On Roe, Alito cites a judge who treated women as witches and property

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

In his recently leaked draft majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. presents what he sees as his most convincing arguments for permitting legislatures to ban abortion. So what is the best Alito can do? One of his prominent strategies is to repeatedly quote and discuss someone he describes as a “great” and “eminent” legal authority, Sir Matthew Hale.

Most Americans have probably never heard of Hale, an English judge and lawyer who lived from 1609 to 1676. Hale was on the bench so long ago that his judgeship included presiding over a witchcraft trial where he sentenced two “witches” to death.

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Hale was not writing for women, who were excluded from the legal profession and judiciary. But he had much to say about women. For example, his pronouncements on rape were bedrocks of American law for generations, and their influence persists.

Hale believed that authorities should distrust women who reported having been raped. In his mind, rape was “an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent.” Judges and lawyers endlessly quoted Hale’s canard well into the second half of the 20th century. Echoes of Hale’s suspicion of women still reverberate in American law and culture, helping rapists avoid punishment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/09/alito-roe-sir-matthew-hale-misogynist/