When Rape was Legal is the first book to solely focus on the widespread rape perpetrated against enslaved black women by white men in the United States. The routine practice of sexual violence against enslaved black women by white men, the motivations for this rape, and the legal context that enabled this violence are all explored and scrutinized. Enlightening analysis found that rape was not merely a result of sexual desire and opportunity, or simply a form of punishment and racial domination, but instead encompassed all of these dimensions as part of the identity of white masculinity. This provocative text highlights the significant role that white women played in enabling sexual violence against enslaved black women through a variety of responses and, at times, through their lack of response to the actions of the white men in their lives. Significantly, this book finds that sexual violence against enslaved black women was a widespread form of oppression used to perform white masculinity and reinforce an intersectional hierarchy. Additionally, white women played a vital role by enabling this sexual violence and perpetuating the subordination of themselves and those subordinate to them.

This book evolved from our interest in rape as feminists and as sodal sdentists. As feminists, we were concemed about the treatment of rape victims and the attrition in rape cases under traditional rape law, and we welcomed legal reforms designed to improve the situation. As sodal sdentists, we wondered about the efficacy of legal changes aimed at an inherently resistant court system. We also were curious about the lack of studies examining the impact of these changes; we were particularly surprised to find that no one had attempted to ana lyze the impact of the reforms in more than one jurisdiction. Con vinced that untangling the effects of the reforms from the effects of contextual factors required a multijurisdictional study, we deeided to undertake the project. We quickly discovered that evaluating rape law reform in several jurisdictions would be no easy task. We had deeided that such an evaluation would require monthly data on the outcome of rape cases before and after the reforms were implemented, as weIl as qualitative data on the attitudes of criminal justice officials toward the reforms. Because states do not generate monthly data on case outcomes, we would have to collect the data ourse1ves from court records main tained by individual jurisdictions. To obtain an adequate number of cases for the time-series analysis, we would have to select our sites from large urban jurisdictions scattered throughout the United States.

This text is fully updated to included abolition of the martial rape exemption, changes in the law on anonymity, sexual history evidence, procedural developments contained in the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, and male rape.

Women were historically treated in wartime as property. Yet in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, prohibitions against pillaging property did not extend to the female body. There is a gap of nearly a hundred years between those early prohibitions of pillage and the prohibition of rape finally enacted in the Rome Statute of 1998. In Looting and Rape in Wartime, Tuba Inal addresses the development of these two separate "prohibition regimes," exploring why states make and agree to laws that determine the way war is conducted, and what role gender plays in this process. Inal argues that three conditions are necessary for the emergence of a global prohibition regime: first, a state must believe that it is necessary to comply with the prohibition and that to do otherwise would be costly; second, the idea that a particular practice is undesirable must become the norm; finally, a prohibition regime emerges with state and nonstate actors supporting it all along the way. These conditions are met by the prohibition against pillage, which developed from a confluence of material circumstances and an ideological context: the nineteenth century fostered ideas about the sanctity of private property, which made the act of looting seem more abhorrent. Meanwhile, the existence of conscripted and regulated armies meant that militaries could take measures to prevent it. In that period, however, rape was still considered a crime of passion or a symptom of behavioral disorder—in other words, a distortion of male sexuality and outside of state control—and it would take many decades to erode the grip of those ideas. Only toward the end of the twentieth century did transformations in gender ideology and the increased participation of women in politics bring about broad cultural shifts in the way we perceive sexual violence, women, and women's roles in policy and lawmaking. In examining the historical and ideological context of how these two regimes evolved, Looting and Rape in Wartime provides vital perspective on the forces that block or bring about change in international relations.

International Approaches to Rape gives an overview of rape law and policy in nine different countries, including the United States and Canada. Many governments have begun to take rape more seriously than in the past and have started to implement wide-ranging reforms; this book describes those reforms and assesses the degree to which they have been successful. Introducing readers to various national perspectives on rape, the contributors outline a comparative approach that highlights the similarities and differences between countries, contexts, laws, issues, policies, and interventions.

The uproar over "legitimate rape" during the 2012 U.S. elections confirms that rape remains a word in flux, subject to political power and social privilege. Redefining Rape describes the forces that have shaped the meaning of sexual violence in the U.S., through the experiences of accusers, assailants, and advocates for change.

The crime of rape has been prevalent in all contexts, whether committed during armed conflict or in peacetime, and has largely been characterised by a culture of impunity. International law, through its branches of international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law, has increasingly condemned such violence and is progressively obliging states to prevent rape, whether committed by a state agent or a private actor.