Stephanie's Law
 

Video voyeurism became a felony Monday with the signing of Stephanie's Law. The law allows for punishment up to seven years in jail for videotaping a person in a private setting such as a changing room or bathroom. Stephanie Fuller lobbied for the law after a camera was installed in her bedroom... The law also places offenders on the Meghan?s law list of convicted sex offenders in New York state." ? Rochester R News (US)

Setting aside the validity of the law itself, you can't help but wonder about this practice of naming laws after victims ? Stephanie's Law, Meghan's Law. On one hand, how does the victim (or the victim's survivors) feel about it? Is it empowering to think that your name is being invoked in the name of justice? Or is it humiliating to have your victimization dragged before the public every time a similar event happens? After all, the name is in the possessive ? not the Stephanie Fuller Law but Stephanie's Law ? which makes it seem as though Stephanie herself is violated by every transgression. You're not just breaking a law, you're violating Stephanie, over and over and over again. What's more, it's not a name like the Monroe Doctrine or the Heimlich Maneuver or Fermat's Last Theorem. It's not a testament to some kind of achievement but rather the recollection of a rape, murder, or victimization. Doesn't it just bring back painful memories? Or to the contrary, does it make you feel as though you're getting revenge (and not just on the criminal who violated you, but on everyone who violates another person in the same way)?

And what about the constitutionality of this naming practice? Doesn't it lend a partiality to the law? Doesn't it add an element of hysteria? If the law were called the Video Voyeurism Statute, the name would be both descriptive and neutral. But when it is called Stephanie's Law, it invokes prior horrors, it gives the law a kind of mascot ? Stephanie ? and the attendant fear that the mascot will appear on talk shows and news reels if prosecutors aren't sufficiently aggressive in their pursuit of offenders. Someone should do a study: are you more likely of being convicted if you're accused of breaking Stephanie's Law than you are if you're accused of violating the Video Voyeurism Statute?

http://www.rnews.com/Story.cfm?ID=11..._story_type=18