Digital Commons Network^™

America And The World: Human Rights At Home And Abroad., Joe W. (Chip) Pitts Iii

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Multiple provisions in the Bill of Rights appear gutted around the last year. While abroad, Mr. Pitts received an outside perspective on American news which provided him with a new outlook on current events. The United Nations Social Forum brought voices into the United Nations which are not typically heard, such as poor and vulnerable populations not represented elsewhere. Concurrently, the Johannesburg Summit addressed similar issues. However, as of late, the American government suppresses the voices of the American people. The Patriot Act includes provisions which deter dissent, freedom of speech, and assembly. This Act also purported to give the …

Terrorism And Human Rights: Power, Culture, And Subordination, Makau Mutua

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

This piece analyzes the effects of the global war on terror in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. The author argues that under the pretext of a global war on terrorism, the United States has set out to dominate the globe in a campaign that will undoubtedly influence human rights, and diminish their respect and enforcement. Human rights will now be defined by the United States to exclude and narrow them while putting pressure on large international institutions such as the United Nations to subordinate itself to other American interests. Thinkers and advocates should work together to craft a …

Rights Inside Out: The Case Of The Women's Human Rights Campaign, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This essay traces the relationship between activists and academics involved in the campaign for “women’s rights as human rights” as a case study of the relationship between different classes of what I call “knowledge professionals” self-consciously acting in a transnational domain. The puzzle that animates this essay is the following: how was it that at the very moment at which a critique of “rights” and a reimagination of rights as “rights talk” proved to be such fertile ground for academic scholarship did the same “rights” prove to be an equally fertile ground for activist networking and lobbying activities? The paper …

The Thirteenth Amendment And Slavery In The Global Economy, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

The globalization of industry has been accompanied by a globalization of labor exploitation. With increasing frequency, U.S.-based multinational corporations are carrying on their foreign operations through the deliberate exploitation of involuntary or slave labor. This development in the foreign labor practices of U.S. entities heralds a new era of challenge and transformation for the Thirteenth Amendment and its prohibition on the existence of slavery or involuntary servitude. It has become necessary to reexamine the range of activities in American industry - and American participation in global industry - that the amendment reaches. I begin that reexamination here. In this article, …

International Intellectual Property, Access To Health Care, And Human Rights: South Africa V. United States, Winston P. Nagan

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines the question of access to patented medicines in international law. It analyzes the extent to which international agreements may lawfully limit affordable versions of these medicines that may be available through parallel imports or compulsory licensing procedures. It considers the concept of intellectual property rights from a national and international perspective to determine how these rights must be sensitive to matters of national sovereignty when extraordinary, life-threatening diseases afflict societies in catastrophic ways. This Article suggests that viewing property (including intellectual property) as a human right requires that its scope be delimited and understood in the context …

Gender Hate Propaganda And Sexual Violence In The Rwandan Genocide: An Argument For Intersectionality In International Law, Llezlie Green

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article explores the gendered dimensions of genocidal hate propaganda before and during the Rwandan genocide and proposes that the international tribunal consider these cases with an intersectional approach that attempts to fully appreciate the harm inflicted upon Tutsi women.

Human Rights Responsibilities Of Private Corporations, Jordan J. Paust

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article discusses the human rights responsibilities of private corporations. Part I addresses how decisions and activities of multinational corporations impact human rights. Part II examines corporate liability under human rights laws by examining trends in judicial decisions in the United States and foreign states and human rights instruments. Part III explores the types of human rights deprivations that multinational corporations might cause. The Article concludes by predicting that there will be increasing scrutiny of corporate deprivations of human rights at the domestic, regional, and international levels.

Overlegalizing Human Rights: International Relations Theory And The Commonwealth Caribbean Backlash Against Human Rights Regimes, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

This article raises the intriguing claim that international law can be overlegalized. Overlegalization occurs where a treaty's substantive rules or its review procedures are too constraining of sovereignty, causing governments to engage in acts of non-compliance or even to denounce the treaty. The concept of legalization and its potential excesses, although unfamiliar to many legal scholars, has begun to be explored by international relations theorists analyzing the effects of legal rules in changing state behavior. This article bridges the gap between international legal scholarship and international relations theory by exploring a recent case study of overlegalization. It seeks to understand …

The Multinational And The "New Stakeholder": Examining The Business Case For Human Rights, Scott Greathead

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Business managers who ignore these realities--the concerns of these new corporate stakeholders--do so at the risk of their company's brand and their own careers. These are just a few examples of the new stakeholders of multinational corporations--workers, consumers, investors, indigenous peoples, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the media...

The concerns of these new stakeholders embrace human rights. It is a much broader concept of human rights, however, than the civil and political rights that used to dominate the agenda. Former concerns centered on freedom from arbitrary arrest, detentions, and other due process rights, freedom of speech and association, and governmental abuses …

Protecting Economic, Social And Cultural Rights In The Inter-American Human Rights System: A Manual On Presenting Claims, Tara J. Melish

Books

This book offers human rights practitioners and scholars a lens into strategies and arguments for the protection of economic, social and cultural rights before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, particularly through the regional system's individual petitions process. It systematically compiles the regional bodies' major statements on social rights from the 1960s through 1999, describes the system's procedures, and offers strategic pathways and arguments for finding social rights protections solidly grounded in each of the regional system's major human rights instruments. It also offers a model petition and provides strategic advice on framing …

Book Review. Perceptions And Interpretations Of Law From Past To Present In The Subcontinent, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Mote In Thy Brother’S Eye: A Review Of Human Rights As Politics And Idolatry, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

Michael Ignatieffs provocatively titled collection of essays, Human Rights As Politics and Idolatry [hereinafter Human Rights], is a careful examination of the theoretical underpinnings and contradictions in the area of human rights. At bottom, both of his primary essays, Human Rights As Politics and Human Rights As Idolatry, make a claim that is perhaps contrary to the instincts of human rights thinkers and activists: namely, that international human rights can best be philosophically justified and effectively applied to the extent that they strive for minimal ism. Human rights activists generally argue for the opposite conclusion: that international human rights be …

New Death Penalty Debate: What's Dna Got To Do With It, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

The nation is engaged in the most intensive discussion of the death penalty in decades. Temporary moratoria on executions are effectively in place in Illinois and Maryland, and during the winter 2001 legislative cycle legislation to adopt those pauses elsewhere cleared committees or one or more houses of the legislature, not only in Connecticut (passed the Senate Judiciary Committee) and Maryland (where it passed the entire House, and the Senate Judiciary Committee) but in Nevada (passed the Senate) and Texas (passed committees in both Houses). In the last year, abolition bills have passed or come within a few votes of …

United States Human Rights Policy In The 21st Century In An Age Of Multilateralism Respondent, Catherine Powell

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Harold Koh's thoughtful article, A United States Human Rights Policy for the 21st Century, 46 ST. Louis U. L.J. 293 (2002), ends with the observation that "globalization has both sinister and constructive faces."' Indeed, we live in a world that is increasingly interdependent. Even some of those opposed to the project of globalization ironically depend on the tools of globalization to undermine it. Consider the terrorists who hijacked airplanes on September 11, 2001 and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands of innocent civilians from many different nations. The terrorists used the Internet and …

Human Rights, Terrorism, And Trade – Remarks By Lori Fisler Damrosch, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

By putting human rights first and terrorism in the middle, I hope to open up questions about linkages among these regimes and whether measures within one regime can advance objectives of the others.