Law Commons^™

Business, Human Rights, & The Triple Planetary Crisis: Confronting Overconsumption, Sara Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

According to the United Nations, the world is facing a triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature (biodiversity) loss, and pollution and waste, with the most egregious consequences felt by those least responsible. These crises are also intertwined: nature-based solutions are promoted as climate change solutions even as heat domes fuel forest fires; extraction of minerals for green energy solutions negatively impacts biodiversity and creates pollution and waste; and carbon major companies are also among the largest producers of plastic pollution. International human rights law is increasingly grappling with environmental rights and responsibilities, as evidenced by the work of special …

The Criticism Of Eurocentrism And International Law: Countering And Pluralizing The Research, Teaching, And Practice Of Eurocentric International Law, Makane Moïse Mbengue, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

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This Chapter draws on Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) in examining the question: how does the research and teaching of international law in the Global South challenge Eurocentrism in international law. The Chapter focuses on the emergent activities within Global South that pluralize Eurocentric international law’s dominance in the research production, teaching, and practice arenas. The Chapter pushes against the unfair over-representation of European countries in the scholarly production and institutions of international law. To illustrate the often-underexplored regional diversity of international law outside Europe, the Chapter reflects on the contemporary roles of critical Global South scholars and …

Introduction To Julie Bilotta’S Story, Sheila Wildeman

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Julie Bilotta’s contribution to this special volume is a straightforward denunciation of prison-based inhumanity and institutionalized misogyny. I write to show solidarity with her and to alert the reader to some of the ways her story exposes intersectional injustice while enlivening feminist abolitionist prison resistance. I write, too, to challenge my own and others’ thinking about whether or how law (litigation, law reform) might contribute to that resistance.

In her essay, Julie offers an intimate glimpse of prisons as sites of reproductive injustice. As this special volume attests, incarceration in Canada and elsewhere produces systematic gendered harms, including lack of …

Platforms, Encryption, And The Cfaa: The Case Of Whatsapp V Nso Group, Jonathon Penney, Bruce Schneier

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End-to-end encryption technology has gone mainstream. But this wider use has led hackers, cybercriminals, foreign governments, and other threat actors to employ creative and novel attacks to compromise or workaround these protections, raising important questions as to how the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the primary federal anti-hacking statute, is best applied to these new encryption implementations. Now, after the Supreme Court recently narrowed the CFAA’s scope in Van Buren and suggested it favors a code-based approach to liability under the statute, understanding how best to theorize sophisticated code-based access barriers like end-to-end encryption, and their circumvention, is now …

Human Rights At The Ocean-Climate Nexus: Opening Doors For The Participation Of Indigenous Peoples, Children And Youth, And Gender Diversity, Unwana Udo, Tahnee Prior, Sara L. Seck

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No abstract provided.

Gender And Intersectionality In Business And Human Rights Scholarship, Melisa N. Handl, Sara L. Seck, Penelope Simons

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In this article, we explore what intersectionality, as an analytic tool, can contribute to business and human rights (BHR) scholarship. To date, few BHR scholars have explicitly engaged in intersectional analysis. While gender analysis of BHR issues remains crucial to expose inequality in business activity, we argue that engagement with intersectionality can enrich and support this and other BHR scholarship. Intersectional approaches allow us to move beyond single-axis analysis, contest simplistic representations about gender issues and expose the complexity of human relations. It draws our attention to structures that sustain disadvantage such as racism, colonialism, social and economic marginalization and …

Breathing Life Into Our Living Tree And Strengthening Our Constitutional Roots: The Promise Of The United Nations Declaration On The Rights Of Indigenous Peoples Act, Naiomi Metallic

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In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (“TRC”) suggested that, despite over 30 years of interpretation in the courts, section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which “recognizes and affirms” the Aboriginal and treaty rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada, is not achieving meaningful reconciliation. The TRC defined reconciliation as being about “establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country.” According to the TRC, the “reconciliation vision that lies behind Section 35 should not be seen as a means to subjugate Aboriginal peoples to an absolute sovereign Crown,” implying this …

A Law And Politics Contextualization Of Corporate Activism In Nigeria’S 2020 Anti-Police Brutality Campaign, Okanga Ogbu Okanga

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Corporate activism – the progressive pursuit of social justice causes by corporations – is a growing global phenomenon. There are increasing expectations and, in many cases, demands that corporations pull off their gloves to actively confront sociopolitical issues bedevilling their communities. Emerging scholarship suggests that corporate activism is influenced by various factors, including the ethical, political, and commercial orientations of corporate minds and the relative political and legal landscape within which corporations operate. Adopting a qualitative research mechanism that reflects on open-source information about relevant actors, collected from blogs, Twitter, and news sites, as complemented by a broad variety of …

Understanding Chilling Effects, Jonathon Penney

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With digital surveillance and censorship on the rise, the amount of data available online unprecedented, and corporate and governmental actors increasingly employing emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and facial recognition technology (FRT) for surveillance and data analytics, concerns about “chilling effects”, that is, the capacity for these activities “chill” or deter people from exercising their rights and freedoms have taken on greater urgency and importance. Yet, there remains a clear dearth in systematic theoretical and empirical work point. This has left significant gaps in understanding. This article has attempted to fill that void, synthesizing theoretical and empirical …

The Role Of The Registry And Legal Division Of The African Court Of Human And People's Rights In Dispute Settlement, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Morris K. Odeh

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This Essay explores whether the African Court of Human and People's Rights’ (African Court) Registry and Legal Division have a similar expansive role in the dispute settlement mechanism as the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Secretariat. The African Court is the African Union's regional body for enforcing human rights. This Essay contributes to the scholarship on African international courts by testing the central arguments in Pauwelyn and Pelc's “Who Guards the ‘Guardians of the System’? The Role of the Secretariat in WTO Dispute Settlement” through a comparative analysis of the role of the Secretariat within the African Court. Despite the growing …

State Responsibility For International Bail-Jumping, Robert Currie, Elizabeth Matheson

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Over the last decade, there has been a spate of incidents in Canada and the United States involving Saudi Arabian nationals who, while out on bail for predominantly sexual crimes, were able to abscond from the countries despite having surrendered their passports. Investigation has revealed evidence supporting a reasonable inference that the government of Saudi Arabia has, in fact, assisted its nationals to escape on these occasions. This article makes the case that this kind of conduct amounts not just to unfriendly acts but also to infringements upon the territorial sovereignty of both states and serious breaches of the international …

Abortion Rights Beyond The Medico-Legal Paradigm, Mariana Prandini Assis, Joanna Erdman

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Abortion rights in international law have historically been framed within a medico-legal paradigm, the belief that regulated systems of legal and medical control guarantee safe abortion. However, a growing worldwide practice of self-managed abortion (SMA) supported by feminist activism challenges key precepts of this paradigm. SMA activism has shown that more than medical service delivery matters to safe abortion and has called into question the legal regulation of abortion beyond criminal prohibitions. This article explores how abortion rights have begun to depart from the medico-legal paradigm and to support the novel norms and practices of SMA activism in a transformation …