The Victorian Law Reform Commission Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Victorian natural law Reform Commission - Essay ExampleUnder the present law factors that reduce a persons culpableness for an intentional killing may be taken into account in one of three ways. In some situations where people intentionally kill another person they may be charged with and convicted of an discourtesy which attracts a lower sentence than murder (for example, manslaughter). In this case they will not be labelled as a murderer. In other situations they may not be guilty of any offence (as where they killed in self-defence) or they may be convicted of the lesser offence of manslaughter beca substance abuse they have a partial defence (as where they successfully argue they killed as the result of incitation).However, incompatible legal clays take account of levels of blameworthiness in different ways. When law reform bodies have reviewed defences and partial defences to homicide, they have frequently reached different conclusions on how factors which affect the b lameworthiness of the accused should be taken into account by the criminal law. ... This allowed the courts to take into account certain world frailties. One such frailty involved the idea that the accused had been provoked into committing the act, because the victim had said or done something that caused the offender to loose control--as was deemed to be the case in the instance of a chance medley. For the provocation defence to be invoked, the nature of the provocation had to fall into one of four categories (1) grossly insulting enchant (2) attack upon a relative or a friend (3) unlawful imprisonment or rampart of an Englishman or (4) a man coming upon his wife engaged in adultery. In order to benefit from the defence, the accused had to prove that, during his response to the provocation, he was sufficiently deprived of self-control and had acted without malice. Historically, the criminal law system has justified and condoned male violence against women. It allowed a man to u se reasonable force to ensure the enjoy and obedience of his spouse it immunized husbands from prosecution for rape of their wives it did not sanction the rape of bad girls and it ignored most forms of child abuse. Our law did not eve recognize the existence of sexual harassment until the mid-eighties, and the use of professional and religious power to sexually exploit subordinates has only recently been acknowledged and condemned by our justness system. More specifically, special evidentiary and substantive rules were developed for cases of wife-assault. Indeed, a woman cannot be compelled to testify against her husband, even in a case where he is accused of assault against her. This principle of marital unity historically privatized her complaint and forced her to bear the