Details:
Please join us for our Winter Quarter installment of our Brown Bag Speaker Series, featuring a presentation by Professor Michele Goodwin titled “Teen Sex and Statutory Rape Law.”
This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
Date:
Monday, April 18, 2016
*RESCHEDULED FROM MARCH 7
Time:
12-:00 – 1:00pm
Location:
University of California, Irvine campus
Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway
Room 1517
Abstract:
This talk considers statutory rape cases of the last decade. It examines statutory rape laws and their application against consenting minors. It argues that contemporary statutory rape laws sometimes create legally untenable, absurd results that frequently impose legal and extralegal burdens on minors that may exceed that of adult, convicted rapists. Moreover, because sex remains deeply politicized, no coherent framework has been offered by politicians that respond pragmatically to the empirical realities of adolescent sexuality. Neither federal nor state legislatures offer a coherent, well-articulated approach to militate against the harshest criminal punishments demanded by statutory rape provisions. Professor Goodwin’s paper points out that even judges interpret and enforce statutory rape cases in a manner that often entrenches stereotypes and biases. The talk emphasizes that in recent decades, absurd results and disproportionately harsh penalties against teens have been been applied in statutory rape cases.
Speaker Biography:
Professor Michele Goodwin is a Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine with appointments at the School of Law, Program in Public Health, Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Center for Psychology and Law. She is the founder and director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at UC Irvine School of Law and its internationally acclaimed Reproductive Justice Initiative. Professor Goodwin is one of the world’s leading authorities on the regulation of medicine, science, and biotechnology. Her publications include five books and over 70 articles and book chapters on law’s regulation of the human body, including civil and criminal regulation of pregnancy and reproduction, reproductive technologies, human trafficking (for organs, sex, and marriage), and tissue and organ transplantation. Her recent works appear in or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, California Law Review, Georgetown Law Review, Northwestern Law Review, and Texas Law Review, among others.
Professor Goodwin’s scholarship defines new ways of thinking about supply, demand, and access to sophisticated medical technologies. Reviews of her work appear in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Publisher’s Weekly, Law and Politics Book Review, Book News, and the Library Journal, amongst other periodicals. Her editorials and commentaries appear in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Gene Watch, Christian Science Monitor, Politico, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Houston Chronicle, Chicago Sun Times, Washington Post, AlterNet and Forbes Magazine among others. She is a blogger for the Huffington Post and the Harvard Bill of Health.
Professor Goodwin is also the president of the Defense for Children International U.S. affiliate and founder of the Institute for Global Child Advocacy. She is the former Everett Fraser Professor in Law at the University of Minnesota. She served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago and as a Visiting Scholar at the University of California-Berkeley and Columbia University Law School. She is a highly sought after voice on civil liberties, cultural politics, and human rights. Prior to law teaching, Professor Goodwin was a Gilder-Lehrman Post-Doctoral Fellow at Yale University.
Connect with us