Public lecture by Prof Sameena Mulla -‘Moynihan Redux: How Courts Theorize Black Families in the Prosecution of Sexual Assault’

This talk traces the ways in which courts continue to frame Black families through the theories of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” a report whose sociological analysis has been debunked and challenged for decades. Professor Mulla shows how it stubbornly persists as a guiding lens within legal frameworks, informing court sentences in the United States.