User:Sonicyouth86/CHS

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Kelly (1994)[edit]

Several scholars and commentators have described errors in Sommers' book. Her claims regarding the legal permissiveness of wife beating, in particular, have been criticized as inaccurate. In arguing that British law since the 1700s and American law since before the Revolution prohibits wife beating, Sommers quotes English legal historian William Blackstone as saying that the "husband was prohibited from using any violence to his wife..."[1] Linda Hirshman, Laura Flanders and Henry A. Kelly separately argue that, in the 1994 issue of her book, Sommers left out the other half of Blackstone's sentence that says in Latin "other than that which lawfully and reasonably belongs to the husband for the due government and correction of his wife". Kelly wrote that "by omitting the Latin of the writ, she [Sommers] omits Blackstone's qualification, namely that the law did allow reasonable violence." Kelly also notes that Sommers' explanation of the etymological origins of the phrase rule of thumb "is supported by no evidence." Flanders said that Blackstone's "complete text says the exact opposite of Sommers' partial quotation".[2][3][4] Sommers wrote a rebuttal column a week after Hirshman's Los Angeles Times piece that Hirshman "commits an interpretive whopper since she evidently reads the omitted Latin as giving Blackstone's opinion. Not so: Blackstone mentions the 'old law' only to point out that it had been superseded in his own 'politer' day (1768): 'A wife may now have security against her husband.' That is Blackstone's view."[5]

  1. ^ Sommers, Who Stole Feminism, 1994, pp. 204–205.
  2. ^ Hirshman, Linda (July 31, 1994). "Scholars in the Service of Politics: Those who would deny men's abuse of women twist statistics and skip the research". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  3. ^ Flanders, Laura (September 1, 1994). "The 'Stolen Feminism' Hoax: Anti-Feminist Attack Based on Error-Filled Anecdotes". FAIR, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  4. ^ Kelly, Henry Ansgar (1994). "Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw of the Husband's Stick". Journal of Legal Education. 44 (3): 341–365. Hirshman is right in saying that Sommers distorts Blackstone's account of the old law by quoting him thus: 'But this power of correction was confined within reasonable bounds and the husband was prohibited from using any violence to his wife....' That is, by omitting the Latin of the writ, she omits Blackstone's qualification, namely that the law did allow reasonable violence. She seems to make Blackstone say that the old law allowed husbands a power of correction that stopped short of violence, and that even this limited power came to be doubted in later times by the courts, which however still allowed it to the lower rank of people by letting them restrain their wives. Her general conclusion is therefore off base: 'Blackstone plainly says that common law prohibited violence against wives, although the prohibitions went largely unenforced, especially where the 'lower rank of people' were concerned.' In fact, Blackstone limits his observation about the lower rank of people to their insisting on the old law of-wife-beating, which was no longer recognized by the courts. He does not limit the courts' allowance of restraints upon wives to any particular class of people, and he says nothing about any failure of the courts to enforce their new interpretation of the law.
  5. ^ Sommers, Christina (August 13, 1994). "Hirshman's Statistics". Los Angeles Times.
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