Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
-
- University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (8)
- University of Pittsburgh School of Law (3)
- Loyola University Chicago (2)
- SIT Graduate Institute/SIT Study Abroad (2)
- University of Connecticut (2)
-
- Ursinus College (2)
- Emory University School of Law (1)
- Macalester College (1)
- Northwestern Pritzker School of Law (1)
- Rhode Island College (1)
- Singapore Management University (1)
- Touro University Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center (1)
- University at Buffalo School of Law (1)
- University of Dayton (1)
- University of Georgia School of Law (1)
- University of Nebraska - Lincoln (1)
- University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1)
- University of Tennessee, Knoxville (1)
- Publication Year
- Publication
-
- All Faculty Scholarship (8)
- Articles (3)
- Honors Scholar Theses (2)
- Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection (2)
- Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works (2)
-
- Scholarly Works (2)
- Baker Scholar Projects (1)
- Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards (1)
- Faculty Articles (1)
- Faculty Publications (1)
- Faculty Working Papers (1)
- Honors Theses (1)
- International Relations Summer Fellows (1)
- Journal Articles (1)
- Political Science Faculty Publications (1)
- Political Science Honors Projects (1)
- Politics and International Relations Presentations (1)
- Research Collection School of Social Sciences (1)
- File Type
Articles 1 - 30 of 31
Full-Text Articles in Law
Does Electoral Proximity Influence Commitment To International Human Rights Law?, Nolan Ragland
Does Electoral Proximity Influence Commitment To International Human Rights Law?, Nolan Ragland
Baker Scholar Projects
The core international human rights treaties from the United Nations have been signed and ratified by varying groups of states, and much of previous research has been dominated by a desire to explain ratification of international human rights law (IHRL) through the democratic lock-in effect and states’ economic and political ties to one another. In this paper, I seek to understand when states are ratifying IHRL, testing whether the presence of elections influences commitment to three of the nine core international human rights treaties: the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of …
Irregular Migration In Morocco: A Case For Constructionism, Mourad Khalil
Irregular Migration In Morocco: A Case For Constructionism, Mourad Khalil
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
Separated by only 14 kilometers of water from Spain, Morocco has become a common destination for many sub-Saharan irregular migrants trying to reach Europe. With a large population of these migrants, Morocco has had to make important decisions on how to manage its irregular migrant population. However, the terrible conditions and regular violations of human rights that irregular migrants in Morocco are subject to lead one to ponder the role that international relations has and the extent to which human rights is a consideration in the policymaking of irregular migration. Applied to the three primary theories of international relations, liberalism, …
White Supremacy, Police Brutality, And Family Separation: Preventing Crimes Against Humanity Within The United States, Elena Baylis
White Supremacy, Police Brutality, And Family Separation: Preventing Crimes Against Humanity Within The United States, Elena Baylis
Articles
Although the United States tends to treat crimes against humanity as a danger that exists only in authoritarian or war-torn states, in fact, there is a real risk of crimes against humanity occurring within the United States, as illustrated by events such as systemic police brutality against Black Americans, the federal government’s family separation policy that took thousands of immigrant children from their parents at the southern border, and the dramatic escalation of White supremacist and extremist violence culminating in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In spite of this risk, the United States does not have …
Explaining Reproductive Health Disparities: Violence In The “Colorblind” Institution Of Medicine, Chineze Osakwe
Explaining Reproductive Health Disparities: Violence In The “Colorblind” Institution Of Medicine, Chineze Osakwe
Honors Scholar Theses
Medical policies have resulted in violence that has a formal role in regulating the reproductive rights of women of African descent in the United States from the Jim Crow era (circa 1965) to present day (2021), resulting in significantly racialized reproductive health disparities regardless of social or economic influences. This thesis explores why reproductive violence against African-American women persists, regardless of women’s own class and educational background. I have focused on the potential impact of two structural components that I hypothesized contributed to the perpetuation of reproductive violence against Black women and persistent health disparities. The two factors explored in …
Strategic Litigation And The Evolution Of Regional Human Rights Norms: Cases From Germany And The Netherlands, Cole Kovarik
Strategic Litigation And The Evolution Of Regional Human Rights Norms: Cases From Germany And The Netherlands, Cole Kovarik
Honors Theses
This study seeks to fill gaps in our understanding of how private actors participate in international human rights politics by examining civil society involvement in European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) cases against long-standing democracies. Descriptive analysis of an exhaustive data set of instances of civil society organization (CSO) participation in ECtHR cases against Germany and The Netherlands is complemented by a comparative case study analysis of networks of organizations that mobilized around German and Dutch cases concerning Articles 8 (right to privacy) and 10 (freedom of expression). The data suggest that civil society organizations not only appear before the …
Local Elected Officials’ Receptivity To Refugee Resettlement In The United States, Robert Shaffer, Lauren E. Pinson, Jonathan A. Chu, Beth A. Simmons
Local Elected Officials’ Receptivity To Refugee Resettlement In The United States, Robert Shaffer, Lauren E. Pinson, Jonathan A. Chu, Beth A. Simmons
All Faculty Scholarship
Local leaders possess significant and growing authority over refugee resettlement, yet we know little about their attitudes toward refugees. In this article, we use a conjoint experiment to evaluate how the attributes of hypothetical refugee groups influence local policymaker receptivity toward refugee resettlement. We sample from a novel, national panel of current local elected officials, who represent a broad range of urban and rural communities across the United States. We find that many local officials favor refugee resettlement regardless of refugee attributes. However, officials are most receptive to refugees whom they perceive as a strong economic and social fit within …
Oppression Or Occupation: Conflicting Views On The Nature Of Sex Work In France And Under International Law, Carver Wolfe
Oppression Or Occupation: Conflicting Views On The Nature Of Sex Work In France And Under International Law, Carver Wolfe
Politics and International Relations Presentations
Although there is some debate over the exact number of victims of sex trafficking, it is agreed upon that it is an issue that affect primarily women and girls around the world. This paper will examine modern day slavery and the unresolved, century-old debate surrounding sex trafficking and sex work. While abolitionists advocate for total eradication of all sex work, whether it is consensual or not, libertarians support the right to voluntary sex work while condemning the coercion and exploitation that surrounds all forms of trafficking. I will use an analysis of international conventions and will begin a comparative analysis …
Oppression Or Occupation: An International Analysis Of Sex Work And Sex Trafficking, Carver Wolfe
Oppression Or Occupation: An International Analysis Of Sex Work And Sex Trafficking, Carver Wolfe
International Relations Summer Fellows
Although there is some debate over the exact number of victims of sex trafficking, it is agreed that it is an issue that affects primarily women and girls around the world. This paper will examine modern-day slavery and the unresolved, century-old debate surrounding sex trafficking and sex work. While abolitionists advocate for the total eradication of all sex work, whether it is consensual or not, libertarians support the right to voluntary sex work while condemning the coercion and exploitation that surrounds all forms of trafficking. I will use an analysis of international conventions and will begin a comparative analysis by …
The Political Development Of Capital Punishment In The Modern Moroccan State, Mia Barr
The Political Development Of Capital Punishment In The Modern Moroccan State, Mia Barr
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
The modern Moroccan state seen today is very young. Having only been independent from France since 1956, the country has spent the last sixty-four years crafting its post-colonial statehood. What has emerged is a hybrid political system with powers split, however unequally, between the King and his inner circle, known as the makhzen, and the Parliament. Not only is the monarchy constitutional—meaning that its legitimacy is literally written into the primary governing document of Morocco, which had its last referendum in 2011—but it is also self-sustaining and self-legitimizing, for the monarchy uses its constitutional powers to grant itself further powers …
The Proof Is In The Process: Self-Reporting Under International Human Rights Treaties, Cosette D. Creamer, Beth A. Simmons
The Proof Is In The Process: Self-Reporting Under International Human Rights Treaties, Cosette D. Creamer, Beth A. Simmons
All Faculty Scholarship
Recent research has shown that state reporting to human rights monitoring bodies is associated with improvements in rights practices, calling into question earlier claims that self-reporting is inconsequential. Yet little work has been done to explore the theoretical mechanisms that plausibly account for this association. This Article systematically documents—across treaties, countries, and years—four mechanisms through which reporting can contribute to human rights improvements: elite socialization, learning and capacity building, domestic mobilization, and law development. These mechanisms have implications for the future of human rights treaty monitoring.
Popular Versus Elite Democracies And Human Rights: Inclusion Makes A Difference, Devin K. Joshi, J. S. Maloy, Timothy M. Peterson
Popular Versus Elite Democracies And Human Rights: Inclusion Makes A Difference, Devin K. Joshi, J. S. Maloy, Timothy M. Peterson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Scholarly research generally finds that democratic governments are more likely to respect human rights than other types of regimes. Different human rights practices among long-standing and affluent democracies therefore present a puzzle. Drawing from democratic theory and comparative institutional studies, we argue more inclusive or "popular" democracies should enforce human rights better than more exclusive or "elite" democracies, even in the face of security threats from armed conflict. Instead of relying on the Freedom House or Polity indexes to distinguish levels of democracy, we adopt a more focused approach to measuring structures of inclusion, the Institutional Democracy Index (IDI), which …
Book Review: Not Enough: Human Rights In An Unequal World, Harlan G. Cohen
Book Review: Not Enough: Human Rights In An Unequal World, Harlan G. Cohen
Scholarly Works
Review of the book Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. By Samuel Moyn. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press 2018. Pp. ix, 220. Index.
Borders Rules, Beth A. Simmons
Borders Rules, Beth A. Simmons
All Faculty Scholarship
International political borders have historically performed one overriding function: the delimitation of a state’s territorial jurisdiction, but today they are sites of intense security scrutiny and law enforcement. Traditionally they were created to secure peace through territorial independence of political units. Today borders face new pressures from heightened human mobility, economic interdependence (legal and illicit), and perceived challenges from a host of nonstate threats. Research has only begun to reveal what some of these changes mean for the governance of interstate borders. The problems surrounding international borders today go well-beyond traditional delineation and delimitation. These problems call for active forms …
Administrative Narratives, Human Rights, And Public Ethics: The Detroit Water-Shutoff Case, Richard K. Ghere
Administrative Narratives, Human Rights, And Public Ethics: The Detroit Water-Shutoff Case, Richard K. Ghere
Political Science Faculty Publications
This inquiry focuses specifically on administrative (local official) narratives that speak to contentious issue contexts of social conflict. Specifically, it draws upon a theoretical connection between hermeneutics and the sociology of knowledge to interpret narrative passages of local officials and others related to a contentious public action—the Detroit Water and Sewerage District’s stepped-up water-discontinuation efforts (2014 and 2015) that left thousands of inner-city residents with “delinquent” accounts and no access to water service. Selected narratives from this case are interpreted on the basis of their literary and social functions. The interpretations support a subsequent determination of whether and how the …
Ratification, Reporting, And Rights: Quality Of Participation In The Convention Against Torture, Cossette D. Creamer, Beth A. Simmons
Ratification, Reporting, And Rights: Quality Of Participation In The Convention Against Torture, Cossette D. Creamer, Beth A. Simmons
All Faculty Scholarship
The core international human rights treaty bodies play an important role in monitoring implementation of human rights standards through consideration of states parties’ reports. Yet very little research explores how seriously governments take their reporting obligations. This article examines the reporting record of parties to the Convention against Torture, finding that report submission is heavily conditioned by the practices of neighboring countries and by a government’s human rights commitment and institutional capacity. This article also introduces original data on the quality and responsiveness of reports, finding that more democratic—and particularly newly democratic—governments tend to render higher quality reports.
Human Rights Treaties In And Beyond The Senate: The Spirit Of Senator Proxmire, Jean Galbraith
Human Rights Treaties In And Beyond The Senate: The Spirit Of Senator Proxmire, Jean Galbraith
All Faculty Scholarship
In 1995, Louis Henkin wrote a famous piece in which he suggested that the process of human rights treaty ratification was haunted by “the ghost of Senator Bricker” – the isolationist Senator who in the 1950s had waged a fierce assault on the treaty power, especially with regard to human rights treaties. Since that time, Senator Bricker’s ghost has proved even more real. Professor Henkin’s concern was with how the United States ratified human rights treaties, and specifically with the packet of reservations, declarations, and understandings (RUDs) attached by the Senate in giving its advice and consent. Today, the question …
Impact Of The “Nirbhaya” Rape Case: Isolated Phenomenon Or Social Change?, Tina P. Lapsia
Impact Of The “Nirbhaya” Rape Case: Isolated Phenomenon Or Social Change?, Tina P. Lapsia
Honors Scholar Theses
In December 2012, a twenty-three year old college student, who was given the pseudonym “Nirbhaya” (“fearless”), was fatally gang-raped on a private bus in Delhi, India, galvanizing the country to swiftly adopt new legislative measures and catapulting the issue of violence against women in India into the international spotlight. Although assault and rape cases have made India infamous for its high volume of crimes against women, the reaction to this particular incident was much different from before. This paper investigates whether the governmental and societal responses represent social change, as indicated by changing attitudes towards violence against women in India. …
Framing For A New Transnational Legal Order: The Case Of Human Trafficking, Paulette Lloyd, Beth A. Simmons
Framing For A New Transnational Legal Order: The Case Of Human Trafficking, Paulette Lloyd, Beth A. Simmons
All Faculty Scholarship
How does transnational legal order emerge, develop and solidify? This chapter focuses on how and why actors come to define an issue as one requiring transnational legal intervention of a specific kind. Specifically, we focus on how and why states have increasingly constructed and acceded to international legal norms relating to human trafficking. Empirically, human trafficking has been on the international and transnational agenda for nearly a century. However, relatively recently – and fairly swiftly in the 2000s – governments have committed themselves to criminalize human trafficking in international as well as regional and domestic law. Our paper tries to …
Frames And Consensus Formation In International Relations: The Case Of Trafficking In Persons, Volha Charnysh, Paulette Lloyd, Beth A. Simmons
Frames And Consensus Formation In International Relations: The Case Of Trafficking In Persons, Volha Charnysh, Paulette Lloyd, Beth A. Simmons
All Faculty Scholarship
This article examines the process of consensus formation by the international community regarding how to confront the problem of trafficking in persons. We analyze the corpus of United Nations General Assembly Third Committee resolutions to show that: (1) consensus around the issue of how to confront trafficking in persons has increased over time; and (2) the formation of this consensus depends upon how the issue is framed. We test our argument by examining the characteristics of resolutions’ sponsors and discursive framing concepts such as crime, human rights, and the strength of enforcement language. We conclude that the consensus-formation process in …
Reconciling Positivism And Realism: Kelsen And Habermas On Democracy And Human Rights, David Ingram
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 …
From Rapists To Superpredators: What The Practice Of Capital Punishment Says About Race, Rights And The American Child, Robyn Linde
Faculty Publications
At the turn of the 20th century, the United States was widely considered to be a world leader in matters of child protection and welfare, a reputation lost by the century’s end. This paper suggests that the United States’ loss of international esteem concerning child welfare was directly related to its practice of executing juvenile offenders. The paper analyzes why the United States continued to carry out the juvenile death penalty after the establishment of juvenile courts and other protections for child criminals. Two factors allowed the United States to continue the juvenile death penalty after most states in …
Notes In Defense Of The Iraq Constitution, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Notes In Defense Of The Iraq Constitution, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Articles
This paper is a defense of sorts of the Iraqi constitution, arguing that the language used in it was wisely designed to allow some level of flexibility, such that highly divided political forces could find incremental solutions to the deep rooted sources of division that have plagued Iraqi society since its inception. That Iraq has found itself in such dreadful political circumstances since constitutional ratification is therefore not a function of the open ended constitutional bargain, but rather of the failure of Iraqi legal and political elites to make use of the space that the constitution provided them to develop …
Adoption Of The Responsibility To Protect, William W. Burke-White
Adoption Of The Responsibility To Protect, William W. Burke-White
All Faculty Scholarship
This book chapter traces the legal and political origins of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine from its early origins in the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty through the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document and up to January 2011. The chapter examines the legal meaning of the Responsibility to Protect, the obligations the Responsibility imposes on states and international institutions, and its implications in for the international legal and political systems. The chapter argues that while the Responsibility to Protect has developed with extraordinary speed, it is still a norm in development rather than a binding legal rule. Its …
Think Outside The Cell: Are Binding Detention Standards The Most Effective Strategy To Prevent Abuses Of Detained Illegal Aliens?, Federico D. Burlon
Think Outside The Cell: Are Binding Detention Standards The Most Effective Strategy To Prevent Abuses Of Detained Illegal Aliens?, Federico D. Burlon
Political Science Honors Projects
In the last twenty years the U.S. government has increasingly utilized detention to control illegal immigration. This practice has become controversial because it has caused numerous in-custody abuses and deaths of immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees and even citizens. Immigrant rights advocates have called for the passage of binding detention standards to prevent in-custody abuses. This thesis’s policy analysis reveals, however, that while they may finesse the practice of immigration detention, such binding standards would be ineffective in protecting immigrants’ rights. Instead this policy analysis calls for and explains the feasibility of discontinuing the practice of mass immigrant detention.
Human Rights Abuses In 1970s Argentina, Vanessa Gomez
Human Rights Abuses In 1970s Argentina, Vanessa Gomez
Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards
In this paper I address various components to the human rights abuses in Argentina in the 1970s. The domestic political situation is analyzed with particular attention paid to the political culture and the history of the regime. Media outlets and interviews by victims are used to facilitate first-hand accounts of the regime. The international arena and the efforts of human rights groups are mentioned as a means to demonstrate the international implications of the regime. I wrote this paper to further my knowledge on human rights abuses and further the knowledge of all who read my attempt. This essay marks …
Of Sweatshops And Human Subsistence: Habermas On Human Rights, David Ingram
Of Sweatshops And Human Subsistence: Habermas On Human Rights, David Ingram
Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this paper I argue that the discourse theoretic account of human rights defended by Jürgen Habermas contains a fruitful tension that is obscured by its dominant tendency to identify rights with legal claims. This weakness in Habermas’s account becomes manifest when we examine how sweatshops diminish the secure enjoyment of subsistence, which Habermas himself (in recognition of the UDHR) recognizes as a human right. Discourse theories of human rights are unique in tying the legitimacy of human rights to democratic deliberation and consensus. So construed, their specific meaning and force is the outcome of historical political struggle. However, unlike …
The European Court’S Political Power Across Time And Space, Karen Alter
The European Court’S Political Power Across Time And Space, Karen Alter
Faculty Working Papers
This article extracts from Alter's larger body of work insights on how the political and social context shapes the ECJ's political power and influence. Part I considers how the political context facilitated the constitutionalization of the European legal system. Part II considers how the political context helps determine where and when the current ECJ influences European politics. Part III draws lessons from the ECJ's experience, speculating on how the European context in specific allowed the ECJ to become such an exceptional international court. Part IV lays out a research agenda to investigate the larger question of how social support shapes …
The Mote In Thy Brother’S Eye: A Review Of Human Rights As Politics And Idolatry, William M. Carter Jr.
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 …
Law And Religion In Israel And Iran: How The Integration Of Secular And Spiritual Laws Affects Human Rights And The Potential For Violence, S. I. Strong
Faculty Articles
Because law and religion are by themselves complex cultural and historical issues, any study of the interaction between the two will be at least as complicated. If one is to understand both a State's current religio-legal regime and what reform measures are most likely to succeed there, it is necessary to understand at least a little of the nation's history and majority religion. Therefore, Part I of this article provides a brief sketch of the principles of the two majority religions at issue in this discussion and an overview of the history of both Israel and Iran. It explains why …
Peace-Building, John Linarelli