Faculty Spotlight: Michal Buchhandler-Raphael
Widener Law Commonwealth’s newest faculty member believes that the criminal justice system must provide justice, fairness and compassion not only to offenders but also to their victims.
“Legal scholarship so often focuses on the defendant’s perspective, urging reforms of the criminal justice system – a system largely perceived as suffering from problems of over-enforcement and mass incarceration,” said Professor Michal Buchhandler-Raphael, who joins Widener Law Commonwealth in July as assistant professor.
“My concern is that some categories of crimes are characterized by under-enforcement and a failure to provide justice for victims,” Buchhandler-Raphael said.
Buchhandler-Raphael will teach Evidence in the fall, and Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure in the spring. For the past eight years, she has been a visiting assistant professor at Washington and Lee School of Law in Lexington, Virginia.
Buchhandler-Raphael holds a doctorate in juridical science from the University of Virginia School of Law. She also holds Bachelor of Law and Master’s degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
Things have changed in recent years according to Buchhandler-Raphael. She said that before the “MeToo Movement,” people were skeptical of her scholarship on the sexual abuses of power in professional and institutional settings.
“Now,” Buchhandler-Raphael said, “the idea that seemed revolutionary to people back then – that unwanted acquiescence to sexual demands that is coerced by abuse of power should not be viewed as legal consent -- is gradually gaining traction.”
A prolific scholar notably in the area of criminal law and its intersection with feminist legal theory, Buchhandler-Raphael’s most recent project has focused on exploring the relationship between criminal law and emotions, including anger, fear and compassion.
“My scholarly interests are informed by nine years of working as a criminal attorney providing legal guidance and oversight to investigators with the Israeli National Police,” she said, adding that she was especially frustrated with how difficult it was at that time to bring perpetrators of domestic and sexual assault to justice.
Her legal scholarship continues to emphasize gender-based violence and its implications for women in the criminal justice system, as both victims and perpetrators of crime.
“Currently I am working on a project that focuses on the problem of under-enforcement of crimes of rape and sexual assault, particulalry prosecutors’ refusal to bring criminal charges in many of these cases,” Buchhandler-Rafael said.
She aims to revisit existing thinking on victims’ rights by shifting the focus away from sentencing issues towards a novel, victim-centered approach that promotes perpetrators’ accountability but also respects victims’ choices about whether to pursue criminal prosecution.
Buchhandler-Rafael argument is that states have a duty to protect victims of gender-based violence from harms perpetrated against them by effectively prosecuting perpetrators of these crimes.
“To reconcile these tensions, I try to disentangle questions of incarceration and criminalization. I believe that the goals of criminalization can be met without harsh incarceration policies,” she said.
Buchhandler-Raphael also said that in addition to teaching and continuing her scholarship, she is also excited to embrace, contribute, and enhance all forms of diversity at Widener Law Commonwealth and in the Harrisburg community.
“Professor Buchhandler-Raphael will be a great addition to the law school,” said Dean Christian Johnson. “She brings it all – excellence in teaching, active and innovative scholarship, a global and inclusive perspective, and tremendous energy.”
Buchhandler-Raphael’s articles have been published or are forthcoming in leading general law reviews including the Washington University Law Review, Fordham Law Review, American Law Review, Cardozo Law Review, Florida State Law Review, Brooklyn Law Review and Tennessee Law Review, as well as in Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, Michigan Journal of Gender and Law and others.
Her work has been cited in popular criminal caw casebooks, such as Dressler & Garvey, Criminal Law; Kadish, Schulhofer & Barkow, Criminal Law and Its Processes: Cases and Materials; as well as in leading criminal law treatises, including Wayne R. LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law; and Joshua Dressler, Understanding Criminal Law.
Her experience also includes active military service in the Intelligence Directorate of the Israeli Defense Forces.
Professor Buchhandler-Raphael’s husband is a cardiovascular anesthesiologist. They have two daughters; one is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, the other a junior in high school.
