Law Commons^™

International Human Rights Are Taking Hold In U.S. States, Cities, And Towns, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

New York, NY (December 10, 2012) – Incorporating human rights into local policies and decision-making leads to effective, sustainable, and responsive policies, according to a new report released today by Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute.

Bringing Human Rights Home: How State And Local Governments Can Use Human Rights To Advance Local Policy, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

State and local governments play an essential role in promoting and protecting human rights. Within the United States, agencies and officials at the municipal, city, county and state levels can help fulfill human rights by ensuring dignity, equality and opportunity for everyone in their jurisdiction.

Recognizing the value of human rights, state and local agencies and officials across the United States are incorporating international human rights standards in their daily work. As illustrated by examples throughout this report, integrating human rights into local law, policy and practice can enhance government decision-making and respond directly to local needs. It also allows …

United States’ Compliance With The International Covenant On Civil And Political Rights, Human Rights Institute, American Civil Liberties Union (Aclu)

Human Rights Institute

The U.S. government is engaged in targeted killings through drone strikes (and other aircraft) in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere, which have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. U.S. practice is characterized by secrecy and an unwillingness even to engage directly with concerns about civilian harm, let alone to provide accountability for civilian deaths and injury. Despite calls for disclosure from UN experts and non- governmental organizations, the U.S. government uses vague and shifting legal standards, and fails to disclose the basis for strikes or the steps it takes to minimize harm to civilians and investigate reported violations …

Reconstituting Constitutions—Institutions And Culture: The Mexican Constitution And Nafta: Human Rights Vis-À-Vis Commerce, Imer Flores

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The aim of this Essay is threefold. First, this Essay will focus on the main characteristics of both the great transformation, experienced in the Mexican institutional economic framework during the last thirty-five years, in general, and within the past twenty years, in particular, that were made through constitutional reforms. In addition, the greater expectation that such structural reforms generated in the process of re-enacting the constitution in the political context, should be along the lines of human rights and separation of powers. Second, this Essay will attempt to bring into play the role of treaties in this transformational process, by …

Shall The Twain Never Meet? Competing Narratives And Discourses Of The Rule Of Law In Singapore, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article aims to assess the role played by the rule of law in discourse by critics of the Singapore Government’s policies and in the Government’s responses to such criticisms. It argues that in the past the two narratives clashed over conceptions of the rule of law, but there is now evidence of convergence of thinking as regards the need to protect human rights, though not necessarily as to how the balance between rights and other public interests should be struck. The article also examines why the rule of law must be regarded as a constitutional doctrine in Singapore, the …

The United Nations' Role In Haiti Cholera Outbreak, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

‘The Messaging Effect’: Eliciting Credible Historical Evidence From Victims Of Mass Crimes, Mahdev Mohan

2008 Asian Business & Rule of Law initiative

No abstract provided.

Subsidiarity In The Tradition Of Catholic Social Doctrine, Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Working Paper Series

This chapter is an invited contribution to the first English-language comparative study of subsidiarity, M. Evans and A. Zimmerman (eds.), Subsidiarity in Comparative Perspective (forthcoming Springer, 2013). The concept of subsidiarity does work in many and varied legal contexts today, but the concept originated in Catholic social doctrine. The Catholic understanding of subsidiarity (or subsidiary function) is the subject of this chapter. Subsidiarity is often described as a norm calling for the devolution of power or for performing social functions at the lowest possible level. In Catholic social doctrine, it is neither. Subsidiarity is the fixed and immovable ontological principle …

Guatemala's Past Casts An Ominous Shadow, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

Our Men In Honduras: Losing Control Of The War On Drugs, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

Courageous Guatemalan Jurist Under Fire, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

The Chixoy Dam: A Time For Justice, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

From Oblivion To Memory: A Blueprint For The Amnesty, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

This Review Essay examines Mark Freeman’s thoughtful book, Necessary Evils: Amnesties and the Search for Justice. One of the book’s core arguments is that amnesties from criminal prosecution, however unpalatable to liberal legalist sensibilities, should not be entirely purged from the toolbox of post-conflict transitions. Although advancing this argument, Freeman also struggles with it, and ultimately builds a very restrained and heavily technocratic defense of the amnesty. This Review Essay weighs this argument, among others, on its own terms and also within the context of recent events that post-date the book’s publication. The result is a vibrant exposition of …

Informe De La Comisión De Verdad, Honduras: La Voz Más Autorizada Es La De Las Víctimas, Elsie Monge Yoder, Luis Carlos Nieto García, Mirna Antonieta Perla Jiménez, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Nora Cortiñas, Craig M. Scott, François Houtart, Francisco José Aguilar, Helen Umaña, Fausto Milla

Commissioned Reports, Studies and Public Policy Documents

No abstract provided.

"They Are Destroying Our Futures": Sexual Violence Against Girls In Zambia's Schools, Women And Law In Southern Africa Trust-Zambia, Cornell Law School. Avon Global Center For Women And Justice, Cornell Law School. International Human Rights Clinic

Avon Global Center for Women and Justice and Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence

This report examines the problem of sexual violence against girls in Zambian schools. In Zambia, many girls are raped, sexually abused, harassed, and assaulted by teachers and male classmates. They are also subjected to sexual harassment and attack while travelling to and from school. Such abuse is a devastating and often overlooked manifestation of the gender-based violence that occurs in numerous settings in Zambia and other countries throughout the world.

This report explores these issues from an international human rights perspective, drawing upon extensive desk research and interviews with 105 schoolgirls and many other stakeholders in Zambia’s Lusaka Province. The …

Targeting Demand: A New Approach To Curbing Human Trafficking In The United States, Morgan Brown

Law Student Publications

Part I of this paper will provide a general framework for understanding human trafficking in the United States by laying out basic statistics relevant to human trafficking, describing the basic economic model under which the business of human trafficking should be understood, and discussing the major legislative approaches the United States has taken to curtail the increase in human trafficking in the country in the past ten years. Part II will then analyze the shortcomings of this approach and the successes of unique efforts to combat trafficking in Sweden. Part III recommends an approach the United States should take moving …

Counting Drone Strike Deaths, Human Rights Clinic

Human Rights Institute

Popular debate on U.S. drone strikes often centers on how many individuals are killed, and which of two categories the individuals killed fall into – militant or civilian. U.S. officials emphasize the precision of drone technology and contend that extremely few civilians have been killed. Yet others have questioned these claims and stated that there is evidence to suggest that deaths, and civilian deaths in particular, are much higher than U.S. officials admit.

The uncertainty about civilian deaths is largely due to the U.S. government’s resistance to openly providing information about strikes. In the absence of official data, the most …

Paradox In Preventing And Promoting Torture: Marginalising 'Harm' For The Sake Of Global Ordering: Reflections On A Decade Of Risk/Security Globalisation, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The ultimate result of globalisation is that as the world setting is compressed there is an intensification of consciousness towards global interests, such as selective ordering, running parallel with strongly influential autonomous interests of the nation state and regional concerns. However, as risk and security disproportionately motivate globalisation, dominant nation state interests (which are at the heart of what operationalises global hegemony) become the prevailing measure of global ordering. Attitudes to ‘harm’ converge around these sectarian interests from the local to the global. As such, the need to torture, it is logically and even ‘legally’ argued, to better ensure domestic …

Comparing The Approaches Of The Presidential Candidates, Pierre-Richard Prosper, William W. Burke-White

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a panel discussion between Pierre Prosper, attorney at Arent Fox LLP and William Burke White, Deputy Dean at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, comparing the approaches and priorities of U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney regarding foreign policy.

The United States' Use Of Drones In The War On Terror: The (Il)Legality Of Targeted Killings Under International Law, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States government began to use drones against al-Qaeda targets. According to several media reports, the United States developed two parallel drone programs: one operated by the military, and one operated in secrecy by the CIA. Under the Obama Administration, the latter program developed and- the number of drone attacks in countries such as Pakistan and Yemen has steadily increased. Because the drone program is operated covertly by the CIA, it has been impossible to determine the precise contours of the program, its legal and normative framework, and whether its operators …

Accountability And The Sri Lankan Civil War, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

Sri Lanka's civil war came to a bloody end in May 2009, with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by Sri Lanka's armed forces on a small strip of land in the island's northeast. The conflict, the product of long-standing tensions between Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils over the latter's rights and place in society, had begun in the mid-1980s and ebbed and flowed for some twenty-five years, leading to seventy to eighty thousand deaths on both sides. Government repression of Tamil aspirations was matched with ruthless LTTE tactics, including suicide bombings of civilian …

Reflections On Kony 2012, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In spring 1997, few people outside Uganda had heard of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA arose in the late 1980s out of the ashes of Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement, and over the next decade, LRA raids killed thousands of villagers in Northern Uganda. Hundreds of thousands were displaced, and an estimated 10,000 children were forcibly abducted by the LRA and brutally coerced into becoming killers, sex slaves or both. But in the spring of 1997, the LRA had yet to make CNN.

Women And Girls Fleeing Conflict: Gender And The Interpretation And Application Of The 1951 Refugee Convention, Valerie Oosterveld

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Civilian Impact Of Covert Drone Operations Overlooked, Human Rights Clinic

Human Rights Institute

WASHINGTON, DC Sept. 30, 2012 — As US covert drone strikes become more entrenched as an accepted counterterrorism strategy, the US government needs to conduct a thorough accounting of the impact on civilians, said a new report released today by Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Clinic and Center for Civilians in Conflict.

Weaponizing Tear Gas: Bahrain’S Unprecedented Use Of Toxic Chemical Agents Against Civilians., Richard Sollom, Holly G. Atkinson

Publications and Research

The Bahraini government’s response to the early 2011 pro-democracy protests was brutal, systematic, and violent. In addition to birdshot and rubber bullets, government law enforcement attacked unarmed protestors with toxic chemical agents including tear gas. The government’s crackdown on the medical profession was especially harmful, as security forces arrested and detained doctors, raided health facilities, and obstructed patients from receiving necessary care. This report’s findings are based on field research that the authors conducted in Bahrain (April 2012) to investigate excessive use of force by law enforcement officials since June 2011—the end of Bahrain’s state of emergency. The medico-legal team …

International Human Rights Law And Social Movements: States' Resistance And Civil Society's Insistence, Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Claire Whitlinger, Alwyn Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This review examines recent scholarship on the rise of international human rights law and proposes that social movements have played critical roles both in elevating the standards of human rights in international law and in leveraging these standards into better local practices. Institutionalization of universal human rights principles began in the immediate post–World War II period, in which civil society actors worked with powerful states to establish human rights as a key guiding principle of the international community and to ensure the actors' continuing participation in international human rights institutions. The subsequent decades saw various hurdles arise in international politics, …

The Public Defender As Anti-Trafficking Advocate, An Unlikely Role: How Current New York City Arrest And Prosecution Policies Systematically Criminalize Victims Of Sex Trafficking, Kate Mogulescu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Background Paper For Second Workshop On Contract Negotiation Support For Developing Host Countries, Vale Columbia Center On Sustainable International Investment, Humboldt-Viadrina School Of Governance

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) and the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance (HSVG) have initiated a process to discuss the desirability and feasibility of mechanisms to provide negotiation support for developing host countries in their negotiations with major investors.

At a first workshop held in October 2011, participants agreed on the need for an expansion of support for developing countries in their contract negotiations.

A second workshop was held at Columbia University in July 2012 that undertook a gap analysis between the existing sources of support for developing countries in relation to complex contracts and the countries’ needs for …

Working Conditions In China: Drama Or Reality?, Evan Bishop

In the Balance

No abstract provided.

License To Kill? Corporate Liability Under The Alien Tort Claims Act?, Kevin Golden

In the Balance

Because Kiobel removed corporate defendants from the scope of civil liability under the ATS, and because a corporation is not a person who can be charged, convicted and imprisoned for a crime, it effectively placed large multinational corporations above the law. Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 621 F.3d 111, 145 (2d Cir. 2010). In Part II of this article, I will provide a necessary overview of the history of the ATS and its evolution into modern-day relevance. I will discuss the state of ATS law as it pertains to corporations in Part III. Lastly, I will discuss the Kiobel …