Document Type

Article

Publication Date

January 2002

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Judges often malign exception making as the erosion of legal rules, yet in the same breath sanction the territory that exceptions have eclipsed to date. Judges may embrace as precedent the course of exceptions that has shaped doctrine so far, but then cite the importance of enforcing common law rules to refuse exceptions that would redress violence against women. This paradoxical stance prompts many feminists to target ignorance of violence in women's lives as the source of judicial resistance to establishing exceptions to rules that prevent recovery for women's harms. These feminists call for education, for increased awareness, to combat this ignorance. This article considers judicial resistance to making exceptions to rules in adjudication of certain tort claims by victims of domestic violence and proposes that the supposed blind spot surrounding this resistance will not be erased through enlightenment.

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