Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Question of Evil and Feminist Legal Scholarship

  • Published:
Feminist Legal Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this article, we argue that feminist legal scholars should engage directly and explicitly with the question of evil. Part I summarises key facts surrounding the prosecution and life-long imprisonment of Myra Hindley, one of a tiny number of women involved in multiple killings of children in recent British history. Part II reviews a range of commentaries on Hindley, noting in particular the repeated use of two narratives: the first of these insists that Hindley is an icon of female evil; the second, less popular one, seeks to position her as a victim. In Part III, the article broadens out and we explain why we think feminist legal scholars should look at the question of evil. In large part, the emphasis is on anticipating the range of possible objections to this argument, and on trying to answer these objections by showing how a focus on evil might benefit feminist legal thinking – specifically in relation to the categories of perpetrator and victim and, more generally, in relation to laws motivated by a desire to secure women’s human rights.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Arendt H., (1994). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin, Harmondsworth

    Google Scholar 

  • Ballinger A., (2000). Dead Woman Walking: Executed Women in England and Wales 1900–1955. Ashgate, Aldershot

    Google Scholar 

  • Bar On B.-A., (2003). “Terrorism, Evil, and Everyday Depravity”. Hypatia 18:157–163

    Google Scholar 

  • Bell C., Fox M., (1996). “Telling Stories of Women Who Kill”. Social & Legal Studies 5:471–494

    Google Scholar 

  • Bell V., (2005). “On the Critique of Secular Ethics: An Essay with Flannery O’Connor and Hannah Arendt”. Theory, Culture & Society 22/2:1–27

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benhabib S., (1992). Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. Polity, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Bernstein R., (2005). The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion Since 9/11. Blackwell, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Birch H., (1993). “If Looks Could Kill: Myra Hindley and the Iconography of Evil”. In: Birch H., (eds) Moving Targets: Women, Murder and Representation. Virago, London, pp. 32–61

    Google Scholar 

  • Bottomley, A., (2004) “Shock to Thought: An Encounter (of a Third Kind) with Legal Feminism”, Feminist Legal Studies 12/1:29–65

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler J., (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discourses Limits of Sex. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler J., (2004). Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. Verso, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Cameron D., Fraser E., (1987). The Lust To Kill. Polity, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, B., “Look Beyond that Menacing Stare”, Independent on Sunday (17 November 2002).

  • Card C., (2002). The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil. OUP, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Charlesworth H., Chinkin C., (2000). The Boundaries of International Law: A Feminist Analysis. Manchester UP, Manchester

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen S., (2001). States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering. Polity, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Collier R., (1997). “After Dunblane: Crime, Corporeality, and the (Hetero-)Sexing of the Bodies of Men”. Journal of Law & Society 24:177–198

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collier R., (1998). Masculinities, Crime and Criminology. Sage, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Connolly W., (2000). “Refashioning the Secular”. In:Butler J., Guillory J., Thomas K., (eds) What’s Left of Theory?. Routledge, New York, pp. 157–191

    Google Scholar 

  • Douglas M., (1966). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Conceptions of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Fraser D., (2005). Law after Auschwitz: Towards a Jurisprudence of the Holocaust. Carolina Academic Press, Durham, NC

    Google Scholar 

  • Frum D., Perle R., (2003). An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. Random House, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gurnham D., (2003). “The Moral Narrative of Criminal Responsibility and the Principled Justification of Tariffs for Murder: Myra Hindley and Thompson and Venables”. Legal Studies 23:605–623

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halley J., (2004). “Take a Break from Feminism?”. In: Knop K., (eds) Gender and Human Rights. OUP, Oxford, pp. 57–82

    Google Scholar 

  • Hawkins, C., “The Monster Body of Myra Hindley”, Scan Journal of Media Arts Culture 1/3 (November 2004). [http://scan.net.au/]

  • Hudson B., (2003). Justice in the Risk Society: Challenging and Reaffirming Justice in Late Modernity. Sage, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Jamieson R., (1999). “Genocide and the Social Production of Immorality”. Theoretical Criminology 3:131–146

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jewkes Y., (2004). Media & Crime. Sage, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson P.H., (1967). On Iniquity: Some Personal Reflections Arising Out of the Moors Murders. Macmillan, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Kapur R., (2002). “The Tragedy of Victimization Rhetoric: Resurrecting the ‘Native’ Subject in International/Post-colonial Feminist Legal Rhetoric”. Harvard Human Rights Law Journal 15:1–38

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy D., (2004). The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism. Princeton UP, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy H., (1992). Eve Was Framed: Women and British Justice. Chatto & Windus, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirsta A., (1994). Deadlier Than The Male. Harper Collins, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Levi P., (1989). The Drowned and the Saved. Vintage, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • McNay L., (2000). Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory. Polity, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • McNay L., (2003). “Having it Both Ways: The Incompatibility of Narrative Identity and Communicative Ethics in Feminist Thought”. Theory, Culture & Society 20/6:1–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Masters, B., “The Other Side of Evil”, Independent on Sunday (17 November 2002).

  • Mendieta, E., Review of ed. M.P. Lara, Rethinking Evil: Contemporary Perspectives, Hypatia 18/2 (2003), 208–213.

  • Millbank J., (1996). “From Butch to Butcher’s Knife: Film, Crime and Lesbian Sexuality”. Sydney Law Review 18:451–473

    Google Scholar 

  • Millbank J., (2004). “It’s About This: Lesbians, Prison, Desire”. Social & Legal Studies 13:155–190

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morrissey B., (2002). “Crises of Representation, or Why Don’t Feminists Talk About Myra?”. Australian Feminist Law Journal 16:109–131

    Google Scholar 

  • Morrissey B., (2003). When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Neiman S., (2001). “What’s the Problem of Evil?”. In: Lara M.P., (eds) Rethinking Evil: Contemporary Perspectives. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 27–45

    Google Scholar 

  • Neiman S., (2002). Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy. Princeton UP, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Orford A., (2003). Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law. CUP, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Padfield, N., “Tariffs in Murder Cases”, Criminal Law Review (2002), 192–204.

  • Razack S.H., (2004). Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism. Toronto UP, Toronto

    Google Scholar 

  • Ritchie J., (1988). Myra Hindley: Inside the Mind of a Murderess. Angus & Robertson, London

    Google Scholar 

  • San Roque M., (1999). “Popular Trials/Criminal Fictions/Celebrity Feminism and the Bernardo/Homolka Case”. Australian Feminist Law Journal 13:38–65

    Google Scholar 

  • Schone J., (2000). “The Hardest Case of All: Myra Hindley, Life Sentences, and the Rule of Law”. International Journal of the Sociology of Law 28:273–289

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schott, R.M., ed. Special Issue on “Feminist Philosophy and the Problem of Evil”, Hypatia 18/1 (2003a).

  • Schott, R.M., ed. “Feminist Philosophy and the Problem of Evil, Part II”, Hypatia 18/2 (2003b), 152–226.

  • Smart C., (1999). “A History of Ambivalence and Conflict in the Discursive Construction of the ‘Child Victim’ of Sexual Abuse”. Social & Legal Studies 8:391–409

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stanford, P., “Myra Hindley”, The Guardian (16 November 2002).

  • Storrs E., (2004). “‘Our Scapegoat’: An Exploration of Media Representations of Myra Hindley and Rosemary West”. Theology & Sexuality 11:9–28

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Symposium, “Claudia Card’s Atrocity Paradigm”, Hypatia 19 (2004), 184–220.

  • Trunk I., (1996). Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation. Nebraska UP, Lincoln

    Google Scholar 

  • Winter J., (2002). “The Truth Will Out? The Role of Judicial Advocacy and Gender in Verdict Construction”. Social & Legal Studies 11:343–367

    Google Scholar 

  • Wykes M., (1998). “A Family Affair: Sex, the Press and the Wests”. In: Carter C., Branston G., Allan S., (eds) News, Gender and Power. Routledge, London, pp. 233–247

    Google Scholar 

  • Young A., (1996). Imagining Crime: Textual Outlaws and Criminal Conversations. Sage, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Young I.M., (2003). “The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State”. Signs 29:1–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zizek, S., “Against the Double Blackmail”, The Nation (21 May 1999).

Download references

Acknowledgments

Our thanks to David Fraser and the anonymous FLS reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Law, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, England

    Thérèse Murphy

  2. Law School, University of Strathclyde, 173 Cathedral St., Glasgow, G4 0RQ, Scotland

    Noel Whitty

Authors
  1. Thérèse Murphy
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Noel Whitty
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thérèse Murphy.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Murphy, T., Whitty, N. The Question of Evil and Feminist Legal Scholarship. Feminist Legal Stud 14, 1–26 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-006-9012-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-006-9012-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation