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International Human Rights And Comparative Mental Disability Law: The Universal Factors, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

An examination of comparative mental disability law reveals that there are at least five dominant, universal, core factors that must be considered carefully in any evaluation of the key question of whether international human rights standards have been violated. Each of these five factors is a reflection of the shame that the worldwide state of mental disability law brings to all of us who work in this field. Each is tainted by the pervasive corruption of sanism that permeates all of mental disability law. Each reflects a blinding pretextuality that contaminates legal practice in this area.

These are the factors …

Refugee Solution, Or Solutions To Refugeehood?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

This is the text of a lecture delivered by James C. Hathaway in London in October 2006 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Jesuit Refugee Service. The lecture was sponsored jointly by the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, London School of Economics; the Heythrop Institute for Religion, Ethics, and Public Life; and Jesuit Refugee Service (UK).

The U.N. Disability Convention: Historic Process, Strong Prospects And Why The U.S. Should Ratify, Tara J. Melish

Journal Articles

On December 13, 2006, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Convention is historic and path-breaking on several levels, both in protection terms for the world's 650 million persons with disabilities who may now draw upon its provisions in defense of their internationally-protected rights, and in relation to the unprecedented level of civil society input and engagement in the negotiation process. This sustained and constructive engagement has given rise to a dynamic process of dialogue, cooperation, and mutual trust that will fuel monitoring and implementation work, at national and international …

Between The Border And The Street: A Comparative Look At Gang Reduction Policies And Migration In The United States And Guatemala, Georgetown University Law Center, Human Rights Institute

HRI Papers & Reports

No abstract provided.

Foreign Authority, American Exceptionalism, And The Dred Scott Case, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

At least since Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1831, the idea that America is distinctive from other nations has permeated much political and social commentary. The United States has been variously perceived as unique in its history, its culture, its national values, its social movements, and its social and political institutions. While the term technically refers only to distinctiveness or difference, "exceptionalism" may have positive or negative aspects – what Harold Koh has called "America's Jekyll-and-Hyde exceptionalism." In the legal realm, claims of exceptionalism have been offered to support what Michael Ingnatieff identifies as "legal isolationism" – or refusal by …

Beyond Juba: Does Uganda Need A National Truth And Reconciliation Process?, Makau Mutua

Journal Articles

Virtually every African State, including Uganda, is a product of the rape of the continent by imperial European powers. Even though it is true that Africans cannot blame every ill on colonialism, the imperial conquests of European powers have had severely debilitating consequences. Yet, we cannot despair, and for beautiful Uganda, the genesis for recovery may lie in Juba. However - it can most certainly only be realized by looking beyond Juba. Ultimately, the reform of the Ugandan state lies in the full democratization of political society. President Museveni must understand that he will not live forever, and therefore he …

Can We Compare Evils? The Enduring Debate On Genocide And Crimes Against Humanity, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

A look back at the twentieth century reveals that the most critical steps in the criminalization of mass human rights constituted the academic work of Raphel Lemkin and his conceptualization of genocide; the International Military Tribunal Charter’s criminalization of crimes against humanity and the trials that followed; and the conclusion and broad ratification of the Genocide Convention. The Convention was the first treaty since those of slavery and the “white slave traffic” to criminalize peacetime actions by a government against its citizens. Since that time, customary international law has recognized the de-coupling of crimes against humanity from wartime.

María Lugones's Work As A Human Rights Idea(L), Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Mariana Ribeiro

UF Law Faculty Publications

The work of Maria Lugones can be utilized to focus on the same ideas of human reality articulated in the human rights framework. She engages the complexity of humans -- the indivisibility of their identity components -- through her concepts of hybridity/multidimensionality. Similarly, Lugones captures the human need for self-determination -- a right embedded in the human rights framework -- in her work on autonomy, agency, and self-care. Finally, her quest for an antisubordination ideal, like the human rights mandate for equality and nondiscrimination, comes to life in her call for the recognition of and respect for the equality of …

Business & Human Rights Law: Diverging Trends In The United States And France, Anna Triponel

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Algunas Reflexiones Entorno A La Reparacion Por Satisfaccion Ante Violaciones De Normas De Proteccion De Derechos Humanos Y Su Relacion Con La Teoria General De La Responsibilidad Internacional Del Estado, Luis A. Lopez Zamora

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Social Justice: The Moral Foundations Of Public Health And Health Policy, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay is a review of Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy by Madison Powers & Ruth Faden (2006).

In this pathbreaking book, senior bioethicists Powers and Faden confront foundational issues about health and justice. How much inequality in health can a just society tolerate? In a world filled with inequalities in health and well-being, which inequalities matter most and are the most morally urgent to address? In order to answer these questions, Powers and Faden develop a unique theory of social justice that, while developed for the specific contexts of public health and health …

Human Rights And The Global Economy : The Promises And Failures Of Globalization, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

No abstract provided.

Derogation From Labour Law Statutes Under Swedish Law, Reinhold Fahlbeck

Reinhold Fahlbeck

No abstract provided.

Stridsåtgärder, Särskilt Sympatiåtgärder, På Arbetsmarknaden Och Kollektiv Reglering Av Anställningsvillkor. En Internationell Jämförelse [Industrial Actions, In Particular Sympathetic Actions, And Collective Regulation Of Employment Conditions], Reinhold Fahlbeck

Reinhold Fahlbeck

No abstract provided.

Deportation Nation: Outsiders In American History, Daniel Kanstroom

Daniel Kanstroom

The danger of deportation hangs over the head of virtually every noncitizen in the United States. In the complexities and inconsistencies of immigration law, one can find a reason to deport almost any noncitizen at almost any time. In recent years, the system has been used with unprecedented vigor against millions of deportees.

We are a nation of immigrants--but which ones do we want, and what do we do with those that we don’t? These questions have troubled American law and politics since colonial times.

Deportation Nation is a chilling history of communal self-idealization and self-protection. The post-Revolutionary Alien and …

Harassment Of Female Farmworkers - Can The Legal System Help?, Maria Ontiveros

Maria L. Ontiveros

This paper provides an in depth and highly textured description of "sexual harassment" as experienced by female farmworkers in California. It explains how the harassment is affected by the extremity of the consequences she faces if she does not comply with the harassment; the structural difficulties in the reporting of and response to these incidents of sexual harassment; the sexualization of migrant women; the cultural factors that influence the harassment; and the fluidity of her workplace. It then critiques both current legal doctrine and current feminist theories of sexual harassment as inadequate to address these workers' concerns. It suggests an …

Female Immigrant Workers And The Law: Limits And Opportunities, Maria Ontiveros

Maria L. Ontiveros

This paper explains the reasons that traditional United States labor and employment laws are incapable of effectively addressing the types of workplace problems confronting female immigrant workers. It critiques the protections supposedly offered by the free market, labor standards, antidiscrimination laws and collective bargaining. It argues that statutory exclusion, immigration issues, nonrecognition of injury, and cultural limitations thwart the effectiveness of traditional approaches. It then describes a variety of initiatives and approaches being taken at the domestic and international level that more effectively address these problems. These initiatives include the use of the Thirteenth Amendment and antitrafficking legislation, as well …

Transnational Debates On Human Rights In The Muslim World: Politics, Economics, And Society, Anthony Chase

Anthony Chase

No abstract provided.

International Human Rights Law: An Introduction, Connie De La Vega, David S. Weissbrodt

Connie de la Vega

For more than half a century, the world community has sought to codify a series of fundamental precepts intended to prevent such abuses of human rights as torture, discrimination, starvation, and forced eviction. The United Nations, other international organizations, regional institutions, and governments have developed various procedures for protecting against and providing remedies for human rights violations. International Human Rights Law is a comprehensive introductory treatise, intended for all concerned about this critical area of international law, including students, lawyers, other advocates, teachers, and academics. The book comprises three sections: an overview of the development of human rights as a …

Queers, Bullying And Schools: Am I Safe Here?, Donn Short

Donn Short

This article reports on interviews conducted with students and educators in various Toronto-area high schools in an attempt to gauge how and to what extent so-called "formal" law (laws, policies, regulations) interacts with other, sometimes, competing normative or- ders, such as gender codes, sexuality, race, religion, in the educational setting. This approach is necessary to understand how anti-harassment and anti-homophobia policies are complicated by these other regulating influences.

A Prisoner's Charter? Reflections On Prisoner Litigation Under The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, Debra L. Parkes

Debra L. Parkes

This paper examines over twenty years of prisoner litigation under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, beginning with a brief consideration of the social and political context for prisoners into which the Charter was entrenched in 1982, before moving on to consider a variety of successful and unsuccessful prisoners' Charter claims. The author notes some ways in which the impact of the Charter has been diminished at the prison walls, including through a lack of full and meaningful access by prisoners to courts or other means of independent review of prison decisions and conditions, as well as by the …

Chasing 'Enemy Combatants' And Circumventing International Law: A License For Sanctioned Abuse, Peter J. Honigsberg

Peter J Honigsberg

In 1944, in Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court made a major error in judgment. It ruled that the executive may forcibly remove over 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and relocate them in American detention camps. In two recent Supreme Court cases, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the court made similar errors in judgment by accepting the administration's term "enemy combatant." The Supreme Court's errors were compounded when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 in October, 2006, statutorily defining the term enemy combatant for the first time. By acknowledging the term enemy combatant, the …

A Shadow Report On Human Trafficking In Lao Pdr: The U.S. Approach V. International Law, Anne T. Gallagher

Anne T Gallagher

Since 2001, the United States Government has issued annual reports on the situation of human trafficking in every country other than its own identified by the State Department as having a significant trafficking problem. The focus of this article is on the standards that are used to assess the response of States to trafficking. The article examines the way in which the US judges the performance of countries while noting that international law already provides detailed and substantive guidance on the obligations of States in this area. The author demonstrates, using Lao PDR as an example, that application of these …

Direito À Informação Ou Deveres De Protecção Informativa Do Estado?,, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

A Liberdade de Informação poderá ser simultaneamente defendida pelo dever de abstenção do Estado na esfera de exercício privado (não perigoso) de cada cidadão ou grupo “ordeiro” de cidadãos, e pelo dever de protecção dos cidadãos e das suas pessoas morais (incluindo obviamente associações e empresas) nos casos em que a ordem natural da rede social equitativa seja rompida, designadamente por fenómenos de massificação arregimentadora, trusts anti-concorrência, violação de direitos fundamentais, etc., e, no limite, crime. Mas o discernimento e ponderação terão que ser muito grandes.

Les Limites Du Pouvoir De Révision Constitutionnelle Entre Le Pouvoir Constituant Et La Constitution Matérielle. Une Illustration Dans Le Contexte Lusophone, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

May we relate with intellectual profit some 'abstract' constitutional concepts such as "pouvoir constituant", "constitution matérielle" and "limites matériels de révision constitutionnelle"?

Do Constitucionalismo Brasileiro: Uma Introdução Histórica (1824-1988), Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

It is not usual to write a constitutional history from the view point of a foreigner. This is a essai of a glimpse of Brazilian constitutional history from the perspective of a Portuguese, descending from Bazilians, descending from Portuguese. In spite of those circunstances, of course the aim was always the possible objectivity in History and in Constitutional Law History.

Citizenship, Residence And Social Security, Mel Cousins

Mel Cousins

In two recent cases the Court of Justice has considered the impact of Union citizenship on the long-standing issue of the exportability of social security payments. These decisions clarify (i) the position of the Court in relation to the material scope of the protection provided by Article 18 EC, i.e. that the exercise of free movement is itself sufficient to bring an issue within the scope of the Treaty regardless of whether the issue actually in dispute involves a question of Community law and (ii) that the Court will examine residence requirements as a restriction on the freedoms conferred by …

Categories Of Migration, Kate Jastram

Kate Jastram

No abstract provided.