PASSIONS PROGRESS - MODERN LAW REFORM AND THE PROVOCATION DEFENSE

The Article presents findings from the first systematic study of intim ate homicide cases that raise the heat of passion or provocation defen se. Based on this data, it argues that legal reform has shaped a flawe d image of passionate killing, an image that ignores, and thus partial ly punishes, women's attempts to separate or depart from intimate rela tionships. After examining the standard theories of self-control suppo rting reform's approach, the Article argues that the provocation defen se, in practice, protects something more than the defendant's autonomy . It protects norms about relationships. We have not recognized this, the Article argues, because reform has transformed all of the normativ e questions into questions about reasonable persons, an intellectual s trategy that has kept the law standing still in the face of social cha nge and has led feminists and liberals to talk past each other. Finall y, this Article tackles one of the oldest and most fundamental questio ns about the provocation defense-why it is that the law protects passi on at all-and proposes an answer that seeks to free the law of murder from the veil of relationship at the same time as it acknowledges that there are some passions the law must continue to protect.