Affirmative consent first attracted national attention in the early 1990s.
As the American Law Institute considered a new Model Penal Code, a working group led by NYU professor Stephen Schulhofer pushed for including affirmative consent in the new guidelines.
Undaunted, affirmative-consent backers turned their attention to the ABA. As originally proposed, the resolution debated at this week's conference urged state legislatures "To define consent in sexual assault cases as the assent of a person who is competent to give consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact, to provide that consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the circumstances, and to reject any requirement that sexual assault victims have a legal burden of verbal or physical resistance." In an e-mail sent to ABA delegates, Mark Schickman, chair of the Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence, candidly asserted that the sponsors hoped to use the law to accelerate social change.
Initially, affirmative consent looked certain to pass.
Their argument: affirmative consent would improperly shift the burden of proof from the state to the defendant, violating the accused party's civil liberties.
More than 100 ALI members signed an open letter pointing out that the resolution's co-sponsors had misrepresented their body's work by suggesting that the ALI hadn't rejected affirmative consent when it had done so.
In an ideal world, the ABA's move would lead campuses that have adopted affirmative consent to reconsider their unfair systems.
https://www.city-journal.org/affirmative-consent
As the American Law Institute considered a new Model Penal Code, a working group led by NYU professor Stephen Schulhofer pushed for including affirmative consent in the new guidelines.
Undaunted, affirmative-consent backers turned their attention to the ABA. As originally proposed, the resolution debated at this week's conference urged state legislatures "To define consent in sexual assault cases as the assent of a person who is competent to give consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact, to provide that consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the circumstances, and to reject any requirement that sexual assault victims have a legal burden of verbal or physical resistance." In an e-mail sent to ABA delegates, Mark Schickman, chair of the Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence, candidly asserted that the sponsors hoped to use the law to accelerate social change.
Initially, affirmative consent looked certain to pass.
Their argument: affirmative consent would improperly shift the burden of proof from the state to the defendant, violating the accused party's civil liberties.
More than 100 ALI members signed an open letter pointing out that the resolution's co-sponsors had misrepresented their body's work by suggesting that the ALI hadn't rejected affirmative consent when it had done so.
In an ideal world, the ABA's move would lead campuses that have adopted affirmative consent to reconsider their unfair systems.
https://www.city-journal.org/affirmative-consent
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