The book explores how claims of rights for battered women have emerged from feminist activism. It assesses the possibilities and limitations of feminist legal advocacy to improve battered women’s lives and transform law and culture. It chronicles the struggle to incorporate feminist arguments into law, especially in cases of battered women who are mothers. Feminist lawmaking is a vehicle for social change. The book examines subjects as wide ranging as criminal prosecution of batterers, the civil rights remedy of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, the O.J. Simpson trials, and a class on battered women and the law taught by the author at Harvard Law School. Notes and Indexes