Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

International Intellectual Property, Access To Health Care, And Human Rights: South Africa V. United States, Winston Nagan

Winston P Nagan

This Article examines the question of access to patented medicines in international law. It analyzes the extent to which international agreements may lawfully limit affordable versions of these medicines that may be available through parallel imports or compulsory licensing procedures. It considers the concept of intellectual property rights from a national and international perspective to determine how these rights must be sensitive to matters of national sovereignty when extraordinary, life-threatening diseases afflict societies in catastrophic ways. This Article suggests that viewing property (including intellectual property) as a human right requires that its scope be delimited and understood in the context …

All Americans Not Equal: Mistrust And Discrimination Against Naturalized Citizens In The U.S., Alev Dudek

Alev Dudek

Notes From A New Underground: The Intersection Of Russian Orthodoxy, Religious Liberty, Lgbt Rights, And State Authority, John Ehrett

John Ehrett

Current laws in the Russian Federation impose sanctions against both speech deemed offensive to Russia’s traditional religious groups, and speech considered “propaganda” of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This Featured Note offers a contemporary examination of the historical, cultural and political forces underlying these ongoing trends, and offers an interdisciplinary consideration of issues surrounding the intersection of liberty of religious expression with liberty of LGBT expression in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This is historically contextualized through consideration of the political integration of church and state as a contributing factor toward limitations on these political freedoms. Ultimately, a vision …

The World’S Youngest Political Prisoner, Richard Klein

Richard Daniel Klein

Every participant at an international human rights conference in June 1998 received a small pamphlet published by Tibetan supporters of Tibetan Buddhism's highest-ranking figure, the Dalai Lama. Entitled "The World's Youngest Political Prisoner," the pamphlet makes a plea for support for a young boy, now nine years old, who the Chinese government has allegedly kidnapped and detained. The Dalai Lama, who has been living in exile for forty years, claims the boy is the eleventh reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second holiest individual in Tibetan Buddhism. This battle over the identification of the reincarnation of a holy man is …

Kosovo's War Victims: Civil Compensation Or Criminal Justice For Indentity Elimination?, Irene Scharf

Irene Scharf

This Article is presented in three Parts. The first Part examines the likelihood that the displaced war victims could receive some type of civil compensation for their losses through the local courts in Yugoslavia. Part II scrutinizes the basic international human rights doctrines and systems of enforcement to determine whether they may offer remedies for the victims of identity elimination. Part III explores the likelihood that, through the Yugoslav Tribunal, those responsible for identity elimination may be held criminally responsible for their actions in Kosovo.

Subsidiarity In The Tradition Of Catholic Social Doctrine, Patrick Brennan

Patrick McKinley Brennan

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 …

The Liberty Of The Church: Source, Scope And Scandal, Patrick Brennan

Patrick McKinley Brennan

This article was presented at a conference, and is part of a symposium, on "The Freedom of the Church in the Modern Era." The article argues that the liberty of the Church, libertas Ecclesiae, is not a mere metaphor, pace the views of some other contributions to the conference and symposium and of the mentality mostly prevailing over the last five hundred years. The argument is that the Church and her directly God-given rights are ontologically irreducible in a way that the rights of, say, the state of California or even of the United States are not. Based on a …

Resisting The Grand Coalition In Favor Of The Status Quo By Giving Full Scope To The Libertas Ecclesiae, Patrick Brennan

Patrick McKinley Brennan

This paper argues that questions about "religious freedom" must be subordinated to the fundamental principle of the liberty of the Church, libertas Ecclesiae. The First Amendment's agnosticism with respect to the liberty of the Church is not ultimately normative. Catholics and others who merely seek religious "accommodation," as with the HHS mandate, for example, are agents of a status quo that illegitimately has comfortable self-preservation as its highest value. It is Catholic doctrine that "creation was for the sake of the Church," not for the sake of, say, religious freedom. The paper argues that the contingent constitution of …

Symposium: Building Global Professionalism: Emerging Trends In International And Transnational Legal Education, Anil Kalhan

Anil Kalhan

It has become a matter of recurring lament and concern — and periodically, an object of satire and derision — that Americans lack basic knowledge, awareness, or interest concerning the world beyond their borders; whether in terms of history, public affairs, culture, language, or even basic geography. Politicians, corporate leaders, scholars, and other observers across a broad spectrum routinely warn of the potential dangers this global awareness deficit poses to the well-being and security of the United States. In an increasingly interdependent world — with a growing array of economic, political, social, and environmental problems that transcend national borders — …

Thinking Critically About International And Transnational Legal Education, Anil Kalhan

Anil Kalhan

It has become a matter of recurring lament and concern — and periodically, an object of satire and derision — that Americans lack basic knowledge, awareness, or interest concerning the world beyond their borders; whether in terms of history, public affairs, culture, language, or even basic geography. Politicians, corporate leaders, scholars, and other observers across a broad spectrum routinely warn of the potential dangers this global awareness deficit poses to the well-being and security of the United States. In an increasingly interdependent world — with a growing array of economic, political, social, and environmental problems that transcend national borders — …

Finding Home In The World: A Deontological Theory Of The Right To Be Adopted, Paulo Barrozo

Paulo Barrozo

Because of the continued dominance of consequentialist views, the deontological paradigm that emerges in the form of a human rights approach to adoption faces two major and partially connected obstacles. First, and despite the fact that the human rights approach has found compelling advocates, its jurisprudential basis has yet to be fully articulated. And in part because of insufficient theorization, the emerging deontological adoption is constantly at risk of being rhetorically and practically subsumed or engulfed by the resilient consequentialist-cum-charity paradigm. This article addresses these two obstacles, laying out the foundations of a deontological theory of adoption.After the Introduction, Part …

Perspectives On Fundamental Rights In South Asia, Anil Kalhan

Anil Kalhan

This symposium issue of the Drexel Law Review marks the anticipated launch of a proposed new section on Law and South Asian Studies of the Association of American Law Schools, including several contributions that were initially presented during a session of the proposed section at AALS Annual Meeting for 2010. The proposed AALS section comes at a moment of heightened interest in the region among lawyers, policymakers, and the public at large in the United States, and is part of a rapidly growing constellation of scholarly initiatives on law in South Asia that have emerged internationally in recent years. In …