Law Commons^™

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 …

Book Review, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Truth As Right And Remedy In International Human Rights Experience, Thomas Antkowiak

Faculty Articles

Early this year, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica, was faced yet again with a seemingly basic question: Does an individual have a legal right to know the truth about the circumstances surrounding the serious human rights violations a loved one has suffered? One might expect to encounter such a privilege in our victim centered system of international human rights protection-especially within the progressive jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court. Yet, it is simply not to be found as a substantive, explicit right. This essay seeks to explore the origins, scope, and key possibilities of an …

Inter-American System, Claudia Martin

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Recognizing The Interdependence Of Rights In The Antidiscrimination Context Through The World Conference Against Racism , Catherine Powell, Jennifer H. Lee

Faculty Scholarship

This background paper assesses the importance of integrating gender into efforts to address racial discrimination and related intolerance in the WCAR process. While this background paper primarily focuses on racial discrimination, the analysis may be applied to xenophobia and related intolerance where these experiences are "raced" experiences. Addressing these forms of intolerance in a comprehensive manner requires unmasking the ways in which race intersects with gender and other status. A gender analysis is needed to make racism more fully visible, because "racial discrimination does not always affect men and women equally or in the same way." Women often experience compounded …

Protection Of Female Prisoners: Dissolving Standards Of Decency, Martin A. Geer

Scholarly Works

Almost fifty years ago, the United Nations set standards that reached international consensus and limited male correctional employees’ activities in female inmate residences. These restrictions were of particular importance to women prisoners. It is well documented that female prisoners who are particularly vulnerable, are traumatized by unwanted touching, assault, harassment, and invasion of their physical privacy and integrity. Despite this population’s history and international legal standards, there was a significant turn around in penology. The resulting cross-gender supervision for housing units and body searches became the norm in the United States.

This article examines how the U.S. penal system transposed …

Missouri, The “War On Terrorism,” And Immigrants: Legal Challenges Post 9/11, Sylvia R. Lazos

Scholarly Works

This article explains how the 2000 census confirmed what many already knew--the traditional image of what it means for Missouri to be a heartland state is changing. The 2000 census shows that the fastest growing racial/ethnic group in Missouri are Latinos. This growth in first generation immigrants has not been limited to Missouri's large urban centers. In rural Missouri and its small towns, the major group of first generation immigrants is Latinos.

Persecution In The Fog Of War: The House Of Lords’ Decision In Adan, Michael Kagan, William P. Johnson

Scholarly Works

International law requires that a refugee have a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group. It is not enough to be at risk of being persecuted, nor is it even enough to be a member of a particular race or religion. There must be a “nexus” between the danger and one of the five Convention-recognized reasons for persecution. In the 1998 decision in Adan v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, the House of Lords concluded that a man fleeing clan warfare in Somalia could not …

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 …

The Settlement Of Nazi-Era Litigation Through The Executive And Judicial Branches, Morris A. Ratner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Tuttle Trilogy: Habeas Corpus And Human Rights, Anne S. Emanuel

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Changing The Face Of The Law: How Women's Advocacy Groups Put Women On The Federal Judicial Appointments Agenda, Mary Clark

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Russian Compliance With Articles Five & Six Of The European Convention Of Human Rights As A Barometer Of Legal Reform & Human Rights In Russia, Jeffrey D. Kahn

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Note examines two of Russia's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR): the Article 5 right to liberty and security, and the Article 6 right to a fair trial to gauge Russian compliance with European human rights norms. These articles lie at the heart of systematic legal reform in the Russian Federation. This Note defends the thesis that the agonizingly slow progress of judicial reform and the advancement of human rights in Russia is a function of the inevitable lag of conceptual norms behind institutional reform. Part I explores the weak place of the rule of law …

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

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Who Should Watch Over Refugee Law?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

We simply cannot afford to sell out the future of refugee protection in a hasty bid to establish something that looks, more or less, like an oversight mechanism for the Refugee Convention.

Human Rights, Civil Wrongs And Foreign Relations: A "Sinical" Look At The Use Of U.S. Litigation To Address Human Rights Abuses Abroad, Jacques Delisle

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Who Should Watch Over Refugee Law?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

We simply cannot afford to sell out the future of refugee protection in a hasty bid to establish something that looks, more or less, like an oversight mechanism for the Refugee Convention.

An Overview: International Human Rights And Mental Disability Law, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Human Rights Beyond The War On Terrorism: Extradition Defenses Based On Prison Conditions In The United States, Daniel J. Sharfstein

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The death penalty presents an issue where a clearly stated norm that is widely held by U.S. allies exists in stark contrast to U.S. practices. The war on terrorism has shone a spotlight on European refusals to extradite terrorists who are accused of capital crimes, but such refusals are double-edged from a human rights perspective. Although capital punishment would seem to be a natural testing ground for human rights advocates to expand the internalization of international norms in the United States, human rights law arguments that support abolishing the death penalty risk making international opinion seem irrelevant or even hostile …

Latcritical Perspectives: Individual Liberties, State Security, And The War On Terrorism, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

This overview of the events of September 11 and the series of domestic and international responses thereto--legal, military, and political--intertwine the global and the local, effectively glocalizing terror. Foreign forces united to effect a military strike against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Captives from numerous countries are held by the U.S. military on a base in Cuba. Assets have been frozen in financial institutions around the world. The global and local lines are blurred or trespassed, depending on one's point of view, by collective enforcement against terror as well as by unilateral actions that, while seeking to bring …

The War On Terrorism And The End Of Human Rights, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, President Bush stated that the perpetrators of the deed would be brought to justice. Soon afterwards, the President announced that the United States would engage in a war on terrorism. The first of these statements adopts the familiar language of criminal law and criminal justice. It treats the September 11 attacks as horrific crimes—mass murders—and the government’s mission as apprehending and punishing the surviving planners and conspirators for their roles in the crimes. The War on Terrorism is a different proposition, however, and a different model of governmental action—not law but war. Most …

Enemy Aliens, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the wake of September 11, many have argued that the new sense of vulnerability that we all feel calls for a recalibration of the balance between liberty and security. In fact, however, much of what our government has done in the war on terrorism has not asked American citizens to make the difficult choice of deciding which of their liberties they are willing to sacrifice for increased security. Instead, the government has taken the politically easier route of selectively sacrificing the rights of aliens, and especially Arab and Muslim aliens, in the name of furthering national security. This is …

Feminism And International Law: An Opportunity For Transformation, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this essay, the author wants to outline briefly both some of the ways in which the assumptions and categories of international law can be damaging to women, and also some of the ways in which creative feminists could use international law to transform both international policy and the domestic political and legal discourse. In the wake of September 11, a robust feminist engagement with international law and policy is more urgent than ever before.

United Kingdom Transgender Win, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

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 …

Interpreting U.S. Treaties In Light Of Human Rights Values, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

International treaty law occupies a more secure place in U.S. constitutional text than customary international law. Treaties, we know, are the “supreme law of the land” under Article VI of the Constitution and are routinely applied both in state courts and in federal courts under Article III. So the “awkward relationship” to which I will address myself is how U.S. courts should determine the meaning of an international treaty to which the United States is bound, when the parties involved in court have different views on the substance of the obligation that the United States has undertaken. Thus my general …

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.

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 …