Human Rights Law Commons^™

Mapping The Interface Between Human Rights And Intellectual Property, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brief For Foreign And Comparative Law Experts Harold Hongju Koh Et Al. As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioners, Harold Hongju Koh, Thomas Buergenthal, Sarah H. Cleveland, Laurence R. Helfer, Ryan Goodman, Sujit Choudhry

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On The Effectiveness Of Private Security Guards On Board Merchant Ships Off The Coast Of Somalia -- Where Is The Piracy? What Are The Legal Ramifications?, Barry H. Dubner, Claudia Pastorius

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

International Courts As Agents Of Legal Change: Evidence From Lgbt Rights In Europe, Laurence R. Helfer, Erik Voeten

Faculty Scholarship

Do international court judgments influence the behavior of actors other than the parties to a dispute? Are international courts agents of policy change or do their judgments merely reflect evolving social and political trends? The authors develop a theory that specifies the conditions under which international courts can use their interpretive discretion to have system-wide effects. The authors examine the theory in the context of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rulings on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues by creating a new dataset that matches these rulings with laws in all Council of Europe (CoE) member states. The …

Toward A Legal Theory On The Responsibility To Protect, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

The idea of the "responsibility to protect" has received enormous attention in recent years-so much attention that it now goes simply by R2P. R2P posits that, when a state fails to protect its population from mass atrocities, the broader international community should step in to help. The vision here is of outside states banding together and doing everything possible to protect the at-risk population. But for all the attention this vision receives, its effect on international law or on the ultimate goal of protecting people from atrocities is unclear. This Article critiques that vision and offers an alternative. The Article …

The International Sugar Trade And Sustainable Development: Curtailing The Sugar Rush, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Indeterminate International Law Of Jurisdiction, The Presumption Against Extraterritorial Effect Of Statutes, And Certainty In U.S. Criminal Law, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

It is, in certain cases, impossible for persons to tell in advance which states will have effective legislative jurisdiction over their acts. In these cases, it is impossible to tell in advance whose law the person must obey. This quandry arises where some national law purports to regulate outsiders and their acts in a manner arguably inconsistent with the international law of legislative jurisdiction. If the regulating state's courts do not allow challenges to jurisdiction based on international law, and the state of the outsider's nationality fails to protect her diplomatically, the outsider has no protection against excessive claims of …

The Law Of War And The Responsibility To Protect Civilians: A Reinterpretation, Thomas H. Lee

Faculty Scholarship

Two seemingly unrelated crises implicating the law of war and the responsibility to protect civilians have arisen in recent years. In 2013, the United States considered military intervention without United Nations (“U.N.”) Security Council preapproval in Syria after discovering that the government had exterminated its own people with chemical agents. In 2014, Russia sent troops into Crimea, a part of Ukraine, to protect ethnic Russians that Russia claimed were in danger after a political coup in the country. In both cases, the military acts contemplated or undertaken were of dubious legality, albeit under different rubrics. This Article aims to show …

The Successes And Challenges For The European Court, Seen From The Outside, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"At The Hospital There Are No Human Rights": Reproductive And Sexual Rights Violations Of Women Living With Hiv In Namibia, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

This report documents the ongoing stigma and discrimination of women living with HIV in Namibia, building on prior findings and investigations on the subject, such as the 2008 research conducted by the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW) and the Namibian Women’s Health Network (NWHN). The report, based upon both desk research and a field mission, examines the human rights situation related to sexual and reproductive health of women living with HIV, including the gravity and ongoing nature of forced and coerced sterilizations in Namibia. The report also provides evidence of violations of informed consent in the context …

The Paradoxes Of Restitution, Mark A. Edwards

Faculty Scholarship

Restitution following mass dispossession is often considered both ideal and impossible. Why? This article identifies two previously unnamed paradoxes that undermine the possibility of restitution.

First, both dispossession and restitution depend on the social construction of rights-worthiness. Over time, people once considered unworthy of property rights ‘become’ worthy of them. However, time also corrodes the practicality and moral weight of restitution claims. By the time the dispossessed ‘become’ worthy of property rights, restitution claims are no longer practically or morally viable. This is the time-unworthiness paradox.

Second, restitution claims are undermined by the concept of collective responsibility. People are sometimes …

All The Missing Souls: A Personal History Of The War Crimes Tribunals By David Sheffer, Jennifer Laws

Faculty Scholarship

David Scheffer’s memoir records his firsthand experiences as the primary U.S. representative in the processes of building five war crimes tribunals between 1993 and 2006: the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia, and the International Criminal Court. This review analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of his work and makes recommendations to libraries regarding selection for their collections.

The Dilemma Of Piratical Ransoms: Should They Be Paid Or Not: On The Human Rights Of Kidnapped Seamen And Their Families, Barry H. Dubner, Kimberly Chavers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Human Rights And The Evolution Of Global Environmental Law, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

Environmental problems that jeopardize the health of humans increasingly implicate concerns that have played an important role in the development of international human rights. While some have questioned the wisdom or effectiveness of focusing human rights concerns on environmental problems, it seems an inevitable response to the failure of many countries to protect their citizens adequately from harm caused by environmental degradation. This paper reviews efforts to apply human rights concerns to environmental problems. It describes how these developments illustrate the growth of a kind of “global environmental law” that blurs traditional distinctions between domestic and international law and public …

Hollingsworth V. Perry, Brief For Foreign And Comparative Law Experts Harold Hongju Koh Et. Al. As Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents, Harold Hongju Koh, Sarah H. Cleveland, Laurence R. Helfer, Ryan Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A New International Human Rights Court For West Africa: The Ecowas Community Court Of Justice, Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, Jacqueline R. Mcallister

Faculty Scholarship

The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (ECCJ) is an increasingly active and bold international adjudicator of human rights violations in West Africa. Since acquiring jurisdiction over human rights issues in 2005, the ECCJ has issued several path-breaking judgments, including against the Gambia for the torture of journalists, against Niger for condoning modern forms of slavery, and against Nigeria for failing to regulate the multinational oil companies that polluted the Niger Delta. This article explains why ECOWAS member states authorized the ECCJ to review human rights suits by individuals but did not allow private actors to complain about violations of regional …

Of Civil Wrongs And Rights: Kiyemba V. Obama And The Meaning Of Freedom, Separation Of Powers, And The Rule Of Law Ten Years After 9/11, Katherine L. Vaughns, Heather L. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

This article is about the rise and fall of continued adherence to the rule of law, proper application of the separation of powers doctrine, and the meaning of freedom for a group of seventeen Uighurs—a Turkic Muslim ethnic minority whose members reside in the Xinjiang province of China—who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base since 2002. Most scholars regard the trilogy of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, and Boumediene v. Bush as demonstrating the Supreme Court’s willingness to uphold the rule of law during the war on terror. The recent experience of the Uighurs …

The Invention Of A Human Right: Conscientious Objection At The United Nations, 1947-2011, Jeremy Kessler

Faculty Scholarship

The right of conscientious objection to military service is the most startling of human rights. While human rights generally seek to protect individuals from state power, the right of conscientious objection radically alters the citizen-state relationship, subordinating a state's decisions about national security to the beliefs of the individual citizen. In a world of nation-states jealous of their sovereignty, how did the human right of conscientious objection become an international legal doctrine? By answering that question, this Article both clarifies the legal pedigree of the human right of conscientious objection and sheds new light on the relationship between international human …

The Long-Term International Law Implications Of Targeted Killings Practices, Christof Heyns, Sarah Knuckey

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most crucial and enduring questions about “targeted killings” is: How will the currently expanding practices of singling out individuals in advance and eliminating them in other countries without accountability impact the established international legal system?

International law, since at least World War II, has developed various mechanisms to limit killing in general, including targeted killings. These take the form of vigorous protections for the right to life under human rights law; safeguards against the interstate use of force while permitting states to protect themselves where necessary; and aiming to strike a balance between the principles of humanity …

Globalization And Law: Law Beyond The State, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

The chapter provides an introduction into law and globalization for sociolegal studies. Instead of treating globalization as an external factor that impacts the law, globalization and law are here viewed as intertwined. I suggest that three types of globalization should be distinguished—globalization as empirical phenomenon, globalization as theory, and globalization as ideology. I go on to discuss one central theme of globalization, namely in what way society, and therefore law, move beyond the state. This is done along the three classical elements of the state—territory, population/citizenship, and government. The role of all of these elements is shifting, suggesting we need …

The Tangled Law And Politics Of Religious Freedom, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium Essay comments on four interrelated themes regarding the right to religious liberty in international law that emerge from Seval Yildirim's article Global Tangles: Laws, Headcoverings and Religious Identity, 10 SANTA CLARA J. INT’L L. 52 (2012). The first is the paradoxical language of freedom in struggles over attempts to proscribe the wearing of the hijab, especially regarding the principles of gender equality and women’s rights. The second is the apparent comfort that governance feminism exhibits with the state imposition of new (presumably woman liberationist) norms and how institutions such as courts may act not only as …

The Evolution Of Law And Policy For Cia Targeted Killing, Afsheen John Radsan

Faculty Scholarship

Many critiques of the Central Intelligence Agency’s alleged use of killer drones depend on law that does not bind the United States or on contestable applications of uncertain facts to vague law. While acknowledging a blurry line between law and policy, we continue to develop a due process for targeted killing. In the real world, intelligence is sometimes faulty, mistakes occur, and peaceful civilians are at risk. International humanitarian law, which applies during armed conflicts, demands very little in the way of process beyond the admonition to take feasible precautions. Even so, the intelligence-driven nature of targeted killing, and the …

Use Of Comparative Law In Determining The Customary International Law Of Human Rights, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

Comparative law method is essential to determining the customary international law status of rules of human rights law. Doing the hard, detailed work of comparative law is necessary if we are to give up on the unfortunate tendency to make overly broad, unsupported claims that wide varieties of human rights have passed into customary international law.

The traditional use of only interstate practice in determining rules of customary international law is insufficient where the rules concern relationships between states and individuals, especially their own nationals. This, however, is the essence of human rights law.

Comparative law techniques allow, and are …

Comparative Law And International Human Rights Law: Non-Retroactivity And Lex Certa In Criminal Law, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dating The State: The Moral Hazards Of Winning Gay Rights, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

On August 1, 2009, a masked man dressed in black carrying an automatic weapon stormed into Beit Pazi in Tel Aviv, the home of the Aguda, the National Association of GLBT in Israel. He opened fire on a group of gay and lesbian teenagers who were meeting in the basement for "Bar-Noar," or "Youth Bar," killing two people and wounding at least ten others. This terrible act of violence attracted immediate national and international attention and condemnation. President Simon Peres declared the next day:

[T]he shocking murder carried out in Tel Aviv yesterday against youths and young people is a …

Criminalized State: The International Criminal Court, The Responsibility To Protect, And Darfur, Republic Of Sudan, Matthew H. Charity

Faculty Scholarship

The international community continues to struggle with the question of what to do when a nation fails to protect its own people from systemic neglect, mistreatment, or even genocide. For many years, this debate pitted proponents of humanitarian intervention by a third-party against those who believe that all others must defer to the sovereign right of the state to control its own affairs and the affairs of its people. In the midst of this debate, the international community has adopted a middle road: insisting that states must acknowledge their responsibility to protect their populations and if the state manifestly fails …

Rule Of Law In Haiti Before And After The 2010 Earthquake, James D. Wilets, Camilo Espinosa

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Islam In The Secular Nomos Of The European Court Of Human Rights, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

Since 2001 the European Court of Human Rights has decided a series of cases involving Islam and the claims of Muslim communities (both majorities and minorities) to freedom of religion and belief. This Article suggests that what is most interesting about these cases is how they are unsettling existing normative legal categories under the ECHR and catalyzing new forms of politics and rethinking of both the historical and theoretical premises of modern liberal political orders. These controversies raise anew two critical questions for ECHR jurisprudence: first, regarding the proper scope of the right to religious freedom; and second, regarding the …

A Return To Lüth, Peter E. Quint

Faculty Scholarship

In the following brief essay, which is based on a paper delivered at the 2009 Annual Meeting of Americal Society of Comparative Law, the author revisits the Lüth case, one of the central decisions of German constitutional law.

Hiv And Women: Incongruent Policies, Criminal Consequences, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

UN Women must take an aggressive role in the standardization of laws and policies at the global and national level where their incongruence has negative and often criminal consequences for the health and lives of women and girls. This article focuses in on three such examples: opt-out testing for HIV, criminalization of vertical transmission, and the new World Health Organization guidelines on breastfeeding.