynists-o-rama, see e.g. http://blog.geeklawyer.org/2008/05/02/stupid-cunts/
Actually, the URL probably already tells you all you need to know.

[Marc J. Randazza]

While I completely disagree with Professor Sacks idea, I would like to say that Geeklawyer is completely out of line. I will attack her idea -- because I think that her idea is a bad one, and that is how the marketplace of ideas works.

But, nobody who engages in personal attacks on Prof. Sacks should consider me to be on the same side as them.