Below is the introduction:
Let me begin by saying that I enjoyed Professor Lininger’s article and found the recommendations aspirational and noteworthy. Let me also say that while I use the term”deontological”in my title, this Essay has nothing to do with ontological or deontological ideas or notions, in part because purely theoretical musings really can’t have any bearing on what we do or how we do it. I employ the term so that the theorists who count thousand-dollar words will believe that I, and we, have the theoretical world under control.
We do not, nor should we.
In addressing the current Supreme Court decisions regarding the Confrontation Clause rights of defendants in domestic violence cases against unavailable battered women, Professor Lininger evaluates possible public policy initiatives against a theoretical backdrop constructed by Kant, Rawls, and Bentham. Yet theory, much like religion, is merely a hunch. Theory gains currency by moving from mere hunch to workable precept only when it is tested against the reality of a world inhabited by mortals:and, in the context of Professor Lininger’s article, this means battered women’s lives.
Conceptions of moral agency, good, and utility are contextual, and while I don’t endorse relativism, I do recognize that one’s cultural position shapes his or her notions of autonomy, good, and utility. As philosopher Diane Meyers reminds us, Kantian, Rawlsian, and Benthamian conceptions of the self are deeply flawed because they disconnect the self from what forms it. If the self is disaggregated from its social origins, invented, inauthentic theories of the self result. Race, gender, class, and sexual orientation configure the who, the how, and the what of selfhood, and one must constantly resist cultural imperatives that misshape one’s identity.
Indeed, posing the perennial, misguided question of why battered women stay in abusive relationships implies that women remain in homes marked by terror out of either masochism or delusion. Yet women stay in such relationships in part because of cultural conceptions of the good mother or the good woman as someone who subordinates her needs, her desires, and at times her safety in order to”keep the family together.”Kant would tell us that such a response demonstrates moral immaturity. Rawls, while attempting to locate”the good,”would filter out cultural scripts, prodding battered woman and mother alike to rise above such pedestrian concerns. Bentham would not have a clue how to handle this reaction to cultural imperative. …
Read the entire piece here in “See Also,” an online companion to the Texas Law Review!
