With regards to the furor over an incident at Cornell where a young coed had "relations" with seven young men while all were highly intoxicated, this Powerline blurb notes that under New York law, voluntary intoxication does not render someone unable to grant consent.
Now this sounds appalling, well...at least to those of us who have never gotten intoxicated to "get up the nerve" to sleep with someone, and...maybe it is indeed the case that a certain portion of sexual assault allegations are indeed....simply people getting intoxicated to get the nerve to do something they otherwise would not have done. The apparent discrepancy between rape rates in anonymous surveys and as reported to police might flow in part from this, and this would also explain the fact that about two thirds of sexual assaults noted on those anonymous surveys involve intoxicated people.
Now what is the proper approach in the law? I'm not sure. Do I want justice for people who are truly victimized while they are intoxicated? Absolutely. Do I know that if a person was drunk at the time, he's going to have suspect memory, and isn't going to be a very good witness? Absolutely.
So I wonder if New York's approach is the right one because it tells all participants that things can really go wrong. Want to have sex with a stranger while drunk? Not only are you risking STDs and unwanted attachments, but if the other person persuades the police that your apparent assent was not real, you get to watch your money disappear by the billable hour.
It's not a perfect system--no system where you're depending on the memories of people who were intoxicated can be anywhere close--but perhaps it has something to say for it.
In related news, the newspaper of record has come up with a foolproof way to avoid being arrested for rape at a ketamine-fueled orgy: don't go to ketamine-fueled orgies. Sounds like someone needs a Nobel Prize for that one.
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