Law Commons^™

Massacre In Central Burma: Muslim Students Terrorized And Killed In Meiktila, Richard Sollom, Holly G. Atkinson

Publications and Research

This report details the results of a Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) investigation into the March 20 and 21, 2013, attacks on Muslim students, teachers, and residents in the Mingalar Zayyone quarter of Meiktila, a small town in central Burma.

A two-person team, the authors of the report, from PHR conducted 33 interviews about the attacks, which resulted in the deaths of at least 20 children and four teachers. The report details the attacks by the Buddhist mobs, provides evidence that local police officers were complicit in the crimes, and lists policy recommendations for the Burmese government and the international …

Inherent Human Rights: Philosophical Roots Of The Universal Declaration, James W. Nickel

Articles

No abstract provided.

Israel’S Rosit The Riveter: Between Secular Law And Jewish Law, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

In the world of Judaism, the “end of men” is not in sight. Surely, tectonic plates are sliding and shifting, and a great deal of change is unfolding, but men are fighting hard to keep patriarchy alive. Deep inside, the Orthodox patriarchal man may be motivated by the sheer impulse to maintain his power, but outwardly he projects a profound commitment to his religious law, the law of God. He believes that his fight is a noble one ordained by divine will and that God is on his side. The problem is global; it appears in every Jewish community around …

Humanitarian Financial Intervention, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

Over the past several decades, states have used international asset freezes with increasing frequency as a mechanism for promoting human rights abroad. Yet the international law governing this mechanism, which I refer to as ‘humanitarian financial intervention’, remains fragmented. This article offers the first systematic legal analysis of humanitarian financial intervention. It identifies six humanitarian purposes that states may pursue through asset freezes: preserving foreign assets from misappropriation, incapacitating foreign states or foreign nationals, coercing foreign states or foreign nationals to forsake abusive practices, compensating victims, ameliorating humanitarian crises through humanitarian aid or postconflict reconstruction, and punishing human rights violators. …

The Bavarian Case For Registering Guns, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rebalancing Intellectual Property In The Information Society: The Human Rights Approach, Ana Eduarda Santos

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

In today's Information Society, one of the most salient paradoxes is the fact that the law of intellectual property has been systematically used in ways that erect barriers around the very building blocks that lie at its foundation. As intellectual property law stretches to cover all kinds of information-intensive goods at an atomic level, access to raw data and educational materials is hindered, creative inputs shrink and scientific research becomes harder, costlier and, in some cases, virtually impossible.

The set of limitations and exceptions offered by intellectual property laws around the world tends to be either too frail or too …

Rio+20 And Biodiversity: What Next? The International And Brazilian Perspectives, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Extended written remarks of the oral panel presentation by Professor Nicholas A. Robinson at the international colloquium in tribute to Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo do Machado on Rio+20 and Biodiversity: Assessing the Future We Want. Presented as part of the Inaugural Panel, held in the Senate Chamber of Brazil in Brasilia on 26 April 2013 and televised nationally.

Justice For War Criminals: The Trials Of Nazi Concentration Camp Guards At Dachau, Jarrid Trudeau

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

This paper will seek to explore whether or not Nazi war criminals tasked with manning and staffing the various concentration and death camps were in any way entitled to due process of law upon their capture and trial. This concept is debated among international Holocaust scholars and often discussed with purely apodictic arguments based upon a lack of understanding of military law. This paper will discuss in detail the rights, liberties, and treatment of Nazi war criminals after World War II in relation to the trials of concentration camp guards. It will also necessarily explore and explicate the misunderstood military …

Great Debate: Mining In Latin America, Lisa E. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Mining represents a great opportunity for economic growth, especially for emerging economies. It is often seen as the path to prosperity. However, the mining industry is a double edged sword. Countries in Latin America are managing to attract significant foreign investment. In Chile, the extractive sector’s participation in the economy has tripled in the last 10 years, reaching 15% of GDP. In Colombia and Peru, it has doubled to 10% of GDP. The Santos administration in Colombia has made mining one of its top policy priorities.

However, there may be significant downsides to mining, as governments are forced to offer …

International Decisions: Territorial And Maritime Dispute (Nicaragua V. Colombia), Nienke Grossman

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

International Law And The Future Of Peace, Diane Marie Amann

Presentations and Speeches

These remarks, delivered at the April 4, 2013, luncheon of the American Society of International Law Women in International Law Interest Group, reflects on contributions of Jane Addams and other members of the early 20th C. peace movement as a means to explore law and practice related to the contemporary use of force and armed conflict.

The Duty To Capture, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The duty to capture stands at the fault line between competing legal regimes that might govern targeted killings. If human rights law and domestic law enforcement procedures govern these killings, the duty to attempt capture prior to lethal force represents a cardinal rule that is systematically violated by these operations. On the other hand, if the Law of War applies then the duty to capture is fundamentally inconsistent with the summary killing already sanctioned by jus in bello. The following Article examines the duty to capture and the divergent approaches that each legal regime takes to this normative requirement, and …

Online Certificate Program For International Commercial Law And International Alternative Dispute Resolution, Vikki Rogers

Cornerstone 3 Reports : Interdisciplinary Informatics

No abstract provided.

Legal Rhetoric And Social Science: A Hypothesis For Why Doctrine Matters In Judicial Decisionmaking, Brett Waldron

Pace International Law Review Online Companion

In the realm of American jurisprudence, little draws more excitement or controversy than investigating the role of federal judges in our constitutional order. Yet, at the same time, the scholarly literature has not settled upon a singular descriptive device to explain how federal judges actually carry out this role. In broad strokes, current academic commentary appears to be divided on the issue of whether fidelity to the law or fidelity to political ideology largely determines how judges decide cases. This division, however interesting it may be, should not be afforded the luxury of being examined on a level playing field. …

Islamic History & Al-Qaeda: A Primer To Understanding The Rise Of Islamist Movements In The Modern World, Andrew M. Bennett

Pace International Law Review Online Companion

A decade following the 9/11 attacks, the objectives and motivations of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda remain largely unknown to the American public. Since the mission of Al-Qaeda is embedded in its interpretation of the history and traditions of Islam, increased analysis on the intellectual framework of Al-Qaeda provides valuable insight into this dangerous ideology that will remain a strategic threat to the United States for the foreseeable future. While more recent successes against the Al-Qaeda organization have encouraged talk of “the end of Al-Qaeda,” the broader ideology remains alive and well. The rise in support for the Islamist groups …

The Future Of Ad Hoc Tribunals: An Assessment Of Their Utility Post-Icc, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Over the past two decades, various mechanisms of international and regional justice have developed. The proliferation of international courts, hybrid tribunals, domestic war crimes chambers, truth commissions, civil compensation commissions, and other tools of accountability has sparked an academic debate over the usefulness of any such mechanism for redressing past violations of international law. This Article briefly discusses some of the best-known mechanisms of international, national, and "hybrid" justice, and assesses their role in light of the creation and existence of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the only permanent tribunal in international criminal law. Does international justice have a place …

Book Review: "Die Gemeinfreiheit: Begriff, Funktion, Dogmatik (The Public Domain: Concept, Function, Dogmatics)" By Alexander Peukert, Marketa Trimble

Scholarly Works

The reviewer considers a recent book by Alexander Peukert, the professor of civil and commercial law who specializes in international intellectual property law at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Peukert has devoted the book to defining the limits of the public domain – the realm of intellectual activity in which works are free for anyone to use because the works are not protected by intellectual property rights, are protected but the protection has expired, are subject to an exception to the rights under the law, or are unprotected because the owner of the rights chooses not to enforce …

Challenges To Compliance With International Humanitarian Law In The Context Of Contemporary Warfare, Morgan Kelley

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The changing nature of warfare in the 21^st century poses a multitude of challenges to the perceived applicability of International Humanitarian Law for both State and non-State actors in contemporary conflicts. These issues, including but not limited to: ambiguity in the distinction of violent conflict, the changing type of actors involved, issues of asymmetric warfare, challenges of negative reciprocity, and an inhibited ability to engage with all parties to conflict, are detrimental to the overriding purpose of IHL. Still, the oftentimes inefficient nature of the international system, as well as lack of consensus regarding new legislation means that formal …

Back To The Bad Old Days: President Putin's Hold On Free Speech In The Russian Federation, Rebecca Favret

Law Student Publications

This paper addresses new laws promulgated in Russia that restrict freedom of speech. Each implicitly reflects the Kremlin's hostility toward political dissidence in the aftermath of serious protests following President Putin's reelection and elections to the legislature. Disturbed by the outcry, which took place in cities across Russia but also infiltrated the Internet, the Russian legislature passed strict laws censoring Internet speech, prohibiting behavior and speech deemed "extremist," and curbing the size and type of public gatherings.

The new legislation is examined through the lens of some of the Kremlin's most infamous and recent targets: namely, the Internet blacklist and …

International Law’S Erie Moment, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

Who fills international law’s gaps? Whether over the meaning of bilateral investment treaties, the standards regarding detainee transfer, or the rules of non-international armed conflict, courts and states are increasingly in conflict over the authority to say what the law is. With international law’s increased judicialization, two competing visions of international law have emerged: One, a gap-filled international law, in which law is developed slowly through custom, argument, and negotiation, and a second, gap-less, in which disputes are resolved through a form of common law adjudication.

Drawing on growing literature on the law outside of courts, particularly out-of-court settlements, the …

The Spirit And Task Of Democratic Cosmopolitanism: European Political Identity At The Limits Of Transnational Law, Paul Linden-Retek

Journal Articles

The problem motivating this essay is the continuing, yet difficult hope for a Europe of democratic cosmopolitanism, for a Europe in which cosmopolitics works to continually question the terms of lingering exclusion while preserving our ideals of self-legislation and democratic authorship. In what follows, I expand the familiar criticism of Europe’s democratic legitimacy gap, its democratic deficit, as a lens through which to analyse the possibility of a supranational participatory identity within the European political space. First, I describe the contemporary juridification of European politics, specifically concerning the legal formalism of the European Court of Justice, and the dangers such …

Is Jus In Bello In Crisis?, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

It is a truism that new technologies are remaking the tactical and legal landscape of armed conflict. While such statements are undoubtedly true, it is important to separate genuine trends from scholarly exaggeration. The following essay, an introduction to the Drone Wars symposium of the Journal, catalogues today’s most pressing disputes regarding international humanitarian law (IHL) and their consequences for criminal responsibility. These include: (i) the triggering and classification of armed conflicts with non-state actors; (ii) the relative scope of IHL and international human rights law in asymmetrical conflicts; (iii) the targeting of suspected terrorists under concept- or status-based classifications …

The Thoughtful Integration Of Mediation Into Bilateral Investment Treaty Arbitration, Nancy A. Welsh, Andrea Kupfer Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

While the current system of investment treaty arbitration has definitely improved upon the “gunboat diplomacy” used at times to address disputes between states and foreign investors, there are signs that reform is needed: states and investors increasingly express concerns regarding the costs associated with the arbitration process, some states refuse to comply with arbitral awards, other states hesitate to sign new bilateral investment treaties, and citizens have begun to engage in popular unrest at the prospect of investment treaty arbitration. As a result, both investors and states are advocating for the use of mediation to supplement investor-state arbitration. This Article …

"At The Hospital There Are No Human Rights": Reproductive And Sexual Rights Violations Of Women Living With Hiv In Namibia, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

This report documents the ongoing stigma and discrimination of women living with HIV in Namibia, building on prior findings and investigations on the subject, such as the 2008 research conducted by the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW) and the Namibian Women’s Health Network (NWHN). The report, based upon both desk research and a field mission, examines the human rights situation related to sexual and reproductive health of women living with HIV, including the gravity and ongoing nature of forced and coerced sterilizations in Namibia. The report also provides evidence of violations of informed consent in the context …

It Sure Looks Different From The Inside: Deciding International Disputes At The Wto, Thomas R. Graham

Philip J. Shapiro Endowed International Visiting Scholar Lecture

No abstract provided.

Pornography And The Connection To Commerical Sexual Exploitation, Cheryl Page

Journal Publications

Human Trafficking is a violation against humanity and a contradiction to the notion that all people are born free and have rights that are equal. 1 This global crime is a part of practically every country in the world. No nation is immune from its reaches. Every year thousands of women, men and children fall prey to human commercial exploitation and are trapped in a criminal enterprise that profits in the billions. Human trafficking is defined as, “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of …

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 …

Quaint And Obsolete: The ‘War On Terror’ And The Right To Legal Personality, Michael Galchinsky

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mass Tort Claims In International Investment Proceedings: What Are The Lessons From The Ecuador-Chevron Dispute?, Chiara Giorgetti

Law Faculty Publications

In parallel to the La go Agrio and Aguinda litigations in the U.S. and Ecuadorian proceedings that have been discussed already,l the Chevron dispute includes an international dimension that presents equally complex and important challenges, but focuses on very different issues and involves different parties. My remarks introduce these international proceedings first to explain the different actions taken by the parties in different forums. I then assess the viability of international dispute resolution mechanisms for mass tort claims in general, before considering more specifically whether they can provide sufficient redress to mass tort claimants. Finally, I briefly introduce alternative dispute …