Law Commons^™

Foreign Investment-Induced Migration In Colombia: Rethinking The Legal Schemes Of Protection And Accountability, Marco A. Velásquez-Ruiz

Marco A. Velásquez-Ruiz

This paper intends to explore the relation between foreign investment and forced Migration in the context of Colombian armed conflict. Through the illustration of recent cases, it shows the various forms in which the operation of multinational corporations has generated adverse effects to the vulnerable communities located at their area of influence, thus generating processes of involuntary human mobility. In that way, it is established that there is a symbiotic relation between conflict and development, affecting the structure and scope of the norms for both the protection of forced migrants and accountability for human rights violations. This is so because …

Global Poverty And The Right To Development In International Law, Patrick Macklem

Patrick Macklem

This Article advances an account of the right to development as a legal instrument that holds the international legal order accountable for its role in the production and reproduction of global poverty. It first distinguishes moral conceptions of human rights, as instruments that protect universal features of humanity, from legal conceptions, which tie their existence to their specification in international instruments promulgated in compliance with international legal norms governing the creation of legal rights and obligations. Despite textual ambiguities in the various instruments in which it finds expression, the right to development vests in individuals and communities who have yet …

Imfing With Your Economic Rights: The Greek Tragedy Of The Eurozone, James C. Brady

James C Brady

While international human rights law promulgates that economic, social and cultural rights (economic rights) be supported just as fervently as civil and political rights, the reality is, they are not. The Greek debt crisis and resulting austerity measures demonstrate how a growing world economy is having an increasingly large impact on economic rights. States treat economic rights obligations similar to how businesses treat risk – that is, states seek to reduce their obligations like businesses seek to reduce their risk. As a result, economic rights remain second fiddle to their civil/political counterpart and a victim of supranational monetary monoliths like …

Strategizing For Compliance: The Evolution Of A Compliance Phase Of Inter-American Court Litigation And The Strategic Imperative For Victims' Representatives., David C. Baluarte

David Baluarte

No abstract provided.

Implementing Truth And Reconciliation: Comparative Lessons For The Republic Of Korea, Tara J. Melish

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

This Article substantively introduces a special symposium issue on "Implementing Truth and Reconciliation: Comparative Lessons for Korea." Inspired by the Dec. 2010 release of the official report and recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea (TRCK), the special issue gathers comparative national and cross-national lessons from four nations -- South Korea, South Africa, Cambodia, and Peru -- on the factors that contribute to or hinder the effective implementation of truth commission recommendations and other efforts aimed at achieving national, community, and individual-level reconciliation. Such lessons are offered in the hope of assisting victim groups and other advocacy …

A Proposal For Addressing Violations Of Indigenous Peoples' Environmental And Human-Rights In The Inter-American Human Rights System, Natalia Gove

Student Works

International concerns in the areas of human rights, health, and environment have expanded considerably in the past several decades. International environmental law primarily focuses on environmental damage, rather than its impact on human beings. The focus of environmental treaties is primarily on constraining environmentally deleterious behavior, rather than preventing injuries to people. Part I of this paper will discuss the significance of environmental protection for indigenous peoples. Part II will analyze the linkage between environmental and human rights, as well as the lack of a direct enforcement mechanism for redressing violations of environmental rights. It will also describe the existing …

Regulating The Corporate Tap: Applying Global Administrative Law Principles To Achieve The Human Right To Water, Kristin L. Retherford

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of ‘Responsibility While Protecting’: Brazil, The Responsibility To Protect, And Guidelines For Humanitarian Intervention, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya, the responsibility to protect (RtoP) doctrine has received considerable blowback. Various states, most notably some of the ‘BRICS’ states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), claimed that NATO exceeded its mandate given to it by United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1973 (by allegedly focusing on regime change rather than on the protection of civilians), was inappropriate in its target selection, violated the arms embargo by transferring arms to rebels, and generally caused too much harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure.1 It was also suggested that the UK, US, and …

Sexual Violence Against Men And Women In War: A Masculinities Approach, Valorie K. Vojdik

Valorie K. Vojdik

No abstract provided.

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 …

January Roundtable: Responding To The Syrian Crisis, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes Julio

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The World Next Genocide” by Simon Adams. New York Times, November 2012.

and

“Syria is Central to Holding Together the Mideast” by Condoleezza Rice. Washington Post, November 2012.

Syrians Crushed Between Humanitarianism And Realism, Philip Cunliffe

Human Rights & Human Welfare

With the UN High Commissioner for Refugees announcing early this year that the war in Syria may have claimed as many as 60,000 lives, two op-eds published late in 2012 usefully exemplify two contrasting frames that have thus far dominated international responses to the conflict—namely, the humanitarian frame and the geopolitical frame. Yet despite the apparent contrasts between these two frameworks, both reflect a similar contempt for the Syrian people and their right to self-determination. The humanitarian framing of the conflict emphasizes the scale of human suffering and the need to alleviate it, while the geopolitical frame accentuates political interests …

Reconciling Positivism And Realism: Kelsen And Habermas On Democracy And Human Rights, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is well known that Hans Kelsen and Jürgen Habermas invoke realist arguments drawn from social science in defending an international, democratic human rights regime against Carl Schmitt’s attack on the rule of law. However, despite embracing the realist spirit of Kelsen’s legal positivism, Habermas criticizes Kelsen for neglecting to connect the rule of law with a concept of procedural justice (Part I). I argue, to the contrary (Part II), that Kelsen does connect these terms, albeit in a manner that may be best described as functional, rather than conceptual. Indeed, whereas Habermas tends to emphasize a conceptual connection between …

Public Law And Social Human Rights, Areto A. Imoukuede

Faculty Books and Book Contributions

This paper argues that public education is an international human right that the U.S. ought to recognize and protect. Recognizing a right to public education would correct a major inconsistency in U.S. law by bringing education rights doctrine more in line with international human rights law. This piece discusses how current U.S. education rights doctrine is inconsistent with U.S. tradition and legal precedent. It then demonstrates how international law recognizes public education as a fundamental duty of government before arguing for why the U.S. is obligated to follow international law regarding the right to public education.

Your View: The Stateless State Of Caribbean Residents, Irene Scharf

Faculty Publications

On the Caribbean island of Hispanola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, grave human rights concerns affecting those of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic have recently erupted. Over the years, thousands of Haitians have come to the Dominican Republic to work the farms there and provide cheap construction and other manual labor. Recently, with the economic and natural disasters that have befallen Haiti, more Haitians have been arriving in the Dominican Republic. Many have put down roots and are raising families. Today, an estimated 200,000 people born in the Dominican Republic have parents who were born in …

Al Shimari V. Caci International, Inc.: The Application Of Extraterritorial Jurisdiction In The Wake Of Kiobel, Ellen Katuska

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

Linking International Investment Agreements And Corporate Social Responsibility: Challenges And Opportunities In The Grounds Of Corporate Governance, Marco A. Velásquez-Ruiz

Marco A. Velásquez-Ruiz

Considering the intention of introducing a dialogue on the possible interconnections between Foreign Investment Law and Corporate Governance, the purpose of this paper is to present some ideas on the International Investment Agreements likelihood to make Corporate Social Responsibility compromises more robust by including specific provisions on the matter. More specifically, it is intended to understand the ways on which Investment Law –and more specifically International Investment Agreements– influences the structure and dynamics of Corporate Governance, so as to assess whether the inclusion of Corporate Social Responsibility on the abovementioned legal instruments might influence the conduct of Multinational Corporations.

Freedom From Food: On The Need To Restore Fdr’S Vision Of Economic Rights In America, And How It Can Be Done, Evgeny Krasnov

Evgeny Krasnov

Within the U.S. policy discourse, it has long been taken for granted that the body of human rights law does not—and should not—include economic rights, which include the right to adequate food, shelter, and health care. This is an irony of history, since the origins of modern-day economic rights law lie in the policies advocated by the U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

This Article argues that (1) the common justifications for neglecting economic rights are not sound; (2) there is a pressing need to recognize economic rights in the United States; and (3) the best way to do so is …

Ending Judgment Arbitrage: Jurisdictional Competition And The Enforcement Of Foreign Money Judgments In The United States, Gregory Shill

Gregory Shill

Recent multi-billion-dollar damage awards issued by foreign courts against large American companies have focused attention on the once-obscure, patchwork system of enforcing foreign-country judgments in the United States. That system’s structural problems are even more serious than its critics have charged. However, the leading proposals for reform overlook the positive potential embedded in its design.

In the United States, no treaty or federal law controls the domestication of foreign judgments; the process is instead governed by state law. Although they are often conflated in practice, the procedure consists of two formally and conceptually distinct stages: foreign judgments must first be …

International Law For American Courts: Why The “American Laws For American Courts” Movement Is A Violation Of The United States Constitution And Universal Human Rights, Maria Surdokas

University of Baltimore Journal of International Law

In recent years, the “American Laws for American Courts” movement has swept across the country in an attempt to ban international law from U.S. state courts. This article specifically examines the Oklahoma Save Our State Amendment and the Arizona Foreign Decisions Act. In doing so, it addresses both the constitutional and policy problems with these attempts, observing that what the states have been trying to do is neither legal nor practical. It analyzes the inability of individual states to unilaterally avoid compliance with the United States’ international law obligations. It notes the absurdity in outlawing international law in order to …

Returning Sovereignty To The People, Hallie Ludsin

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Governments across the world regularly invoke sovereignty to demand that the international community "mind its own business" while they commit human rights abuses. They proclaim that the sovereign right to be free from international intervention in domestic affairs permits them unfettered discretion within their territory. This Article seeks to challenge those proclamations by resort to sovereignty in the people, a time-honored principle that is typically more rhetorical than substantive. Relying on classical interpretations of sovereignty, this Article infuses substance into the concept of sovereignty in the people to recognize that a government is entitled to sovereign rights only as the …

Lochner Disembedded: The Anxieties Of Law In A Global Context, Peer Zumbansen

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper explores, in an inevitably cursory manner, some of the main challenges facing a legal theory of transnational governance today. In part building on and responding to William Twining's identification of key problems of law in a global context (2009; 2012), the following paper adopts a two-fold approach. One element is to suggest a conceptual architecture, which captures law in its transformational state through a focus on actors, norms, and processes. Second, the paper proposes case

studies as a central methodological device to explore the nature, scope, and function of governance-both legal and nonlegal-in a global context. Through the …

In The Breach: Citizenship And Its Approximations, Susan C.B. Coutin

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

To analyze the forms of membership that are created in the gap between formal citizenship and social belonging, this paper takes up three examples of citizenship in the breach: (1) the 1980-1992 Salvadoran civil war, in which human rights abuses perpetrated in El Salvador effectively constituted Salvadoran migrants as stateless persons, though technically they held Salvadoran citizenship; (2) informal U.S. membership claims put forward by longtime U.S. residents who were deported to El Salvador; and (3) the legal or documentary problems that emerge when legal permanent residents, some of whom immigrated to the United States from El Salvador during the …

Plugging The Democracy Drain In The Struggle For Universal Access To Safe Drinking Water, Tara Paul

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Privatization of water delivery services has become a global trend as states seek ways to shift both political and economic costs to private actors. The advantage of privatization is that it relieves governments of the daunting expense of repairing and expanding water infrastructure in order to improve quality and reach marginalized communities. But water privatization has also been deeply criticized for corrupt practices, increasing prices to the poor, undermining human rights objectives, and dodging accountability. This note aims to find middle ground, acknowledging that privatization is an important tool to increase freshwater access, but that treating water as a human …

Syria: Not Libya, But Let’S Treat It Like It Is Anyway, Eric A. Heinze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The articles by Condoleezza Rice and Simon Adams advance a series of disquieting possibilities for the future of Syria if the US and other states fail to act. While I am sympathetic to the urgency with which both writers advance their claims, there is much strained and stretched logic—as well as outright naiveté—in both authors' arguments, especially Rice's.

After Assad: Syria’S Post-Conflict Reconstruction, H. M. Roff

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Simon Adams and Condoleezza Rice warn us that with the portended fall of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, the country could witness even more heinous crimes and, potentially, regional political fallout. These worries are not unfounded. However, what seems to be truly missing in their discussions is any mention of post-conflict reconstruction planning. This is unfortunate, as much handwringing is still occurring over "what to do" in Syria, and it will continue until there is a clear vision of what to do after this civil war. Syria's post-conflict reconstruction plan is—or should be—inherently tied to its current operational agenda.

Myths About Syria, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In my contribution, I want to focus on five fallacious claims and arguments that have been presented about the conflict in Syria. (Please note that this piece was written in Dec 2012).

Labor Rights Are Human Rights: Direct Action Is Critical In Supply Chains And Trade Policy, Marisa Ann Pagnattaro

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

The Global Land Rush: Markets, Rights, And The Politics Of Food, Smita Narula

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In the past five years, interest in purchasing and leasing agricultural land in developing countries has skyrocketed. This trend, which was facilitated by the 2008 food crisis, is led by state and private investors, both domestic and foreign. Investors are responding to a variety of global forces: Some are securing their own food supply, while others are capitalizing on land as an increasingly promising source of financial returns. Proponents argue that these investments can support economic development in host states while boosting global food production. But critics charge that these “land grabs” disregard land users' rights and further marginalize already …

Globalization And Law: Law Beyond The State, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

The chapter provides an introduction into law and globalization for sociolegal studies. Instead of treating globalization as an external factor that impacts the law, globalization and law are here viewed as intertwined. I suggest that three types of globalization should be distinguished—globalization as empirical phenomenon, globalization as theory, and globalization as ideology. I go on to discuss one central theme of globalization, namely in what way society, and therefore law, move beyond the state. This is done along the three classical elements of the state—territory, population/citizenship, and government. The role of all of these elements is shifting, suggesting we need …