One result of this study is that now that I know the framework well, I notice things that I hadn't noticed before. For example, I caught the following line in one of my study guides:
Under the Saxon laws, rape was a felony punishable by death. For a short time in the thirteenth century, it was treated as only a trespass punishable by two years' imprisonment and a fine. Subsequently, the offense was treated again as a capital crime. (Understanding Criminal Law, Joshua Dressler, p. 571, 3rd Edition, with apologies to my LWR teacher for the bad format of this citation.)
That's all it says. No explanation, just a citation.
I don't have time to track this down, but I have to admit that I am terribly curious about what happened in thirteenth century England to cause rape to be downgraded to essentially a property crime, and then upgraded a few years later.
2 comments:
Hm, finding out might make you mad, T. Okay, it might make ME mad. But if you ever track it down, I hope you post about it.
I am going to look it up later, and if I find out, I'll post.
The rape section of this course was pretty horrible. I found myself infuriated often. I didn't post about this much because I didn't have time to write a well-thought-out post about it, but I found the rape cases incredibly shocking. I'll post more about that after exams.
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