Point/Counterpoint on the Crime Victims’ Rights Amendment:
Responses to key objections raised by opponents.

by Steve Twist

Letter from 5 Republican Law Professors
Statement in Opposition, July 11, 2003

1. “We have no doubt that the law should protect crime victims, and the laws of all states do in considerable measure do that.”

Simply put, the evidence reveals that the laws of all states “in considerable measure” do not “protect victims.” Justice Department studies have reached this conclusion and victims’ stories support this conclusion.

2. “But it seems to us that the matter should be left precisely there: in the states.”

The leave it to the states approach condemns crime victims to second-class status, where victims’ rights always exist in the shadow of the defendant’s superior rights and the government’s unrestrained power.

• No government should refuse to tell a battered woman when her batterer is given a release hearing or is released.
• No government should silence a battered woman on the matter of the defendant’s release or her safety.
• No government should exclude the parents of a murdered child from the courtroom during the public trial of those accused of the murder.
• No government should force a victim to stand silent during the sentencing of her attacker, unable to offer an opinion on the sentence.
• No government should silence the parent of a murdered child when the murderer is given a plea bargain.
• No government should force crime victims to endure years of delays without any consideration for their interests.
• No government should ignore a woman, raped and beaten and left for dead, when she makes a just claim for restitution from her attacker.
• No government should deny crime victims the right to stand in court and seek their rights.

Federalism exists to advance liberty. Federalism is preserved and the cause of liberty is advanced, when rights are written into the Constitution. When James Madison first proposed the Bill of Rights, he was met with criticism that the proposed amendments claimed were unnecessary, especially so in the United States, because states had bills of rights. Madison responded with the observation that "not all states have bills of rights, and some of those that do have inadequate and even 'absolutely improper' ones."

Our experience in the victims' rights movement is no different. Not all states have constitutional rights, nor even adequate statutory rights. There are 33 state constitutional amendments of varying degrees of value. Madison knew that only the U. S. Constitution had the power to change culture. By including the Bill of Rights in the Constitution, Madison correctly observed, “ the Constitution will have a tendency to impress some degree of respect for [the rights], to establish the public opinion in their favor, and rouse the attention of the whole community . . . as [they] acquire, by degrees, the character of fundamental maxims. . . as they become incorporated with the national sentiment . . . ."

3. “... where fundamental human rights are in imminent jeopardy, the Constitution might need to be amended to provide a national standard.”

The 5 Law Professors may not think that “fundamental human rights are in imminent jeopardy” when the government denies to a woman the right to speak at her batterer’s release hearing, or when it excludes the parents of a murdered child from a public proceeding, or in any of the other circumstances the amendment would address, but before they make this observation final they might want to talk to crime victims who have been treated this way by their government.

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