Law Commons^™

Duty To Revolt, Katherine Crabtree

Katherine Crabtree

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights not only prescribes universal rights but also individual duties, stating “everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.” This paper examines the nature of the right to revolution and considers whether an individual’s duty to uphold human rights includes a moral duty to revolt when the current social structure permits or requires intolerable systematic human rights violations. Four subsections discuss (1) the development and nature of disciplinary power that a government imposes on citizens in order to force conformity to the laws, (2) …

Women, Pmscs And International Law, Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

It is deeply ironic that as the implementation and enforcement of international humanitarian law and human rights law has been strengthened, in the last decades, through the establishment of individual complaint procedures, specialist tribunal and courts covering breaches of human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law, there has been an erosion of these principles and protections through the privatisation of governmental and intergovernmental functions. Despite an exponential increase in the contracting out of these activities to PMSCs since 2001, the legal regulation of these companies and their personnel has been slow and fragmented.

The failure of the …

The Inter-American Court On Human Rights’ Judgment In Artavia Murillo V. Costa Rica And Its Implications For The Creation Of Abortion Rights In The Inter-American System Of Human Rights, Ligia M. De Jesus

Ligia M. De Jesus

In Artavia, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights addressed the meaning of article 4(1) the American Convention on Human Rights, which recognizes a person’s right to life beginning at conception. The court handed a restrictive interpretation of this provision, holding that, before implantation, the human embryo is not a person entitled to human rights protection under the American Convention, while redefining the term “conception” as implantation, not fertilization. The court also redefined article 4(1)’s terms “in general, from the moment of conception” to mean that only gradual or incremental protection should be given to prenatal life, depending on the unborn …

Addressing Prescription Opioid Abuse Concerns In Context: Synchronizing Policy Solutions To Multiple Public Health Problems, Kelly Dineen

Kelly Dineen

No abstract provided.

Redefining Terrorism: The Danger Of Misunderstanding The Modern World's Gravest Threat, Jennifer Breedon

Jennifer Breedon

No abstract provided.

Can The Center Hold? The Vulnerabilities Of The Official Legal Regimen For Intercountry Adoption, David M. Smolin

David M. Smolin

Amidst controversy, a legal regimen for intercountry adoption (ICA) has been developed over the past twenty-five years. The primary constituent parts are the 1989 UN-based Convention on the Rights of the Child (“CRC”) and the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Hague Convention). Since the creation of those conventions, international and national legal efforts have focused on delineation and implementation of a set of standards based on their principles in the attempt to create a stable and reliable intercountry adoption system. This project of the creation of a stable and reliable intercountry …

The Right To No: The Crime Of Marital Rape, Women's Human Rights, And International Law, Melanie Randall, Vasanthi Venkatesh

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

More than half of the world’s countries do not explicitly criminalize sexual assault in marriage. While sexual assault in general is criminalized in these countries, sexual assault perpetrated by a spouse is entirely legal. The human rights violations inhere in acts of violence against women are now well recognized. Yet somehow marital rape is a particular form of gendered violence that has escaped both criminal law sanctions and human rights approbation in a great number of the world’s nations.

This silence in the law creates legal impunity for men who sexually assault or rape the women who are their wives …

Values And The Courts: Maintaining The Rule Of Law In The Global World, Honourable Beverley Mclachlin

The International Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Human Rights Hero: The Supreme Court In Griswold V. Connecticut, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Participatory Fact-Finding: Developing New Directions For Human Rights Investigations Through New Technologies, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

This chapter considers the way in which broader participation in human rights fact-finding, enabled by the introduction of new technologies, will change the nature of fact-finding itself. Using the example of a participatory mapping project called Map Kibera, the chapter argues that new technologies will change human rights fact-finding by providing opportunities for ordinary individuals to investigate the human rights issues that affect them. Those who were formerly the ‘subjects’ of human rights investigations now have the potential to be agents in their own right. This ‘participatory fact-finding’ may not be as effective in ‘naming and shaming’ states and companies …

"I Still Live In Guantanamo!" Human Rights Abuses Continue After Detainees Leave Guantanamo, Peter Honigsberg

Peter J Honigsberg

In November 2014, the U.S. government transferred Yemeni national Hussein Al-marfadi, from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention center to the nation of Slovakia. He had never been charged with a crime, and had been cleared for release nearly five years before his transfer to Slovakia. Three months later, in February 2015, the Witness to Guantanamo project (W2G) interviewed Al-marfadi in Zvolen, a town in central Slovakia. Although physically and psychologically scarred from his 12 years of detention, Al-marfadi was an engaging, even-tempered and thoughtful man.

However, when W2G asked Al-marfadi about his life today, his composure and even-tempered tone transformed …

Thinking Globally, Policy Locally: A Plan For Decentralized Law Enforcement In Côte D’Ivoire, __ J. Of Int’L Bus. & L. __ (Forthcoming 2015), Hugh Mundy

Hugh Mundy

During a 2009 speech in Ghana, President Barack Obama said, “Africa doesn’t need strongmen. It needs strong institutions.” Obama credited Ghana’s “impressive rates of growth” to the country’s “repeated peaceful transfers of power even in the wake of closely contested elections.” Free elections and non-violent power transfers, he said, “may lack the drama of the twentieth century’s liberation struggles” but “will ultimately be more significant.” Last July, the president expressed similar sentiments during a highly anticipated trip to Kenya. Côte d’Ivoire offers a stark example of the instability wrought when an unseated leader refuses to cede power. Once hailed as …

A Human Rights Perspective On U.S. Courts And The Constitutional Regulation Of The Internet, Molly K. Land

Molly K. Land

This chapter examines the approaches used by the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower U.S. federal courts to contend with the challenges presented by new Internet technologies for the protection of constitutional rights. The chapter first discusses judicial regulation of the Internet as a story of inter-branch power sharing. Regulation has been most effective, and most coherent, when Congress and the courts are engaged in dialogue with one another in ways that play to the strengths of each. Second, the chapter argues that although U.S. federal courts have been relatively effective in updating the individual constitutional protections to meet the …

The Transformation Of South African Private Law After Twenty Years Of Democracy, 14 Nw. J. Int’L Hum. Rts. (Forthcoming 2016)., Christopher J. Roederer

Christopher J. Roederer

In The Transformation of South African Private Law after Ten Years of Democracy, 37 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 447 (2006), I evaluated the role of private law in consolidating South Africa’s constitutional democracy. There, I traced the negative effects of apartheid from public law to private law, and then to the law of delict, South Africa’s counterpart to tort law. I demonstrated that the law of delict failed to develop under apartheid and that the values animating the law of delict under apartheid were inconsistent with the values and aspirations of South Africa’s democratic transformation. By the end of …

Justice As Legitimacy In The European Court Of Human Rights, Molly K. Land

Molly K. Land

Using the example of the prisoner voting cases at the European Court of Human Rights, this chapter builds on existing literature regarding the legitimacy of judicial institutions to consider the role of justice with respect to the normative and sociological legitimacy of international human rights courts. The chapter identifies the pursuit of just outcomes as a significant independent influence on the legitimacy of these courts. Doing justice even when it requires expansive lawmaking in order to protect unpopular groups can be an affirmative source of legitimacy for these institutions. Although the legitimacy challenges faced by the European Court of Human …

The Role Of Non-Governmental Organizations In Advancing International Criminal Justice, Charles Jalloh

Charles C. Jalloh