Feminism vs. Federalism: The Violence Against Women Act and the Ideological Debate over National Sovereignty.

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling in the case of United States v. Morrison (529 U.S. 598), found that §13981 of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which provided a federal remedy for victims of gender motivated crimes, exceeded Congress’s power under the 14th Amendment and Article I, Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution. In response to this decision, debates ensued over whether or not violence against women is an appropriate object of Congressional power. Such debates, however, miss the foundational ideology underlying the VAWA. An examination of the arguments made in support of the law, as well as the design and implementation of the law, reveals that the root issue behind the VAWA goes deeper than the question of whether crimes against women are an appropriate object for national power. For, as many proponents of the VAWA have clearly argued, the law represents an attack on the nature of federalism itself. In view of the VAWA's pending reauthorization in 2010, this paper seeks to examine how the ideology behind the design and implementation of the VAWA calls into question the very nature of a constitutional system of government and that system’s ability to advance the freedom and well being of women. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]