Word: mackinnon
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...Monday night the debate came to Harvard as Charles Fried, former U.S. Solicitor General and Harvard Law School professor, and Catharine A. MacKinnon, a professor of law at the University of Michigan squared off on the VAWA inside a packed Ames Courtroom. Though the evening's preferred language was esoteric legalese, the major arguments came through loud and clear. Fried described a slippery-slope scenario, whereby the precedent set by VAWA would allow Congress to circumvent state sovereignty indiscriminately. MacKinnon dismissed these concerns out-of-hand, postulating that civil suits remedy flaws in state legal systems that have allowed gender...
...MacKinnon's stance is by far the stronger, but she and other VAWA advocates need to understand that on such matters one needs to tread carefully. Too often, supporters of civil rights bend to the cloying, putrescent of political correctness instead of relying upon substantive judicial precedent and hard facts. Even the most genuine, visceral appeal against gender violence cannot serve as the basis for the kind of far-reaching, personal consequences that exist under VAWA...
...MacKinnon facetiously broke her argument into two sections: "Part One: Why I am Right" and "Part Two: Why Charles is Wrong...
When asked to identify one state crime that would not be placed in the federal domain under such an interpretation, MacKinnon refused...
...MacKinnon also cited the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law to all citizens as a guarantee of the law's constitutionality. She argued that the bias against women in state justice systems deprives them of equal protection and that Congress can use its power granted by the Fourteenth Amendment to remedy those violations with the VAWA...