The Violence Against Women Act, and the powerful men who violate women

Some personal recollections

Friends,

The Violence Against Women Act was signed into law by Bill Clinton 30 years ago today, on September 13, 1994. At the time, I was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration.

The Act seeks to protect women against men who are typically physically stronger and often possess resources and status that women do not. As president, Bill Clinton took advantage of a young White House intern. When news of this broke, I was out of the administration, but I was and still am deeply upset by it.

Allow me to go further back, to 1973 — the year I entered Yale Law School, along with Bill Clinton and Clarence Thomas. (Hillary had matriculated the previous year.)

All of us were there when the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade, protecting a pregnant woman’s right over her body, under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

The professors at Yale Law used what you may know as the “Socratic method” — asking hard questions about the cases they were discussing and waiting for students to raise their hands in response, and then criticizing the responses. It was a hair-raising but effective way to learn the law.

One of the principles guiding those discussions is called stare decisis — Latin for “to stand by things decided.” It’s the doctrine of judicial precedent. If a court has already ruled on an issue (say, on reproductive rights), the principle says future courts should decide similar cases the same way.

Supreme Courts can change their minds and rule differently than they did before, but they need good reasons to do so, and it helps if their opinion is unanimous or nearly so. Otherwise their rulings appear (and are) arbitrary — even, shall we say, partisan?

In those classroom discussions a half-century ago, Hillary’s hand was always the first in the air. When she was called upon, she gave perfect answers — whole paragraphs, precisely phrased. She distinguished one case from another, using precedents and stare decisis to guide her thinking. I was awed.

My hand was in the air about half the time, and when called on, my answers were meh.

Clarence’s hand was never in the air. I don’t recall him saying anything, ever.

Bill was never in class.

As I write this, one of us sits on the Supreme Court.

***

Confirmation hearings on George H.W. Bush’s nomination of Thomas to the Supreme Court were held in October 1991.

Anita Hill, who had worked for Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee — then headed by Delaware Senator Joe Biden — about the sexual harassment she endured from Thomas.

Facing a Senate committee comprised entirely of white men, Hill, a Black woman, recounted many raunchy sexist remarks made by Thomas.

Her claims were often dismissed by the committee members. “You testified this morning, in response to Senator Biden, that the most embarrassing question involved — and this is not too bad — women’s large breasts,” then-Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter said to Hill at one point. “That is a word we use all the time.”

Other Republicans called her “a little nutty, a little slutty.”

But Hill did not back down.

In the end, though, Thomas’s nomination was confirmed.

I got to know Anita Hill in the late 1990s when we were both professors at Brandeis University. Her office was next to mine.

I’ve met few people over the course of my life with more humility, intelligence, and integrity than she has. I don’t have a scintilla of doubt that what she told the committee about her harassment by Thomas was true.

Hill has devoted her scholarship and activism to the cause of stopping sexual harassment. The data she has gathered — on children in elementary schools who are bullied and sexually harassed, university students who are sexually assaulted, sexual harassment in the workplace, sexual assault by athletic coaches and doctors, and harassment and assault inside people’s homes — is chilling.

The #MeToo movement exposed some of this — rapes, assaults, and sexual extortion in the entertainment industry and elsewhere.

But our society is still averting its eyes. Ten million people are victimized by an intimate partner every year in this country. Many become homeless as a result.

Meanwhile, one out of three women of childbearing age now resides in a state that effectively bars them from having an abortion.

The Violence Against Women Act provided victims of gender-motivated violence the right to sue their attackers in federal court. The Act also provided $1.6 billion toward investigation and the prosecution of violent crimes against women, imposed automatic and mandatory restitution on those convicted, and allowed civil redress when prosecutors chose to not prosecute cases.

In 2000, in a case titled United States v. Morrison, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision — including Thomas’s concurring opinion — held that key parts of the act were unconstitutional because they exceeded the powers granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause.

Violence against women, the court assumed, was a “domestic” problem whose reach did not extend beyond state lines. Therefore, it could not be a federal crime. The court did not explain why.

In 2018, Christine Blasey Ford appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee with detailed allegations of sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The outcome was the same as the Senate’s response to the allegations of sexual harassment by Thomas: Kavanaugh was confirmed.

In 2022, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and three of their colleagues decided to reverse Roe and violate stare decisis. None gave a coherent argument for why.

On this 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act, it’s also important to acknowledge that the Republican nominee for president of the United States has repeatedly harassed and abused women, been found liable for rape in a civil lawsuit, and appointed three of the justices who joined Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito in reversing Roe.