Law Commons^™

Government Of Thailand & Chaiwat Limlikhitaksorn V. Wuth Boonlert & Samak Donnapee, Human Rights Institute, Lionel Blackman

Human Rights Institute

In 2019, Samak Donnapee, a retired forestry officer, and Wuth Boonlert, an indigenous human rights advocate, were prosecuted and tried for criminal defamation. The charges, brought by a government officer, Chaiwat Limlikhit-aksorn, (in his private capacity) and the Public Prosecutor, relate to Facebook posts by Samak Donnapee. The Prosecution alleged that the Facebook posts suggested that government employee Chaiwat Limlikhit-aksorn owned land that unlawfully encroached onto a national park that is also traditionally indigenous land. Wuth Boonlert was accused of sharing one of these posts with no further commentary. None of the posts named Chaiwat Limlikhit-aksorn.

Chaiwat Limlikhit-aksorn, a senior …

How Medicalization Of Civil Rights Could Disappoint, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay reflects on Craig Konnoth’s recent Article, Medicalization and the New Civil Rights, which is a carefully crafted and thought-provoking description of the refashioning of civil rights claims into medical rights frameworks. He compellingly threads together many intellectual traditions—from antidiscrimination law to disability law to health law—to illustrate the pervasiveness of the phenomenon that he describes and why it might be productive as a tool to advance civil rights.

This response, however, offers several reasons why medicalization may not cure all that ails civil rights litigation’s pains and elaborates on the potential risks of overinvesting in medical rights-seeking. …

See This Empty Cage Now Corrode: The International Human Rights And Comparative Law Implications Of Sexually Violent Predator Laws, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo

Articles & Chapters

From every perspective, our sexually violent predator (SVPA) laws are a miserable failure. In this paper, we present a new approach: a turn to international human rights law as a source of rights for the population in question, and a consideration of the matter from the perspective of comparative law.

To briefly summarize, many nations have enacted laws that both mirror and contradict early developments in United States civil commitment jurisprudence. In these nations, though, challenges to community containment and preventive detention laws have been more successful when based upon international human rights law. Also, registry notification is generally far …

An Exploration Of Factors That Motivate Human Rights Workers Working In Areas With Armed Conflict In The Philippines, John Francis Hernandez, Jan Nikko Dela Paz, Ethan Cedric Chua, Mendiola Teng-Calleja

Psychology Department Faculty Publications

This study examined the experiences and motivation of human rights workers (HRWs) in areas affected by armed conflict in the Philippines. Six human rights workers from Karapatan responded to semi-structured interviews. Karapatan is a Philippine NGO whose mission is to uphold human rights and document instances of human rights violations. The results described the risks experienced by human rights workers in conflict afflicted areas in the country. Intrinsic factors that motivate HRWs to continuously engage in human rights work despite facing adverse situations include altruism; belief that they are advocating a just cause; feeling a sense of fulfillment; and strongly …

Literature Review: How U.S. Government Documents Are Addressing The Increasing National Security Implications Of Artificial Intelligence, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This article emphasizes the increasing importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in military and national security policy making. It seeks to inform interested individuals about the proliferation of publicly accessible U.S. government and military literature on this multifaceted topic. An additional objective of this endeavor is encouraging greater public awareness of and participation in emerging public policy debate on AI's moral and national security implications..

Human Rights And Global Health Emergencies Preparedness, Andrea Boggio

History and Social Sciences Faculty Journal Articles

The spread of infectious disease is always ranked high as a global threat. It features prominently among the list of urgent health challenges for the next decade, issued in early January 2020 by WHO. The emergence of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the Hubei Province in China, is a reminder of global health vulnerabilities.

Evidence Brief: Impact Assessment And Responsible Business Conduct, Sara L. Seck, Penelope Simons, Adebayo Majekolagbe

Responsible Business Conduct and Impact Assessment Law

This Evidence Brief provides a concise overview of the April 2020 report, Sara Seck & Penelope Simons, "Impact Assessment and Responsible Business Guidance Tools in the Extractive Sector: Implications for Human Rights, Gender and Stakeholder Engagement" (Draft Final Report for the SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant: Informing Best Practices in Environmental and Impact Assessments, 13 April 2020).

The Neglect Of Persons With Severe Brain Injury To The United States: An International Human Rights Analysis, Tamar Ezer, Megan S. Wright, Joseph J. Wright

Articles

Brain injury contributes more to death and disability globally than any other traumatic incident. While the past decade has seen significant medical advances, laws and policies remain stumbling blocks to treatment and care. The quality of life of persons with severe brain injury often declines with unnecessary institutionalization and inadequate access to rehabilitation and assistive technologies. This raises a host of rights violations that are hidden, given that persons with severe brain injury are generally invisible and marginalized. This article highlights the current neglect and experiences of persons with severe brain injury in the United States, analyzing the rights to …

Introduction To The Symposium On Soft And Hard Law On Business And Human Rights, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

This symposium turns to a major debate within a field of international law that has moved from the periphery to center stage in just a few decades—business and human rights, or BHR: Can and should international law's approach to the human rights impacts of business activity shift from today's mostly soft-law framework to a multilateral treaty regime? While advocates for and against such a treaty debate this point at the UN Human Rights Council and other venues, this symposium examines the problem from four theoretical perspectives. Each contribution offers insights for practitioners and scholars alike, but they suggest no easy …

Impact Assessment And Responsible Business Guidance Tools In The Extractive Sector: Implications For Human Rights, Gender And Stakeholder Engagement, Sara L. Seck, Penelope Simons

Responsible Business Conduct and Impact Assessment Law

This report aims to identify RBC tools referenced in the literature as relevant and/or promoted to Canadian extractive companies operating within and outside Canada. While not appraising or pronouncing on the quality of RBC tools, we consider the different actors that promote these diverse tools and whether there is a coherent framework for the efficient and effective application of current and future tools. We focus on RBC tools on human rights, stakeholder engagement, the rights of Indigenous peoples, and the rights of women and girls. Further, we review the position of scholars on the relationship between RBC and IA.

Amicus Memoriais, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Cardozo Human Rights & Atrocity Prevention Clinic

Amicus Briefs

Professor Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum and the Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic submitted an amicus brief in the Brazilian Supreme Court for a landmark ruling for the Xokleng people.

Conceptualizing Global Indigenous Rights, Kerri J. Malloy

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Taxation And Business: The Human Rights Dimension Of Corporate Tax Practices, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

If we want to narrow the North-South divide that threatens our world, some limits on tax competition are inevitable. The world faces a crucial choice in the 2020s. We can either continue retreating from globalization in favor of xenophobic nationalism, tariffs, immigration restrictions, and exchange controls. That road leads ultimately to war, as it did in the 1930s. Or we can revive globalization by investing in a robust social safety net, infrastructure, education, and job creation. While more needs to be done, we have made significant progress in curbing tax competition in the last decade. The key move now is …

Law School News: Rwu Law Professors File Emergency Covid-19 Lawsuit 04-12-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Addressing Environmental Toxins That Affect Children Through A Children's Rights Framework: Tools To Help You Succeed, Jenifer Cartland

Center for the Human Rights of Children

This toolkit was developed as part of Loyola University Chicago’s Advancing Healthy Homes and Healthy Communities Initiative (HHHCI). This initiative establishes an interdisciplinary university-community-public-private partner- ship to tackle the problem of environmental toxins in homes and communities through a range of activities. This approach integrates a unique set of strategies and tactics, including applied research, public education, organiz- ing, coalition building, legislative and policy advocacy, and policy implementation. HHHCI uses an integrative research and advocacy model to address the public health and hous- ing problems associated with environmental toxins. This approach integrates a unique set of strategies and tactics, including …

Comment On Us Trade And Investment Agreements Submitted To Ustr, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Comments to USTR Re: U.S.-Kenya Trade Agreement (April 28, 2020): CCSI, in response to the United States Trade Representative’s request for public comment to inform its approach to a U.S.-Kenya Trade Agreement, submitted Comments elaborating on our main points that (1) investor-state dispute settlement should not be included in any U.S.-Kenya agreement and (2) principles that should guide an investment chapter or investment provisions in any such agreement should (a) strategically support cross-border investment that produces positive development outcomes for the U.S. and Kenya, (b) facilitate and support good governance of investment projects, and (c) enhance cooperation to solve challenges …

Reimagining Reproductive Rights Jurisprudence In India: Reflections On The Recent Decisions On Privacy And Gender Equality From The Supreme Court Of India, Dipika Jain, Payal K. Shah

Human Rights Institute

In July 2018, twenty-year-old Sarita approached the Supreme Court of India seeking permission to terminate her twenty-five-week pregnancy. Sarita was a domestic violence survivor and suffered from other health complications due to epilepsy. She had learned of her pregnancy at seventeen weeks and her petition stated that she had become pregnant as a result of her husband’s refusal to use contraceptives. At twenty-one weeks, when she first approached the Bombay High Court, Sarita was just one week over the legal limit specified in the 1971 Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP Act), which permits termination of pregnancies on certain grounds up …

Faith-Based Approaches To Ecological Harmony And Environmental Protection, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

From The Ulama To The Legislature: Hermeneutics & Morocco’S Family Code, Rachel Olick-Gibson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study examines the role that Islamic law has played thus far in reforming the Moroccan Family Code, also known as the Moudawana. When King Mohammed VI reformed this law in 2004, Morocco received immediate international praise for its liberal strides towards gender equality. Through this study I investigated the hermeneutical tools and methods of ijtihad employed both by the drafters of the Moudawana and by activists leading up to the 2004 reforms. I then investigate impediments to the implementation of this Code in providing substantive legal rights to Moroccan women and the role that interpretation of Islamic law plays …

Submission To The Us State Department Commission On The Unalienable Rights, Catherine Coleman Flowers, Joann Kamuf Ward

Human Rights Institute

This submission emphasizes the centrality of economic and social rights to human rights and highlights how advocating for a hierarchy of rights that downplays their equal status is contrary to widely-recognized international norms, ignores the lived experience of individuals, and will serve to further entrench inequality. The submission urges the Commission to recognize and reaffirm the full panoply of human rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and subsequent human rights agreements. The discussion highlights the negative implications of a narrowed conceptualization of human rights, emphasizing that a circumscribed vision of human rights will perpetuate a system …

Covid 19 In U.S. Migrant Detention Centers: The Call For Freedom In The Face Of A Global Pandemic, Salma Rojas

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My research paper investigates the responses of the U.S. immigration detention system to the COVID 19 pandemic and determines the capacity of the detention centers to keep detained individuals alive and healthy. As I analyze their capacities, I look to past detention center outbreaks, updated public health resources, reports on ICE facility conditions and the testimonies of migrant people who were detained during the COVID 19 crisis. The urgency of the COVID 19 pandemic is why I dedicate part of my paper to what needs to be done to prevent the situation from worsening. In drawing from these various sources, …

Internship Paper: Completed At The Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo, Julia Herzfeld

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper discusses my experiences while online interning with the Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo, an organization based out of Prishtina and works to support inclusive and victims-centered transitional justice in Kosovo. I worked primarily on two research projects, one on the Transitional Justice Strategy of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the other on the status of criminal complaints filed by the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade to the Serbian justice system related to war crimes committed in Kosovo. While the circumstances surrounding my online internship were not ideal due to the Covid-19 pandemic, my experience greatly enhanced my knowledge of the …

The Elastic Meaning(S) Of Human Trafficking, Julie A. Dahlstrom

Faculty Scholarship

What is human trafficking? When is an expansive definition of trafficking justifiable? How does trafficking relate to other concepts—like domestic violence, sexual assault, labor exploitation, and prostitution—with which it often overlaps? These questions have become increasingly salient after the U.S. Congress defined the crime of human trafficking in the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (“TVPA”). Since then, all fifty states have passed legislation with varying definitions of the crime. Congress also has re-entered the field with subsequent legislation, expanding the crime to capture new conduct.

As a result of legislative advocacy and judicial interpretation, the legal …

Trafficking To The Rescue?, Julie A. Dahlstrom

Faculty Scholarship

Since before the dawn of the #MeToo Movement, civil litigators have been confronted with imperfect legal responses to gender-based harms. Some have sought to envision and develop innovative legal strategies. One new, increasingly successful tactic has been the deployment of federal anti-trafficking law in certain cases of domestic violence and sexual assault. In 2017, for example, victims of sexual assault filed federal civil suits under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (“TVPRA”) against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Plaintiffs argued that the alleged sexual assault conduct amounted to “commercial sex acts” and sex trafficking. Other plaintiffs’ lawyers have similarly invoked trafficking …

New Media, Free Expression, And The Offences Against The State Acts, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

New media facilitates communication and creates a common, lived experience. It also carries the potential for great harm on an individual and societal scale. Posting integrates information and emotion, with study after study finding that fear and anger transfer most readily online. Isolation follows, with insular groups forming. The result is an increasing bifurcation of society. Scholars also write about rising levels of depression and suicide that stem from online dependence and replacing analogical experience with digital interaction, as well as escalating levels of anxiety that are rooted in the validation expectation of the ‘like’ function. These changes generate instability …

Asylum Update: Ninth Circuit Deals Two Defeats To The Trump Administration, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Review Of Sierra Leone’S Mines And Minerals Act, Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye, Perrine Toledano, Sophie Thomashausen

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

With the support of Oxfam, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment reviewed select provisions in the Mines and Minerals Act 2009 and corresponding policy statements from the Minerals Policy 2018 to provide recommendations for how to best align the anticipated new mining law with international best practice. The 2009 law was reviewed with a focus on the following topics:

• Fiscal regime;
• Climate change;
• Access to and use of land;
• Community consultations and participation;
• Human rights; and
• Community development agreements.

The policy brief aims to support the Government of Sierra Leone in the ongoing law reform process.

Collective Criminality And Sexual Violence: Fixing A Failed Approach, Susana Sacouto

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

International criminal tribunals have developed a number of legal theories designed to hold individuals responsible for their role in collective criminal conduct. These doctrines of criminal participation, known as modes of liability, are the subject of significant scholarly commentary. Yet missing from much of this debate, particularly as regards the International Criminal Court, has been an analysis of how current doctrine on modes of liability responds to the need to hold collective perpetrators criminally responsible for crimes of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Indeed, many writings in this area of the law address perceived shortcomings in the theoretical underpinnings of …

Series Editor's Preface, James C. Hathaway

Other Publications

Could we – should we – think differently about the ways in which refugees are assisted and protected? Is it possible to turn traditional thinking on its head by seeing refugees not as the objects of protection and assistance, but instead as the architects and managers of solutions?