When asked to identify one state crime that would not be placed in the federal domain under such an interpretation, MacKinnon refused.
"I'd rather not confine myself," she said.
MacKinnon also cited the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law to all citizens as a guarantee of the law's constitutionality. She argued that the bias against women in state justice systems deprives them of equal protection and that Congress can use its power granted by the Fourteenth Amendment to remedy those violations with the VAWA.
Fried said the Fourteenth Amendment is strictly for states and state actors and recounted precedents in his favor.
Though he acknowledged the horrors of gender-based violence and the need for severe punishment of criminals who commit it, Fried saw VAWA more as politics than jurisprudence.
"The federal criminal code cannot be allowed to be turned into a billboard" he said.