ABSTRACT
The call to law and legal rights and their concomitant progress narratives figure centrally in late modern society. This pull is particularly characterized by an appeal to law as an instrument to bring about recognition of various social and political problems as civil rights issues. In many respects, domestic violence can be considered the premier civil rights issue in this context. After thirty years of feminist advocacy and politics, a small but historic change has taken place: domestic violence has entered mainstream international and national politics as a matter of legitimate public concern and has become the subject of various legal regulations in the United States, notably the provision of rights to support and protect victims.1 Domestic violence has been constructed as a respectable legal domain where, both nationally and internationally, substantial lawmaking takes place that reflects interesting political and cultural differences.2 In the field of
domestic violence against adult women, for example, the level of both criminal and civil legal regulation in most West European countries is not as widely developed as in the United States (both on the national and state levels). This seems to reflect a general cultural difference in the way law figures much less prominently in European as compared to American culture as the primary device to call upon when resolving or handling social conflicts. Further international comparative research is necessary to gain more insight into this cultural-legal aspect.3 It is interesting to note that in Dutch, the expression "American situations" (Amerikaanse toestanderi) is commonly used in an unequivocally pejorative sense to indicate America's cultural preoccupation with issues of liability and the tendency to sue, usually for excessive amounts of monetary compensation, for any form of sustained damage or suffering. From a Dutch (European) perspective, this is generally considered to be an objectionable use of law that reflects the status of (if not obsession with) law in a liberal society as one of the most powerful cultural instruments that can be called upon to serve individual interests under the guise of pursuing legal justice. However, the development toward juridification of the issue of domestic violence inevitably invokes new social and legal disputes, both in civil and criminal law In particular, the ongoing debate focuses on the questions of whether and how the fact that violence in the home is a matter of public concern translates into an affirmative obligation of the state to protect victims of family violence.4 It is interesting to note that from a constitutional law perspective, the plight of the state is usually emphasized within feminist legal debates and the predominant negative liberties approach in the United States has been severely criticized.5
