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The Summary of the Research on

Gender Bias in Thai Supreme Courtûs Decision
Judicial Colloquium Workshop
25-27 October 2007 at Chiangmai, Thailand
Presented by Asst.Professor Somchai Preechasinlapakun
Dean of Law Faculty, Chiang Mai University

________________________

1. Introduction
In Thailand, it is widely believed that the court decisions are straight › forward exercises of
rationality and legal logics free from personal value. Court decisions are neutral, no gender
bias in their decisions. This is conventional belief it is therefore understandable why Thai

lawyers, including academics, have been paying little attention to analyze Thai court decisions.
The role of the court is similar to legal machines.

My study is to raise the question on the mainstream belief by looking into court decisions in the
crime of rape during the past 50 years so as to find how the court define what consensual
or forced sex is, and what factors lead to the reduction or increase of punishment.

2. How Thai Court Interprets çConsensual Sexé on the Rape Case.

Although rape is a crime under Thai criminal code, the courtûs reasoning on what constitute rape
is still problematic.

Consent is very important issue in the courtûs consideration in the rape case. In most cases, male
defendant usually claimed that woman agreed to engage in sexual activity not by force, the plaintiff
usually expressed the opposite. Nonetheless, most cases do not have hard evidence or witness ›
incidents usually took place in places far away from eye witness such as at motels, houses, in the
jungle etc. Without any witness, it is difficult to prove whether such sexual incident fall in the

category of consensual sex or rape. The disputes are often çword against wordé.
The court usually relies on some specific reasoning to define what consensual rape is.

Based on Supreme Court decisions in the past 50 years, the study found that the court constructs
3 main factors constituting rape: A) wound B) duration of time when the incident is revealed to
others and C) victimsû background