Home      Login

Abstract: 

James Ptacek, a sociology professor at Suffolk University in Boston, has made a valuable contribution to domestic violence literature in his book “Battered Women in the Courtroom: The Power of Judicial Responses”. His book focuses on only one element of the problem: judicial responses to battered women’s requests for protective orders. His focus is also narrow in time and place: he studied two courts in the Boston area from 1992 to 1994. Yet this narrowness is a major strength of Ptacek’s work. This article summarizes and discusses Ptace3k’s book.

Keywords: behavior of judges towards victims and abusers; universal risk theory

Affiliations:  1: University of Tulsa College of Law.