Domestic Violence—The Laws and the Courts - Landmark Legal Decisions, Key Domestic Violence Legislation, Filing Charges, The Courts, Differing Responses To Stranger And Nonstranger Crime

Before the 1962 landmark case Self v. Self, when the California Supreme Court ruled that "one spouse may maintain an action against the other for battering," women had no legal recourse against abusive partners. The judicial system had tended to view wife abuse as a matter to be resolved within the family. Maintaining that "a man's home is his castle," the U.S. government traditionally had been reluctant to violate the sanctity of the home. Furthermore, many legal authorities persisted in "blaming the victim," maintaining that the wife was, to some degree, responsible for her own beating by somehow inciting her husband to lose his temper. Yet even after the landmark California case, turning to the judicial system for help was still unlikely to bring assistance to or result in justice for victims of spousal abuse. Jurisdictions throughout the United States continued to ignore the complaints of battered women until the late 1970s.