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James T. McHugh, "Traumatic Developments: Contractual Theory of Rape In America", Feminist Legal Studies Vol III/2 [1995], 237-247: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's 1994 affirmation of a 1992 Pennsylvania Superior Court's appellate ruling in the case of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Robert A. Berkowitz provides a stunning confirmation of the applicability of "sexual contract" theory to an actual judicial system. Berkowitz's conviction of rape was overturned, despite the fact that the survivor repeatedly said "no" throughout the incident. The courts ruled that Pennsylvania law decrees that rape occurs in the absence of "forcible compulsion." The courts determined that the fact that the survivor resisted verbally, but not physically, indicated a lack of such "compulsion" and implying the survivor's willingness to engage in this sexual "transaction." This case is noteworthy because of the way that it reveals that Pennsylvania' s rape statute (as well as similar statutes in many other American states) treats this crime in such a manner that its principles appear to be drawn from the common law of contracts and the federal Uniform Commercial Code, rather than from criminal law and state criminal codes. It provides, therefore, a uniquely vivid substantiation of the body of scholarship (including the seminal works of Susan Brownmiller and Carol Pateman) that has asserted the presence of a "sexual contract" which male dominated societies have imposed upon their respective legal systems.

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