Like numerous legal scholars have observed, modernistic penal codes throughout the U.S retain a substantive definition of rape that is facially indistinguishable from that which judges have been applying in our culture for numerous hundreds of years. In 1769, William Blackstone, who is the leading 18th century power on the common law in both England and the colonies, defined common-law rape as the carnal knowing of a woman (sexual intercourse) compulsorily and against her desire. Rape is second only to murder in being regarded by law and community as the most dangerous offense. This is not just right nowadays. Since colonial times until 1977, when the United States Supreme Court proclaimed it was cruel and unusual sentence, rape was punishable
