Law Commons^™

Umd Law Students Travel To Haiti On Fact-Finding Trip, Irene Scharf, Justin Steele

Irene Scharf

During spring break Professor Irene Scharf, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the UMass School of Law in Dartmouth accompanied a group of UMass law students to the Dominican Republic to engage in fact-finding about the conditions of Haitians in the country. This piece was written by Scharf and Justin Steele, executive articles editor of the UMass Law Review.

Addressing Early Marriage: Culturally Competent Practices And Romanian Roma (“Gypsy”) Communities, Judith Hale Reed

Judith A Hale Reed

Early marriage affects many communities around the world. Examples of commonly practiced early marriage can be found today in the U.S., India, Syria, and many other places. Although most countries have instituted minimum age laws for marriage, so that legal marriage can only occur after an age set by law, early marriage is still practiced for tradition, control, security, and other reasons. This article explores the harms of early marriage and the international instruments meant to defend against these harms in Part II. Part III reviews theoretical perspectives from legal anthropology and presents a case study of early marriage in …

The Problem Of Thirst: The Right To Equality And The Unlawful Privatization Of Water, Kasari Jl Govender

Kasari JL Govender

The problem of thirst is a massive one, and a child dies every 15 seconds from disease related to lack of access to safe, clean water. Privatization is touted as the solution to water injustice, despite evidence that privatization of water services only increases water deprivation for the poorest citizens. This paper examines whether a privatized for-profit system of water access for personal use infringes the human right to water, and whether states have a legal responsibility to protect their citizens from any and all third party business interests in water. The problem of thirst is considered from the perspective …

Closing The Gap: The Federal Role In Respecting & Ensuring Human Rights At The State And Local Level, Human Rights Institute, International Association Of Official Human Rights Agencies (Iaohra)

Human Rights Institute

This report offers an overview of the domestic landscape for human rights implementation and recommends action the United States must take to respect and ensure Covenant rights at the state and local level. This information responds directly to questions posed by the Human Rights Committee as part of the fourth periodic review of the United States, and offers a more complete picture of how the lack of institutionalized support impacts state and local governments. The report further describes a number of promising state and local human rights initiatives and details the myriad barriers that impede more comprehensive and effective state …

Kadi V. Commission: A Case Study Of The Development Of A Rights-Based Jurisprudence For The European Court Of Justice, Alisa Shekhtman

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

Panel Discussion: International, National, And Local Perspectives On Civil Right To Counsel, Andrew Scherer, Martha F. Davis, Debra Gardner, Rosie Mendez, Juanita B. Newton, Adriene Holder, Laura K. Abel

Touro Law Review

The following is based on a transcript of a panel discussion which took place at An Obvious Truth: Creating an Action Blueprint for a Civil Right to Counsel in New York State, held at Touro Law Center, Central Islip, New York, in March, 2008.

South Dakota: Making Dollars And Sense Of Indian Child Removal, Rachael Whitaker

Rachael Whitaker

South Dakota- Making Dollars and Sense of Indian Child Removal By: Rachael Whitaker In 2004, a South Dakota Governor’s Commission report adamantly denied claims that the state’s Department of Social Services (DSS) is “harvesting Indian children as a cash crop” and “runs nothing more than a state sponsored kidnapping program.” National Public Radio (NPR) broke a story in 2011, claiming South Dakota removed Indian children for profit. Since NPR’s report, the state has remained tight-lipped, advocates have threatened litigation, and Congress has asked for answers. South Dakota has a small population and economy, and it receives almost half of its …

The Obligation To Investigate Ill-Treatment Of Persons With Disabilities: The Way Forward, Janos Fiala-Butora

Janos Fiala-Butora

No abstract provided.

Are You A Terrorist Or An American?:An Analysis Of Immigration Lawpost 9/11: Introduction, Mark A. Drumbl

Mark A. Drumbl

No abstract provided.

Umd Law Students Travel To Haiti On Fact-Finding Trip, Irene Scharf, Justin Steele

Faculty Publications

During spring break Professor Irene Scharf, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the UMass School of Law in Dartmouth accompanied a group of UMass law students to the Dominican Republic to engage in fact-finding about the conditions of Haitians in the country. This piece was written by Scharf and Justin Steele, executive articles editor of the UMass Law Review.

Victory Without Success? – The Guantanamo Litigation, Permanent Preventive Detention, And Resisting Injustice, Jules Lobel

Articles

When the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) brought the first habeas cases challenging the Executive’s right to detain prisoners in a law free zone at Guantanamo in 2002, almost no legal commentator gave the plaintiffs much chance of succeeding. Yet, two years later in 2004, after losing in both the District Court and Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush handed CCR a resounding victory. Four years later, the Supreme Court again ruled in CCR’s favor in 2008 in Boumediene v. Bush, holding that the detainees had a constitutional right to habeas and declaring the Congressional …

Springtime For Freedom Of Religion Or Belief: Will Newly Democratic Arab States Guarantee International Human Rights Norms Or Perpetuate Their Violation?, Robert C. Blitt

Book Chapters

The Arab Spring has generated unprecedented and seismic political and social upheaval across the Arab world. The reasons for the outbreak of widespread and vociferous public protest are myriad, but generally understood as including long-simmering resentment of government corruption and repression, underwhelming economic development, chronic unemployment and poor respect for human rights, including the treatment of individuals and groups affiliated with political manifestations of Islam. Despite the initial drama surrounding the street rallies, two years on, the pace of change has grown fitful and uncertain.

The purpose of this chapter is to consider one narrow aspect of the Arab Spring. …

The Court's Denial Of Racial Societal Debt, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

In this year of civil rights anniversaries, the narrative of racial progress has been tempered by the Supreme Court’s game-changing decisions this past summer. The notion that “we’ve come a long way and we have much more work to do” sounds ever more like wishful thinking in the face of a Supreme Court that is no longer an active contributor to the cause. Having abandoned its unprecedented insistence that white supremacy be upended root and branch, the current Court’s boldness is measured by its audacious efforts to reverse engineer the transformative mechanisms these anniversaries celebrate.

Tribal Rights, Human Rights, Kristen A. Carpenter, Angela R. Riley

Publications

No abstract provided.

Desafíos Para Los Derechos De La Persona Ante El Siglo Xxi: Familia Y Religión / Sfide Per I Diritti Della Persona Nel Xxi Secolo: Famiglia E Religione / Challenges Of Individual Rights In The Xxi Century: Family And Religion, Edoardo C. Raffiotta, Antonio Pérez Miras, Germán M. Teruel Lozano

Germán M. Teruel Lozano

Facing continuous changes and evolving social contexts that are a characteristic of a pluralistic society, a law professional encounters difficulties with re-arranged traditional institutions such as family and marriage, as well as difficulties in redefining the role of religion in our societies, especially in relation to individual rights and liberties within these institutions. To address these important topics, the author reviews the approach to the study of the challenges facing the constitution, and in particular the rights of the individual, in our multicultural societies.