Law and Non-Legal Entitlements: Kate Manne’s Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women

LESLEY WEXLER

Illinois law professor Lesley Wexler comments on philosopher Kate Manne’s recent book, Entitled, in which Mann tackles “privileged men’s sense of entitlement” as a “pervasive social problem with often devastating consequences.” Wexler praises Manne’s work as “illuminating” and calls upon lawyers and law scholars to ask how such entitlements might best and safely be challenged and reallocated, and how new more egalitarian entitlements might be generated and enforced.

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Commonwealth v. Adams

Docket: SJC-12709

Opinion Date: September 9, 2020

Judge: Gaziano

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law

The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed Defendant's conviction, after a second jury trial, as a joint venturer in vaginal and anal rapes committed by his two coventurers, holding that subjecting Defendant to a second trial did not violate the constitutional protection against double jeopardy. Defendant was indicted on nine counts of forcible rape of a child. Defendant was charged as a principal in three of the rape counts and a joint venturer in three other counts. After a jury trial, Defendant was acquitted on the counts in which he was charged as a principal and all counts alleging oral rape where he had been charged as a joint venturer. The jury was unable to reach a verdict with respect to the remaining counts. At the retrial, the Commonwealth introduced the results of additional DNA tests conducted on the clothing the victim had been wearing. After a second jury trial, Defendant was convicted as a joint venturer in vaginal and anal rapes. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the convictions, holding (1) there was no error in retrying Defendant; and (2) the additional DNA evidence should not have been introduced at the second trial, but the error did not prejudice Defendant.