Recently a Bri-tish judge sentenced a battered woman to life imprisonment for murder. After years of abuse her husband told her he would kill her. She waited until he was asleep, then shot him. About the same time another man who strangled his wife after she`d nagged him for two hours faced another British judge, also male. Pronouncing this not murder, but only manslaughter, the judge sentenced the killer to probation, declaring he`d already suffered enough.
Why this difference in the two sentences? Each judge followed the law as he saw it. The differ-ence is in the innate sex bias of both British and American law.
During 49 years of law prac-tice I have noticed laws that look neutral and impartial can create grave injustice when applied to women, who are weaker both physically and financially than men.
The men of our single-sex legislatures are not cruel. Secure in their superior physical strength, they simply do not perceive the terror and hopeless-ness of a trapped woman as a factor to be considered.
We now have the chance to even this grievous imbalance. Many judges are on the ballot this spring. Only a few women serve as judges now, but many women from both parties are running. With more women judges of whatever party, the gender bias in the law, seemingly imperceptible to men, can grad-ually be reinterpreted through the more sensitive innate perceptions of women judges.
