Victims deserve the best: Victims' rights and the decline of the liberal consensus

The liberal consensus that dominated post-World War 2 politics has declined. Elements of the consensus in decline include a faith in expert knowledge, doubts concerning the universal benefits of unregulated capitalism and the possibility of socioeconomic mobility, and a robust conception of an interconnected society. These elements have been dislodged by a faith in personal experience as a guide for policy-making, the celebration of unregulated capitalism, a belief socioeconomic mobility, and the promotion of the traditional family as the true guarantor of socioeconomic viability, not government.;The victims' rights movement arose concurrently with the liberal consensus's decline. Its main goal was to insert victims of crime into the criminal justice process. As a result of the victims' rights movement, victims can now participate in sentencing hearings, prosecutorial decisions, and parole hearings. In addition, participants in the victims' rights movement are instrumental in advocating for the passage of tough-on-crime legislation.;The victims' rights movement buttressed four elements of the attacks on the liberal consensus. First, it elevated the traditional family over other forms of socioeconomic relations, displacing them from the primacy the liberal consensus accorded them. Second, by maximizing victim-input in both the criminal justice and legislative processes, it valorized an experience-based expertise. Third, it denigrated a conception of an interconnected society by elevating the needs of individual victims of those of society. Finally, by making political stars out of previously unknown victims, it presented a picture of American socioeconomic mobility.;This dissertation links these four developments of victims' rights to the decline of the liberal consensus. It also looks at how responses to domestic violence initially accorded with the liberal consensus by providing material support for victims, and how this response has been marginalized by the victims' rights movement. It concludes by examining the ways an alternative conception of responding to victimization, restorative justice, which focuses on dialog rather than violence, complements the liberal consensus's tenets.