Homicide law reform and gender: Configuring violence

Abstract

This article charts aspects of the engagement by formal law reform agencies with feminist ideas in the context of homicide law reform. This requires, of course, a concentration on violence against women. The article uses law reform work on the provocation defence to map the ways in which violence against women was an apparent driver of reform. It has Victorian law reform as its focus, and concentrates on the various manifestations of independent law reform agencies in Victoria – the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC), and its two predecessor agencies, the Law Reform Commission of Victoria (LRCV) and the Law Reform Commissioner. The article explores the thesis that when law reform, at least homicide law reform, is driven by the social context in which the legal phenomenon of interest occurs, one is more likely to get progressive legal change than where reform is driven by legal categories. However, that social context had itself to be configured and the paper briefly traces the identification of ‘domestic violence’ as a social phenomenon.