ABSTRACT
In 1999, the third division of the Supreme Court of Appeals in Rome overturned a 34-month sentence for rape because the woman was wearing jeans. Among other things, the court noted that it was ‘common knowledge’ that ‘jeans cannot even be partly removed without the effective help of the person wearing them’ and that it is Impossible, if the victim is struggling with all her force’.1 The source of this knowledge, its commonness, allowed the judges to conclude that the woman’s story was implausible and that she must have consented to sex. Two questions immediately call to be answered in the face of the Appeals Court decision: (1) how might this view of tight jeans become common knowledge; and (2) how do the judiciary know it?
