If A hits B, the law that will be used against A seems to vary based on A’s prior history with B. Why is that?
(Prompted by a discussion where the person I was talking with said, essentially, assault is assault and battery is battery, so we should have one set of laws for threatening and violent behavior short of homicide.)
For much of American legal history, husbands could do anything they wanted with their wives. There was no such thing as raping one’s wife, nor was most other abuse considered anything of the legal system’s business. I thought that spousal protection laws were enacted specifically to overcome this history and show that violence could not be protected by marriage. The wiki page on marital rape contains a brief summary of this history, and extends it to other countries’ history.
Today we recognize that abuse can go either way, of course, and the U.S. laws are applied against men and women. Thinking on this subject has evolved dramatically.
Exapno Mapcase: I knew my OP was a bit light.
I, of course, realize the history involved, but is that it? Is that the only reason spousal and partner abuse forms its own little section of American law?
I was wondering why someone as usually knowledgeable as you asked this question, but I’ve given up thinking anybody knows anything about history. 
I’d say that any state or jurisdiction of the “United States of America” (sic) that has separate spousal/partner abuse laws, also has separate penalties for them , and perhaps separate mention of them in guidelines, regulations, “howto”'s of all sorts…
Wow. Coming from you, this is high praise. 
I suppose I’m tired, but I can only think of one other reason: If partner abuse (inclusive of spousal abuse) is handled specially, the legislature has a freer hand to attach riders like mandatory arrest provisions, the ability to prosecute without the consent of the victim, and other things that are needed on a pragmatic level to ensure the societal goal of putting abusive scum behind bars. So, without my having to do research others can do off the top of their heads, are such things common enough to reasonably say that’s a common reason for the laws to be distinct?
Because your spouse/partner/child/adult dependant is someone you’re specifically required and, in the case of spouse/partner, have specifically agreed to, take care of.
Beating up someone for whom you’re supposed to be the primary caretaker is viewed as different from beating up someone you don’t know from Adam, someone that you’re not required to take care of.
There are jurisdictions in which the ability to prosecute any supposed crime relies on the judiciary whether the supposed victims and witnesses agree to testify or not and despite the supposed victims having recanted a complaint - it isn’t limited to domestic abuse. In those locations where this ability is limited to certain crimes, it’s limited to those crimes where history shows that victims are highly likely to either have Stockholm syndrome or receive threats they have reason to believe (organized crime, terrorism).
Is it actually the case in the US that separate laws are used to prosecute domestic abusers? In Ireland, there are a whole range of special *civil *remedies available to battered spouses/partners, but the actual criminal law that’s applied is just the ordinary assault law.
I can’t think of any reason why a special criminal law would be needed to allow for mandatory prosecutions; this could be achieved just by a law or policy specifying that the consent of the victim isn’t needed for prosecution to take place. Although, and this is something of a separate debate, there are strong arguments against such policies and a lot of victims’ advocates and feminists oppose them.
I believe it is because the propensity for further continued violence is higher than a simple assault or battery on a stranger, random person, or any person one does not live with (or share a child with).
And, on a related note, the victim is often in a situation of financial or emotional dependence towards the offender.
Also, the domestic violence laws often try to cover psychological violence, which doesn’t happen often in a random mugging.
That’s how it used to be in Spain (relevant parts of the Criminal Code included “domestic situation” as an agravante, adding sentence time), but now we have a separate Law About Gender Violence which wasn’t even written properly according to our procedures (it left unclear many details which have been clarified via Ministerial Orders or even police internal procedures). Personally I think global solutions are better and that one should follow the damn procedures, but IANAL, much less a Socialist politician.
The reason depends very much on the particular law and system in place to address it.
For instance some laws are more intended to ensure that police and courts will intervene, as traditionally they tended to view it as ‘private’ and needing a different intervention to public violence, ie a punch is a punch rather than a family punch being a ‘tiff’ and not needing intervention.
Alternatively some laws were designed to make it easier for the victim to report, because they didnt want it to transfer directly to a prison sentence, ie the focus was on ceasing the violent behaviour rather than on punishment, because victims were too reluctant to report otherwise, or people didnt want to ‘break up families’. Eg intervention orders or the like.
Others were to treat the issue as partially ‘psychological’ ie for there to be treatment as an option, or viewing it as a ‘couples’ issue while stranger related violence would be viewed more as instrumental, ie they had a wallet. Ie that the victim had some responsibility for the behaviour occurring in family violence situations, so both would be sent to couples therapy which would never occur in stranger violence situations even if both parties were violent.
Others were based on the view that domestic violence is not based on a single behaviour such as hitting, and instead is a constellation of behaviours having an overall outcome on the victim, which traditional stranger related violence laws are not designed for.
Some of these reasons could be argued to be obsolete, others not. It depends on the theory in use for why violence occurs in the first place, and the current societal attitudes in place.
Otara
Are they usually different laws- or is it only that the police/prosecutors are required to treat the incidents in a particular way? I can’t think of a law in my state that is written specifically to apply to domestic violence incidents - assault is assault and stalking is stalking no matter who the victim and the perpetrator are. How the police handle it may be different- if they show up to a domestic dispute and there is evidence of assault, they must arrest the perpetrator where they may not be required to do so if a bar fight leaves the same evidence.
Some names you get to recognize for the good work they do. And thanks in return. 
Would any of the many recent articles on gay marriage cover this kind of history, something that gay couples would have been excluded from in the past? That might be a way to start.
Adding speculation to the foregoing: abuse is grounds for divorce, to the chagrin of many. Maybe having laws about domestic violence specifically helps stremaline the paperwork involved?
also perhaps because of children in the household
Some of it is probably the cohabitation situation. Beating up a guy at the bar is one thing, beating up someone who has to expend money and/or effort to not sleep in the same place as the one who assaulted them – even potentially having to put themselves in danger in order to bring their own property with them is another.
Of course, that raises the question about why roommate violence isn’t treated the same as intimate partner violence. (Unless it is in some areas?) I guess it’s especially aggravated if you’re married because of the time/money/effort that has to be expended to legally separate yourself and your property from that person.
In Spain it’s one of the agravantes (items which make a crime or fault more serious) under the assault, injuries, insults etc. parts of the Criminal Code.
One unintended consequence of the new Spanish law and one of the items which needed clarification is that it was so completely focused on “male-SO on female-SO-or-ex” violence that other situations which had previously fallen under the heading of “domestic violence” would not, if the previous law was to be considered to be completely superseded by the new one. Going by the literal wording of the new law, a same-sex couple, a pair of roomies or an uncle and nephew beating each other up didn’t count as a “special case” any more, where previously same-sex couples, other family situations or roomies were covered. Police procedurals indicate to ignore that specific bit of wording. And this law came once we already had SSM! :smack: What, gay couples don’t fight and lesbians don’t call each other names?
If it’s a sex crime there is generally a separate statutory provision due to the ubiquitous-until-recently spousal rape exception EM referenced. For strictly violent domestic crimes the normal assault and battery provisions are applied, for the most part. Florida, weirdly, has a separate provision for domestic battery by strangulation but all other domestic battery is charged under the general battery statute.
Note, however, that the laws specifying the relevant police procedures and whether the accused must be incarcerated are different.
The emotional dependence (and financial, I suppose) maks for a much more interesting situation. I recall a case in Toronto around 1970 where a pair of police were arresting a husband for beating his wife. He’d been beating the crap out of her, so even in the dark ages of 1970 they were going to arrest him. She jumped on the back of one of the officers, grabbed his gun, and shot the policeman dead.
The dynamics of spousal / domestic violence don’t match the standard bar-fight pattern. they can be incredibly complex. We get not just refusal to testify, we get spouses outright lying to cover being abused. we get situations where the violence will continue and likely escalate if not stopped, and then there’s the likelihood the violence will be passed on to children, both as victims and as a learning experence for the next generation.
Assault is assault, but the situation and consequences can be very different between a bar fight and spousal abuse. Whether it needs a separate law, or simply different guidelines on how to handle the situation - it does need special recognition.