Subjects:

Jurisprudence, Family Law

This book provides the first serious, sustained philosophical invesitgation of the criminal prosecution of domestic violence. It provides a theoretical framework for understanding ongoing debates regarding the criminal justice system's repsonse to domestic violence.

• Sets prosecutorial discrection into a theoretical framework, providing an original point of reference for philosophical investigation of prosecution.
• Employs tools of analytic jurisprudence to domestic violence prosecutions, which clarifies terms of the 'victimless' prosecution debates
• Adopts a feminist approach to evaluating state action that aids understanding of how state action can be feminist, and when it ought to be
• Provides analysis of concepts of patriachy and feminism that clarifies what it means to be a feminist
• Examines discretion exercised by executive branch state actors and moves away from the traditional focus of judicial discrection in analytic jurisprudence