Human Rights Law Commons^™

The Political Economy Of The Production Of Customary International Law: The Role Of Non-Governmental Organizations, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Increasingly, United States courts are recognizing various treaties, as well as declarations, proclamations, conventions, resolutions, programmes, protocols, and similar forms of inter- or multi-national “legislation” as evidence of a body of “customary international law” enforceable in domestic courts, particularly in the area of tort liability. These “legislative” documents, which this Article refers to as customary international law outputs, are seen by some courts as evidence of jus cogens norms that bind not only nations and state actors, but also private individuals. The most obvious evidence of this trend is in the proliferation of lawsuits against corporations with ties to the …

New Social Movements And The Struggle For Worker’S Rights In The Maquila Industry, Victoria Carty

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

"Campaigns to improve worker’s rights in export processing zones (EPZs), also referred to the maquila industry in Latin America, is an important topic analytically and politically. On theoretical and practical levels, the co-existence of market economies with effective means to ensure adequate working conditions for workers is a critical question. Underlying the issue is a vigorous debate regarding how the global economy should be governed; who or what should govern it, and whose interest is should serve (Faux, 2002)."

The Relationship Of Imf Structural Adjustment Programs To Economic, Social, And Cultural Rights: The Argentine Case Revisited, Jason Morgan-Foster

Michigan Journal of International Law

Perhaps as important as what this Note is, is what it is not: Economic theories abound concerning the causes of the Argentine crisis, some of which directly analyze the IMF's causal connection to the Argentine catastrophe. A Note on this subject would be one of economic theory, not international human rights law. While at certain points in the analysis of the human rights implications of SAPs, it will become difficult to avoid some speculation of economic theory, it is not the primary focus of this Note. Rather than implicate the IMF as part of the cause of the crisis, this …

The Mote In Thy Brother’S Eye: A Review Of Human Rights As Politics And Idolatry, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

Michael Ignatieffs provocatively titled collection of essays, Human Rights As Politics and Idolatry [hereinafter Human Rights], is a careful examination of the theoretical underpinnings and contradictions in the area of human rights. At bottom, both of his primary essays, Human Rights As Politics and Human Rights As Idolatry, make a claim that is perhaps contrary to the instincts of human rights thinkers and activists: namely, that international human rights can best be philosophically justified and effectively applied to the extent that they strive for minimal ism. Human rights activists generally argue for the opposite conclusion: that international human rights be …

Feeling The Heat Of Human Rights Branding: Bringing Transnational Corporations Within The International Human Rights Fence, Robert Mccorquodale

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Human Rights Standards and the Responsibility of Transnational Corporations edited by Michael K. Addo. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1999. 384pp.

Capitalizing On Market Reforms: Facets Of Legal Development In Contemporary China, Stefanie Elbern

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Law and Justice in China’s New Marketplace by Ronald C. Keith and Zhiqiu Lin. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 315pp.

and

Profits and Principles: Global Capitalism and Human Rights in China by Michael A. Santoro. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. 256pp.

Laborious Law, Bas De Gaay Fortman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Inaugural Address at Utrecht University, on the occasion of accepting the Chair in Political Economy of Human Rights 21 MAY 2001

This paper may be freely circulated, either electronically or on paper, on condition that it not be modified in any way and that the rights of the author are in no way infringed. You may provide a link to this paper on any Web site. You may not, however, post it on another site without the author's express permission.

Trends. Colombian Rebels And Elite Interests: Rights And Wrongs On Human Rights, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses and analyzes the reactions of elites to rebel actions (e.g., human rights violations, other violent actions) in Colombia.

Rights Of Inequality: Rawlsian Justice, Equal Opportunity, And The Status Of The Family, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Is the family subject to principles of justice? In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls includes the (monogamous) family along with the market and the government as among the "basic institutions of society" to which principles of justice apply. Justice, he famously insists, is primary in politics as truth is in science: the only excuse for tolerating injustice is that no lesser injustice is possible. The point of the present paper is that Rawls doesn't actually mean this. When it comes to the family, and in particular its impact on fair equal opportunity (the first part of the the Difference …

Trends. Licit And Illicit Human Trafficking: The Ultimate Violation Of Human Rights, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses human trafficking for economic reasons and its context.

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …

Rising Temperatures: Rising Tides, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Transboundary environmental problems do not distinguish between political boundaries. Global warming is expected to cause thermal expansion of water and melt glaciers. Both are predicted to lead to a rise in sea level. We must enlarge our paradigms to encompass a global reality and reliance upon global participation.

What's Wrong With Exploitation?, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Abstract: Marx thinks that capitalism is exploitative, and that is a major basis for his objections to it. But what's wrong with exploitation, as Marx sees it? (The paper is exegetical in character: my object is to understand what Marx believed,) The received view, held by Norman Geras, G.A. Cohen, and others, is that Marx thought that capitalism was unjust, because in the crudest sense, capitalists robbed labor of property that was rightfully the workers' because the workers and not the capitalists produced it. This view depends on a Labor Theory of Property (LTP), that property rights are based ultimately …

From Libertarianism To Egalitarianism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard natural rights argument for libertarianism is based on the labor theory of property: the idea that I own my self and my labor, and so if I "mix" my own labor with something previously unowned or to which I have a have a right, I come to own the thing with which I have mixed by labor. This initially intuitively attractive idea is at the basis of the theories of property and the role of government of John Locke and Robert Nozick. Locke saw and Nozick agreed that fairness to others requires a proviso: that I leave "enough …

Human Rights, Women, And Third World Development, Winston E. Langley

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

As part of the effort to inaugurate a new international socio-political order after World War II, international emphasis was given to certain moral and legal entitlements we have come to call human rights. That emphasis initially found its most forceful expression in the Charter of the United Nations, which not only asserts its members' faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, as well as in the equal rights of men and women of all nations, but also recites its members' commitment to employ international machinery for the promotion of the social and economic …