Jurisprudence

A makeshift memorial in front of a house where eight children were killed in a mass shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana, on Monday. Arafat Barbakh/Reuters

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On April 16, former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax shot and killed his wife, Cerina Wanzer Fairfax, before taking his own life amid a divorce . Just three days later in Louisiana, a father murdered multiple children of his own and gravely injured both their mother and his estranged wife before turning the gun on himself. He was also going through a divorce.

These cases are often framed as shocking, unthinkable tragedies—aberrations no one could have predicted. But I have spent more than two decades representing victims of domestic violence in family courts.…