Teaching Prostitution Seriously

Abstract

This article examines what students learn about prostitution in criminal law courses by reviewing the treatment of prostitution in three criminal law casebooks currently in use in law schools and the teacher’s manuals that accompany them. Criminal law casebooks have undergone change as a result of feminist efforts to reform the criminal justice system. Although feminist legal theory has influenced the treatment of rape and domestic violence in the casebooks, the stereotypical treatment of prostitution remains virtually unchanged. The purpose of this article is to build on earlier feminist efforts and encourage criminal law teachers and casebook authors to recognize the gendered implications of the treatment of prostitution, to take the law of prostitution seriously, and to consider how prostitution implicates a broad range of criminal justice issues. During the last thirty years, feminist legal scholarship and activism have succeeded in making the criminal justice system more responsive to the issue of violence against women. In the area of domestic violence, states have