Around the Web

The Associated Press is reporting that "[a] woman has sued a town that refused to allow her to open a dance studio that featured pole-dancing exercise classes on the grounds it was a sexually oriented business." A complaint filed by the ACLU in Pittsburgh alleges that township officials violated the woman's right to free expression by denying her an occupancy permit.  Although classes include "pole-dancing, power lap dance, strip tease and 'SeXXXercise,' they are all taught and performed fully clothed; [m]en can't take the classes, and no spectators are allowed."  You can view the complaint here. The Wall Street Journal blog has more.

CrimProf Blog reports that the California Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that a sexual assault which "leaves a victim pregnant may be punished more severely than one that does not result in pregnancy."  The California high court said a pregnancy may be considered a "great bodily injury."  The justices split 5 to 2 on whether to declare that every pregnancy stemming from sexual assault would amount to a great injury, with the majority noting that it was a question for juries to decide based on the facts of a case. The LA Times has more.

Virginia Davis and Kevin K. Washburn (National Congress of American Indians and University of Arizona - James E. Rogers College of Law) have posted: Sex Offender Registration in Indian Country (Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Forthcoming) on SSRN.

Monica C. Bell's article entitled Grassroots Death Sentences?: The Social Movement for Capital Child Rape appears in the Fall 2007 issue of Northwestern University's Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. The article "examines recent changes in the death penalty law relating to States' authorization of capital punishment for child rape through the lens of social movements."

Makau W. Mutua (University at Buffalo Law School, SUNY) has posted: Transitional Justice in Sexual and Gender-Based Violence.  The article "explore[s] the reasons for the invisibility of women and gender in transitional justice vehicles such as truth commissions and judicial and other adjudicatory processes."

Dennis J. Baker (King's College London, School of Law) has posted: The Sense and Nonsense of Criminalizing Transfers of Obscene Material (Singapore Law Review, Vol. 26, 2008) on SSRN.  The article argues that "Hong Kong's laws prohibiting the transfer of obscene and indecent information and images between consenting adults are both under-inclusive and over-inclusive."

Comments

[jimbino]

That's a strange ruling. I thought the law has always held an unintended pregnancy not to be and "injury" since a child is a gift of god. This country is schizophrenic about sex!