Maybe I’m naive, but two questions gnawed at me as I began reporting my story in Friday’s paper about the District Court judge who married a man suspected of domestic violence to his alleged victim on the day of trial:

1) Why would a victim agree to marry her alleged abuser?

2) Why would she not testify against him?

Prosecutor Stephen Roscher, who heads the family violence division in the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office, summed it up.

“The internal dynamic when we deal with domestic violence victims is completely different than any other crime,” he said.

He and Dorothy Lennig, director of the House of Ruth‘s legal clinic, cited a number of potential contributing factors. Their list is similar to the one offered by the National Center for Victims of Crime.

“Domestic violence is about power and control,” Lennig said.

Knowing that, Roscher has worked with county police on domestic violence case protocol for more than a decade and regularly talks to new recruits about the topic. The strategy, which has been adopted across the country, is to “assume the victim is not going to be cooperative at the time of the trial,” Roscher said.

That’s why police thoroughly document a suspected domestic violence crime scene and get a statement and photos of the victim. That’s why 911 calls are analyzed for “excited utterances” (which can be admitted in court, even though they’re hearsay) and for anything out of the ordinary, Roscher said.

All of this allows Roscher to prosecute a case even without the victim taking the witness stand. It can be challenging, he said, but it’s never impossible.

“There’s never been a murder case where the victim has testified,” Roscher said.

When former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich opened the Baltimore office of Womble Carlyle about a month after leaving office three years ago, taking key legal and public relations staff with him, there were those who wondered about the move: Was it a law office, or campaign headquarters?

The Maryland Democratic Party has wondered more vocally over the years, and according to the Baltimore Sun’s Maryland Politics blog, took formal action Thursday by writing to the state Board of Elections, challenging the propriety of the arrangement in light of Ehrlich’s expected return to the political sphere.

The best oral argument I have ever heard, of the hundreds I have attended at the U.S. Supreme Court and the Maryland Court of Appeals, was in the case of United Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls Inc.

I was reminded of this lawyerly duel before the Supreme Court in reporting on the increased number of workplace pregnancy-discrimination claims.

The case concerned the legality of Johnson Controls’ then-policy of prohibiting fertile women of childbearing age from working in areas that would expose them to lead, such as in the manufacture of car batteries.

The argument, on Oct. 10, 1990, was most notable because the opposing attorneys ignored the conventional advice that if the law is not on your side, argue public policy, and vice versa. Rather, the lawyers each argued that both the law and public policy were on their side.

Attorney Marsha S. Berzon represented a group of women who challenged the company’s “fetal protection” policy as violating the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, a part of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The decision of whether to take on a hazardous job belongs to the woman, not her employer, argued Berzon, now a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“In today’s day and age, women in general can control whether or not they are going to have children, and, therfore, in supposing that they will not, the policy is incorporating a negative behavioral stereotype,” Berzon said.

Attorney Stanley S. Jaspan countered that the company’s compelling interest in ensuring workplace safety trumped the federal law.

“We’re not to leave common sense at the doorstep when interpreting Title VII,” said Jaspan, a partner with Foley & Lardner LLP in Milwaukee. “It would violate common sense and the overriding interest in occupational health and safety to require an employer to damage unborn children.”

The Supreme Court ultimately agreed with Berzon.

That’s my No. 1. Do any of you judges and lawyers out there have a favorite all-time oral argument?