Through her scholarship and her teaching, she made it possible for women in abusive relationships to claim self-defense when fighting back.
Holly Maguigan, a law professor who drew on her years as a criminal defense lawyer to revolutionize the legal tools available to women who defend themselves against abusive partners, died on Nov. 15 in Manhattan. She was 78.
Her husband, Abdeen Jabara, said she died in a hospital from cardiac arrest.
When Ms. Maguigan started practicing law, in the early 1970s, women with physically abusive partners had almost no recourse in the criminal justice system.
The police rarely investigated their claims but were quick to arrest them if they fought back. More frequently than they do today, juries and the public tended to blame the victim, asking why she didn’t simply leave the relationship or flee an attack.
Those attitudes began to change in the late 1970s and early ’80s, a cultural shift reflected in a series of books and movies — like the 1980 book “The Burning Bed” (and the 1984 made-for-TV movie based on it), about a wife who kills her abusive husband — that gave voice to women suffering decades of violence.