Mark Fuller Practiced the Doctrine of Chastisement on Wife Kelli Fuller On August 9, 2014, Mark Fuller practiced the old doctrine of chastisement on his wife Kelli. Chastisement was a once protected legal doctrine under which a husband could physically punish a defiant wife, as long as her injuries weren’t permanent. As Margaret Talbot points out in the New Yorker article below, this doctrine held sway in Anglo-American common law until the mid-nineteenth century. By then, the authoritarian notion of marriage was giving way to the idea that a husband’s dominion over his wife and children shouldn’t be physically enforced, and wife-beating was increasingly seen as brutal and low-class. In fact, one of the first states to rescind the right of chastisement was Alabama, in 1871, in a case called Fulgham v. State. “The wife is not to be considered as the husband’s slave,” the State Supreme Court held. “And the privilege, ancient though it be, to beat her with a stick, to pull her hair, choke her, spit in her face or kick her about the floor, or to inflict upon her like indignities, is not now acknowledged by our law.” Apparently, Mark Fuller, who prides himself on being called a respected federal judge, didnt get the message that beating your wife, spitting on her, pulling her hair out, slamming her to the floor, and kicking her while she is down, was outlawed in 1871. Now that legalized chastisement has been banned for 143 years in Alabama, we will see if the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee resurrects a new de facto form of chastisement by their inaction in Fullers case. Somebody please send this neanderthal thug back to Enterprise, or wherever he came from. He is 143 years behind the times.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 16:28:09 +0000
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