Joe Biden biography by Jules Witcover: on Families & Children

Joe Biden: 1991: VAWA is about civil rights, not divorce law

In 1991 Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist appointed a four-judge committee to appraise the push for a Violence Against Women Act. It challenged classifying such violence as a civil rights offense and warned that the federal caseload might be so increased as to cause "major state-federal jurisdictional problems and disruptions."

Biden angrily wrote to the committee: "The bill does not federalize divorce law or domestic relations cases any more than any other civil rights law does." But Rehnquist wrote that the bill "is so open-ended and the new private right of action so sweeping that the legislation would involve the federal courts in a host of domestic relations disputes."

William Rehnquist: 1991: Violence Against Women Act federalizes divorce law