Legal System Reform
Legal System Reform
Historically, intimate partner violence (IPV) laws were limited, gendered, and cisnormative. While legal recourse for transgender people has evolved over recent decades, there is room for the legal system to improve its response to IPV against transgender people. Legal system actors, including police, judges, lawyers, and court staff, often harbor conscious and unconscious biases against transgender people. The law also can limit the relief available to transgender people. To address these problems, the substantive law—the statutes and cases that govern legal practice—should include various relationship structures and utilize gender-neutral language. Equally important, police, judges, lawyers, and court staff must be attentive to the unique issues raised when transgender people seek protection (e.g., civil protection orders), including proper name usage, properly gendering litigants, and understanding how using misgendered documentation can further complicate cases of IPV. This chapter discusses these issues and suggests how the courts and legal system can better respond to transgender survivors of IPV.
Keywords: transphobia among police, transphobia in courts, transphobia among judges, transphobia among lawyers, anti-transgender bias in criminal law, civil protection orders
NYU Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
