Summary: Professors from both Harvard and Yale Law Schools are asking that rape law continue to be taught in classrooms.
Rape law is being removed from law school curricula across the country, but students and professors from Harvard Law School and Yale Law are working to keep the difficult subject in the classroom, according to The Yale Daily News.
A discussion forum was held on February 4 at Harvard where two professors stressed how important it is to keep rape law in the curricula.
Rape law is taught in many criminal law and evidence classes at Yale Law School.
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Law professor James Whitman teaches rape law in his criminal law class. He said that there is no policy about teaching rape law since professors make up their own class curricula.
Claire Simonich will graduate from the law school in 2016. She said rape law was part of the curricula in her criminal law class last semester.
“Yale Law School could use more classes in gender-based violence and that deal with rape, and there is a big group of students pushing this,” she said. “Some members of the administration have been responsive to us, and it sounds like they’re trying to bring in someone to teach gender-based violence next year.”
Karlanna Lewis will graduate this spring from the law school. She said she learned about rape law when taking an evidence class.
To read more about Yale Law School, click here.
“People are sometimes more delicate than they need to be because they’re trying to avoid making anyone offended,” she said. “I think people are just hesitant because you don’t want to talk about it too much so that people feel this isn’t a safe space to learn.”
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Source: Yale Daily News