Word: legalism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...first time the law - which went into effect on Nov. 25 of this year and gives courts the power to protect forced-marriage victims and dole out sentences to their perpetrators - was invoked on behalf of someone who is not a British national. While the court order had no legal bearing in Bangladesh, a sympathetic judge, Justice Syed Mohmed Hossain, mentioned the injunction at the hearing in Dhaka in which Abedin sought to have her marriage voided. After ruling that she was free to go, Hossain noted, "Children are not the slaves of their parents. They must have their...
...Forced Marriage Act may inadvertently discourage women from seeking help. Sumanta Roy, acting director of Imkaan, a nonprofit organization in the U.K. run by Asian refugees that advocates for women and children facing domestic violence, does not think most women who are in forced marriages would seek legal remedy unless they were sure they had access to housing, job training and other social services first. "We're concerned that this law may deter some women from coming forward, since you're asking them to completely isolate themselves from their family and community in a very public way," says...
...Abedin's public reaction to her verdict confirms what human-rights groups say is another challenge of controlling forced marriage through legal mechanisms: the victims rarely want to use the law to punish their parents. "I'm relieved that I'm free. I'm happy," Abedin told reporters on Dec. 14 after being released in Dhaka. "But I don't have any bad feelings towards my parents." Speaking outside court, Abedin insisted that she does not want her parents to be prosecuted, as she still loves them...
...Friday, Brown's legal brief ignited a statewide debate among legal scholars, with discussion of the argument dominating law professor list-servs and e-mail lists. "It's creative and contains thoughtful insights," says Vikram Amar, a constitutional law professor and dean of academics at the University of California-Davis. "It profoundly highlights the almost paradoxical character of American constitutionalism: That minority rights exists only to the extent that the majority stands behind them...
When the California Supreme Court issued its decision legalizing gay marriage in May, it declared that ""The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of the majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts." Brown has apparently now taken that as a touchstone, arguing that some rights cannot be taken away by the majority, absent special circumstances. "The Declaration of rights in Article I gives certain rights a privileged status," Brown told TIME. "Those rights...