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Full-Text Articles in Law

All Human Rights Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others: The Extraordinary Rendition Of A Terror Suspect In Italy, The Nato Sofa, And Human Rights, Chris Jenks, Eric Talbot Jensen Dec 2010

All Human Rights Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others: The Extraordinary Rendition Of A Terror Suspect In Italy, The Nato Sofa, And Human Rights, Chris Jenks, Eric Talbot Jensen

Faculty Scholarship

On November 4, 2009, an Italian court found a group of Italian military intelligence agents, operatives from the Central Intelligence Agency and a U.S. Air Force (USAF) officer guilty of the 2003 kidnapping of terror suspect Abu Omar. Thrown in a van on the streets of Milan, the abduction took Abu Omar from Italy to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured and interrogated about his role in recruiting fighters for extremist Islamic causes, including the insurgency in Iraq. This essay posits that lost amidst politically charged rhetoric about Bush administration impunity and the “war on terror” is that the Italian …


Walking The Legal Tightrope: Solutions For Achieving A Balanced Life In Law, Leslie L. Cooney Jan 2010

Walking The Legal Tightrope: Solutions For Achieving A Balanced Life In Law, Leslie L. Cooney

Faculty Scholarship

For over twenty years, issues surrounding women and their status in the legal profession have been documented, analyzed, and reported. The American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Women in its 1988 study concluded that a thorough reexamination of attitudes and structures within the legal profession was needed to remedy the underrepresentation of women in the positions of power within the profession-law firm partnerships and judicial appointments. Nearly a decade later, the ABA Commission on Women found that little progress had been made in female representation and concluded the mere passage of time alone would not render sufficient corrections. Although the …


Walking The Legal Tightrope: Solutions For Achieving A Balanced Life In Law, Leslie Larkin Cooney Jan 2010

Walking The Legal Tightrope: Solutions For Achieving A Balanced Life In Law, Leslie Larkin Cooney

Faculty Scholarship

Leslie Cooney, Walking the Legal Tightrope: Solutions for Achieving a Balanced Life in Law, 47 San Diego Law Review 421 (2010). For over twenty years, issues surrounding women and their status in the legal profession have been documented, analyzed, and reported. The American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Women in its 1988 study concluded that a thorough reexamination of attitudes and structures within the legal profession was needed to remedy the underrepresentation of women in the positions of power within the profession-law firm partnerships and judicial appointments. Nearly a decade later, the ABA Commission on Women found that little …


Collateral Consequences Of Criminal Convictions: Confronting Issues Of Race And Dignity, Michael Pinard Jan 2010

Collateral Consequences Of Criminal Convictions: Confronting Issues Of Race And Dignity, Michael Pinard

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the racial dimensions of the various collateral consequences that attach to criminal convictions in the United States. The consequences include ineligibility for public and government-assisted housing, public benefits and various forms of employment, as well as civic exclusions such as ineligibility for jury service and felon disenfranchisement. To test its hypothesis that these penalties, both historically and contemporarily, are rooted in race, the article looks to England and Wales, Canada and South Africa. These countries have criminal justice systems similar to the United States’, have been influenced significantly by United States’ criminal justice practices in recent years, …


Defaming Muhammad: Dignity, Harm, And Incitement To Religious Hatred, Peter G. Danchin Jan 2010

Defaming Muhammad: Dignity, Harm, And Incitement To Religious Hatred, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

The Danish cartoons controversy has generated a torrent of commentary seeking to define and defend competing conceptions of the normative implications of the affair. This Article addresses the question of how liberal democratic states ought to respond to visible manifestations of hatred, especially speech that constitutes incitement to religious hatred. Taking the publication of the Danish cartoons as its point of departure, the Article interrogates the complex historical and normative relationship between free speech and freedom of religion in the liberal democratic order and discusses the two critical questions of whether the cartoons give rise to a genuine conflict of …


Community Recovery Lawyering: Hard-Learned Lessons From Post-Katrina Mississippi, Bonnie Allen, Barbara Bezdek, John Jopling Jan 2010

Community Recovery Lawyering: Hard-Learned Lessons From Post-Katrina Mississippi, Bonnie Allen, Barbara Bezdek, John Jopling

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Relocation Revisited: Sex Trafficking Of Native Women In The United States, Sarah Deer Jan 2010

Relocation Revisited: Sex Trafficking Of Native Women In The United States, Sarah Deer

Faculty Scholarship

The Trafficking Victim Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) signaled a comprehensive campaign by the United States (US) government to address the scourge of human trafficking in the US and abroad. The US rhetoric about sex trafficking suggests that the problem originates in foreign countries and/or is recent problem. Neither claim is correct. This article details the historical and legal context of sex trafficking from its origin among the colonial predecessors of the US and documents the commercial trafficking of Native women over several centuries. Native women have experienced generations of enslavement, exploitation, exportation, and relocation. Human trafficking is not just …


Cultural And Economic Self-Determination For Tribal Peoples In The United States Supported By The Un Declaration On The Rights Of Indigenous Peoples, Angelique Eaglewoman Jan 2010

Cultural And Economic Self-Determination For Tribal Peoples In The United States Supported By The Un Declaration On The Rights Of Indigenous Peoples, Angelique Eaglewoman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Crimes Without Punishment: Violence Against Women In Guatemala, Karen Musalo, Elisabeth Pellegrin, S. Shawn Roberts Jan 2010

Crimes Without Punishment: Violence Against Women In Guatemala, Karen Musalo, Elisabeth Pellegrin, S. Shawn Roberts

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Human Rights And Intellectual Property: Mapping The Global Interface, Laurence R. Helfer, Graeme W. Austin Jan 2010

Human Rights And Intellectual Property: Mapping The Global Interface, Laurence R. Helfer, Graeme W. Austin

Faculty Scholarship

Human Rights and Intellectual Property: Mapping the Global Interface explores the intersections between intellectual property and human rights law and policy. The relationship between these two fields has captured the attention of governments, policymakers, and activist communities in a diverse array of international and domestic political and judicial venues. These actors often raise human rights arguments as counterweights to the expansion of intellectual property in areas including freedom of expression, public health, education, privacy, agriculture, and the rights of indigenous peoples. At the same time, the creators and owners of intellectual property are asserting a human rights justification for the …


Criminal Defence And The International Legal Personality Of The Individual, Kenneth S. Gallant Jan 2010

Criminal Defence And The International Legal Personality Of The Individual, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

Since the beginning of the Nuremberg trial, the status of the individual in international law has changed. This change is intimately connected with the right of defense in criminal proceedings, especially international criminal proceedings. Today, as a matter of right, the individual may make certain claims in international law, and especially international criminal law and international human rights law related to criminal procedure and substantive criminal law, without relying on a state to make them on his or her behalf. This article explores this development of the international legal personality of individuals. It also considers some of the limits of …


Human Rights Without Foundations, Joseph Raz Jan 2010

Human Rights Without Foundations, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

This is a good time for human rights. Not that they are respected more than in the past. The flagrant resort to kidnapping, arbitrary arrests, and torture by the United States of America (USA), and the unprecedented restriction of individual freedom in the USA, and in Great Britain (GB), cast doubt about that. It is a good time for human rights in that claims about such rights are used more widely in the conduct of world affairs than before. There are declarations of and treaties about human rights, international courts and tribunals with jurisdiction over various human right violations. They …


Forced Eviction And Resettlement In Cambodia: Case Studies From Phnom Penh, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Rijie Ernie Gao, Elizabeth Joynes, Anna Cave, Jessica Mikhailevich Jan 2010

Forced Eviction And Resettlement In Cambodia: Case Studies From Phnom Penh, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Rijie Ernie Gao, Elizabeth Joynes, Anna Cave, Jessica Mikhailevich

Faculty Scholarship

This Article culminates a project undertaken by the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic (“Leitner Clinic”) at Fordham Law School to examine the effects of land resettlement on communities that were forcibly evicted or are at risk of forced eviction from their homes, and, in particular, the effects of forced evictions on the Boeung Kak Lake community in central Phnom Penh and on people living with HIV/AIDS (“PLWHA”). This Article is based on field research the Leitner Clinic conducted in Cambodia in the fall of 2008. While in Cambodia, the Leitner Clinic interviewed families from four different communities: resettlement camps …


Comparative Tales Of Origins And Access: Intellectual Property And The Rhetoric Of Social Change, Jessica Silbey Jan 2010

Comparative Tales Of Origins And Access: Intellectual Property And The Rhetoric Of Social Change, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the open-source and anti-expansionist rhetoric of current intellectual-property debates is a revolution of surface rhetoric but not of deep structure. What this Article terms “the Access Movements” are, by now, well-known communities devoted to providing more access to intellectual-property-protected goods, communities such as the Open Source Initiative and Access to Knowledge. This Article engages Movement actors in their critique of the balance struck by recent law (statutes and cases) and asks whether new laws that further restrict access to intellectual property “promote the progress of science and the useful arts.” Relying on cases, statutes and recent …


State Action And Corporate Human Rights Liability, Curtis A. Bradley Jan 2010

State Action And Corporate Human Rights Liability, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

This essay considers the requirement of state action in suits brought against private corporations under the Alien Tort Statute. It argues that, in addressing this requirement, courts have erred in applying the state action jurisprudence developed under the domestic civil rights statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1983. It also argues that, even if it were appropriate to borrow in this manner from the Section 1983 cases, such borrowing would not support the allowance of aiding and abetting liability against corporations, and that this liability is also problematic on a number of other grounds.


Foreign Sovereign Immunity, Individual Officials, And Human Rights Litigation, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith Jan 2010

Foreign Sovereign Immunity, Individual Officials, And Human Rights Litigation, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith

Faculty Scholarship

For thirty years, international human rights litigation in U.S. courts has developed with little attention to a lurking doctrinal objection to the entire enterprise. The paradigm international human rights case involves a suit against a foreign government official for alleged abuses committed abroad under color of state law. A potentially dispositive objection to this litigation is foreign sovereign immunity. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) creates presumptive immunity for foreign states and has no exception that would cover human rights cases. Many courts have assumed that the FSIA has no relevance to human rights suits as long as they are …


The United States And Human Rights Treaties: Race Relations, The Cold War, And Constitutionalism, Curtis A. Bradley Jan 2010

The United States And Human Rights Treaties: Race Relations, The Cold War, And Constitutionalism, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

The United States prides itself on being a champion of human rights and pressures other countries to improve their human rights practices, and yet appears less willing than other nations to embrace international human rights treaties. Many commentators attribute this phenomenon to the particular historical context that existed in the late 1940s and early 1950s when human rights treaties were first being developed. These commentators especially emphasize the race relations of the time, noting that some conservatives resisted the developing human rights regime because they saw it as an effort by the federal government to extend its authority to address …


Foreign Sovereign Immunity And Domestic Officer Suits, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith Jan 2010

Foreign Sovereign Immunity And Domestic Officer Suits, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith

Faculty Scholarship

Under international law, official-capacity suits brought against a foreign state’s officers are treated as suits against the state itself and thus as subject to the state’s immunity, even in suits alleging human rights abuses. This immunity regime differs from the immunity regime that applies in the United States in suits brought against state and federal officials for violations of federal law. Despite the federal government’s sovereign immunity and the immunity of state governments under Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence, courts often allow suits against federal and state officers for their official actions. This essay attempts to explain why the immunity rules differ …


Human Rights In The Emerging World Order, Joseph Raz Jan 2010

Human Rights In The Emerging World Order, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Pursuing the so-called political account of human rights, this talk first explains some aspects of the relations between legal and moral rights, and between rights and interests, and then applies the analysis to provide an explanation of human rights. Using the rights to health and to education as examples, it rejects the traditional theory that takes human rights to be rights that people have in virtue of their humanity alone. But human rights are synchronically universal. They are rights which all people living today have, a feature that is a precondition of, and a result of, the fact that they …


Human Rights For Hedgehogs?: Global Value Pluralism, International Law, And Some Reservations Of The Fox, Robert D. Sloane Jan 2010

Human Rights For Hedgehogs?: Global Value Pluralism, International Law, And Some Reservations Of The Fox, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, a contribution to the Boston University Law Review’s symposium on Ronald Dworkin’s forthcoming book, Justice for Hedgehogs, critiques the manuscript’s account of international human rights on five grounds. First, it is vague: it fails to offer much if any guidance relative to many of the most difficult concrete issues that arise in the field of international human rights law and policy - precisely the circumstances in which international lawyers might benefit from the guidance that moral foundations supposedly promise. It is also troubling, and puzzling given Dworkin’s well-known commitment to the right-answer thesis, that his account of human …


Embedded International Law And The Constitution Abroad, Sarah H. Cleveland Jan 2010

Embedded International Law And The Constitution Abroad, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the role of "embedded" international law in U.S. constitutional interpretation, in the context of extraterritorial application of the Constitution. Traditional U.S. understandings of the Constitution's application abroad were informed by nineteenth-century international law principles of jurisdiction, which largely limited the authority of a sovereign state to its geographic territory. Both international law and constitutional law since have developed significantly away from strictly territorial understandings of governmental authority, however. Modern international law principles of jurisdiction and state responsibility now recognize that states legitimately may exercise power in a number of extraterritorial contexts, and that legal obligations may apply …


Making Social Rights Conditional: Lessons From India, Madhav Khosla Jan 2010

Making Social Rights Conditional: Lessons From India, Madhav Khosla

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have witnessed important advancements in the discussion on social rights. The South African experience with social rights has revealed how such rights can be protected without providing for an individualized remedy. Comparative constitutional lawyers now debate the promise of the South African approach, and the possibility of weak-form judicial review in social rights cases. This article considers the Indian experience with social rights, and explains how it exhibits a new form of social rights adjudication. This is the adjudication of a conditional social right; an approach that displays a rare private law model of public law adjudication. This …