Criminal Judgements and Judicial Work in Cases of Violence against Women Creative Critical Legal Analysis

Abstract

This case study is a critical feminist legal analysis questioning the myth of gender neutrality of the law by exposing the naturalized and therefore hidden gender implications embedded in contemporary legal practice in Hungary. The special focus of my research is legal measures and court practices in the area of violence against women, a study of criminal judgments and judgment writing in contemporary Hungary. In order to expose practices that are worrisome from a feminist point of view and to name the major dilemmas in my primary sources, the texts of court judgments, I approach these texts in an interpretative manner, by doing a form of qualitative text analysis called critical discourse analysis (CDA). As the texts I work with (court judgments) are products of the world of law, I can also adopt a method used by feminist legal criticism called feminist judgment writing. This practice provides guidelines to the discourse analysis of legal judgments, as it dispels the myth of the unbiased, neutral judge, which is widely believed (and promoted). It exposes how certain interpretative frameworks and discourses are embedded in the legal texts in and through the sentencing activities of judges. The study gives an overview of the five court cases I have analyzed and gives a picture of the extent and forms of attitudes and biases related to gender present in Hungarian courts today, as well as legal solutions and tools to make them visible.