Human Rights Law Commons^™

Special Feature Seventh Colloquium On Challenges In International Refugee Law, James C. Hathaway

Michigan Journal of International Law

Refugee status at international law requires more than demonstration of a risk of being persecuted. Unless the risk faced by an applicant is causally connected to one of five specified attributes – his or her race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion – the claim to be a refugee must fail. Because the drafters of the Refugee Convention believed that the world’s asylum capacity was insufficient to accommodate all those at risk of being persecuted, they opted to confine the class of refugees to persons whose predicament stems from who they are, or what they …

Filling The Gap Of Domestic Violence Protection: Returning Human Rights To U.S. Victims, Melanie Kalmanson

Florida State University Law Review

The prevalence of domestic violence in the United States indicates a need for increased governmental protection. The current state-based system inadequately serves victims of domestic violence, and previous US. Supreme Court rulings indicate that the U.S. Constitution leaves the federal government in an impotent position for providing any form of protection for domestic violence victims. Pursuant to the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, domestic violence violates one's human rights, or those fundamental to personhood. By ratifying the American Declaration through the Charter of the Organization of the American States, the United States established its responsibility for …

The Wages Of Human Trafficking, Rana M. Jaleel

Brooklyn Law Review

This article asks a deceptively straightforward question: What is the wrong of human trafficking? If the answer seems obvious, a closer look at anti-trafficking law reveals a doctrinal crisis. Human trafficking law has traditionally concerned itself with movement and how compelled or chosen migration estranges vulnerable people from the locales, customs, and resources that might otherwise shield them from exploitation. According to the U.S. State Department, however, movement is no longer a central element of human trafficking. Instead, “many forms of enslavement” are thought to comprise the core of the crime. The revocation of the movement requirement and the equation …

Emerging Issues: Fifa World Cup 2022: Enjoying The Game At The Suffering Of Migrant Workers, Iram Ashraf

University of Baltimore Journal of International Law

On December 2, 2010, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (“FIFA”), granted Qatar the honor of hosting the 2022 World Cup. FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter, stated that hosting the World Cup in Qatar, an “unstable region of the world,” is intended to unify millions of people that may not otherwise come together, such as Israelis and Palestinians. FIFA has put great efforts towards hosting this event in Qatar, so much so that it changed the tournament to be held in the winter rather than the summer for the first time in history. The logic behind this timing change was to …

Student Comment: Not Really A Battle Of The Sexes: Women’S Health Agenda Advocates Global Equality In Medical Research Trials And Drug Administration, Margery R. Beltran

University of Baltimore Journal of International Law

The New Women’s Health Agenda seeks to close the discriminatory gap between men’s and women’s medical treatment around the world. Often, women’s reproductive issues are the focus of medical studies in which women are involved; however, chronic diseases are quickly becoming a high health risk for the female population around the world. This comment explores the past, present, and future of women’s global health. Throughout history, women have been prevented from participating in clinical trials for reproductive protection reasons. The problem arises after men have successfully responded to treatment because the medication is then administered to both men and women. …

"Measuring" The Erosion Of Academic Freedom As An International Human Right, Klaus D. Beiter, Terence Karran, Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article reports and comments on the results of an assessment of the legal protection of the right to academic freedom (an examination of its factual protection to be undertaken at a future point) in EU member states, having examined these countries' constitutions, laws on higher education, and other relevant legislation. The assessment relied on a standard scorecard, developed by utilizing indicators of protection of academic freedom, notably as reflected in UNESCO's Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel, a document of 1997 that is not legally, but "politically" binding, and which concretizes international human rights requirements in respect …

Introduction: Global Human Rights Law And The Boundaries Of Statehood, Daniel Augenstein, Hans Lindahl

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The contributions collected in this Special Issue are the outcome of a colloquium on "Global Human Rights Law and the Boundaries of Statehood" held at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa in March 2015. The colloquium is the first in a series of topics to be addressed within the STIAS research project, "Boundaries and Legal Authority in a Global Context," coordinated by Hans Lindahl and Louise du Toit. We would like to express our gratitude to STIAS for the funding and logistics of the colloquium. Our particular thanks are due to the director of STIAS, Hendrik …

The Temporal Rivalries Of Human Rights, Fleur E. Johns

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Nation-states' "boundaries" are produced in time: around official working hours and terms of office, for instance, and in the historicomythic "life of the nation." Global human rights practices affirm and depend on nation-states' temporal authority, while also calling that authority into question. In different ways, global markets do likewise. In recent decades, the ubiquity of both finance capital and international human rights law, among other factors, may have encouraged the fracturing of time into intervals of ever-decreasing length. Temporal authority premised on the long-term seems to have declining purchase, even as historicism and futurism abound, discouraging some modes of state-based …

Fractured Territories And Abstracted Terrains: Human Rights Governance Regimes Within And Beyond The State, Larry Catá Backer

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The problem of representation has become a central element for the development of human rights norms, not just within international organizations, but within states as well. The problem has been made acute by two significant changes in the organization of power that became visible after the 1950s. On one hand, the idea of the individual became more abstract. Mass democracy became symptomatic of a general trend toward the dissolution of the individual within a mass population, which was incarnated as the aggregation of its group characteristics, its statistics, and data. On the other hand, states were becoming less solid; the …

Some Newly Emergent Geographies Of Injustice: Boundaries And Borders In International Law, Upendra V. Baxi

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This conversation examines the relationship between the boundaries and borders in international law and the production of geographies of injustice through the lens of the colonial epistemologies, especially of private international law in the face of mass social disasters like the archetypal Bhopal catastrophe. I also address the languages and logics of coloniality and postcoloniality, as states of consciousness and social organization, under the complex and contradictory unity of neoliberalism.

Statehood, Power, And The New Face Of Consent, Sheldon Leader

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Individuals and groups are often subjected to power, both public and private, by eliciting their consent. Debate usually focuses on whether or not that consent is freely given or is vitiated by imbalances of strength between the bargaining parties. This essay focuses on a different issue, one that is largely passed over in legal and moral analyses: how far does and should consent bind one to accepting in advance changes in the future? There are signs of a fundamental shift in answering this question-a shift that particularly concerns the control of power in the economy. Industrial democracies may be abandoning …

Decentering Human Rights From The International Order Of States: The Alignment And Interaction Of Transnational Policy Channels, Radu G. Mares

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article accounts for recent developments in corporate social responsibility, international trade and investment law, international human rights law, development aid, and the laws of home states reaching extraterritorially in order to advance a regulatory perspective on commerce and human rights. While these developments are remarkable, the analysis documents the prevalence of softer strategies and a corresponding scarcity of coercive legalization strategies. The question, then, is how to reason about these recent developments and their genuine potential for human rights protection. The article proposes two elements-a root-cause orientation and the interaction of policy channels-as indispensable for a regulatory and systemic …

Human Rights And Global Public Goods: The Sound Of One Hand Clapping?, Neil Walker

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Each operating in a presumptively general or universal register, 'public goods" and "human rights" are among the most popular and visible contemporary carriers of ideas of global law and governance and are therefore prime sources for any broader project of global justice. Their combination, moreover, holds out the prospect of a fertile engagement between the two core concerns of modern political morality our collective requirements and potential (public goods) and our individual dignity and well-being (human rights). Yet for all their ambition, public goods and human rights each face the formidable challenge of placing considerations of political authority and political …

Corporations And The Limits Of State-Based Models For Protecting Fundamental Rights In International Law, David Bilchitz

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

At the heart of international law lies a central tension. On the one hand, the fundamental rights recognized in international treaties protect the fundamental interests of individuals, obligating all actors who can affect these rights. One the other hand, international law has often been conceived of as a system in which the only legitimate actors are states. In turn, only states can be bound by the fundamental rights obligations in international treaties. To address this tension, two models have been proposed. The first is an "Indirect duty" approach, whereby the state remains the primary duty-bearer and must itself "create" the …

One Pillar: Legal Authority And A Social License To Operate In A Global Context, Hans Lindahl

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The claim that businesses have a social license to operate acquires concrete form in the second pillar of the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in the fundamental distinction between "compliance with all applicable laws" and "respect for human rights." The aim of this paper is to critically examine the presuppositions that undergird this distinction and to explain how and why moving beyond state-centered thinking about law, in response to violations of human rights by globally operating businesses, requires acknowledging that there is one pillar that embraces states and businesses: the legal obligation to comply with international …

To Whom It May Concern: International Human Rights Law And Global Public Goods, Daniel Augenstein

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Public goods and human rights are sometimes treated as intimately related, if not interchangeable, strategies to address matters of common global concern. The aim of the present contribution is to disentangle the two notions to shed some critical light on their respective potential to attend to contemporary problems of globalization. I distinguish the standard economic approach to public goods as a supposedly value-neutral technique to coordinate economic activity between states and markets from a political conception of human rights law that empowers individuals to partake in the definition of the public good. On this basis, I contend that framing global …

Australia's Guantanamo Bay: How Australian Migration Laws Violate The United Nations Convention Against Torture, Katelin Morales

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Indefinite Detention, Deadly Conditions: How Brazil's Notorious Criminal Justice System Violates The International Covenant On Civil And Political Rights, Layla Medina

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Extraterritorial Application Of The Alien Tort Statute After Kiobel, Ranon Altman

University of Miami Business Law Review

This article explores when corporations can be held liable under the Alien Tort Statute for human rights abuses that are committed outside of the United States. The Alien Tort Statute grants the United States district courts jurisdiction for torts committed against foreigners in violation of the law of nations. While the Alien Tort Statute concerns international law, it does not indicate whether the district courts have jurisdiction over disputes that involve conduct outside of the United States.

In this article, I focus my analysis on the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. That case …

The Art Of Nailing Jell-O To The Wall: Reassessing The Political Power Of The Internet, Bryan Druzin, Jessica Li

Journal of Law and Policy

Political observers commonly argue that, given the unique characteristics of the Internet, democratization is an inevitability of its widespread use. The critical role that social media played in the wave of demonstrations, protests, and revolutions that swept across the Arab world in 2011 cemented this perception in the minds of many. Yet China defies this simplistic paradigm—China has been stunningly successful at constraining the political power of its Internet. We argue that the political importance of Internet technology has been overstated, particularly with respect to China. As support for this thesis, we cite recent political events in Hong Kong known …

A Post-Millennial Inquiry Into The United Nations Law Of Self-Determination: A Right To Unilateral Non-Colonial Secession?, Dr. Glen Anderson

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The present Article inquires whether a right to unilateral non-colonial (UNC) secession is grounded in the United Nations (UN) law of self-determination. The Article argues that peoples subjected to deliberate, sustained, and systematic human rights abuses in extremis (e.g., ethnic cleansing, mass killings, or genocide) by the existing state have an international customary law right to UNC secessionist self-determination. This right is coextensive with the "remedial-rights-only" philosophical approach to UNC secession. The Article further argues that in the post-millennial era two developments are likely for the law of UNC secessionist self-determination: first, the right will become available in response to …

The Phase-Out And Sunset Of Travel Restrictions In The International Health Regulations, Sarah R. Goldfarb

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Whether and to what extent travel restriction should be implemented during international infectious disease epidemics became a controversial issue, most recently, during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. The primary authority on the manner in which to respond to such epidemics is the International Health Regulations (IHR). The IHR is a treaty, established by the World Health Organization (WHO), which governs and coordinates international responses to international infectious disease epidemics. Despite the WHO's strong advisement to the contrary, many countries who were signatories to the IHR implemented travel bans and other types of travel restrictions to prevent the transmission of the disease …

The Principle Of Legality And A Common Law Bill Of Rights—Clear Statement Rules Head Down Under, Dan Meagher

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

This article traces the evolution in Australia of fundamental rights protection provided by the courts. It is a fascinating and controversial story that, at its most critical moments, was (and continues to be) informed by U.S. constitutional law design and statutory interpretation principles. On one level, that is no surprise when “it may be said that, roughly speaking, the Australian Constitution is a redraft of the American Constitution of 1787 with modifications found suitable for the more characteristic British institutions and for Australian conditions.” But, what is extraordinary is that the decision of the framers of the Australian Constitution to …

The Costs And Consequences Of Incorrect Citations: European Law In The U.S. Supreme Court, Andrea Pin

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Building on the controversy over foreign citations in domestic courts, this article reflects on the U.S. Supreme Court's practice of quoting EU law and the European Court of Human Rights’ case law. It offers a detailed examination of how the U.S. Supreme Court has used European sources and shifts the debate over whether it should use them, by explaining a different way in which the court could exploit them. The article focuses on the three fields in which such foreign case law has either influenced the U.S. Supreme Court decisions or otherwise impacted the judges’ reasoning: laws targeting homosexual conduct; …

“Chi S’Aiuta, Dio L’Aiuta”: Balancing Italy’S Right To Utilize Assisted Reproductive Technologies With The Teachings Of The Catholic Church, Erin A. Mcmullan

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Adelina Parrillo never anticipated starting a prolonged legal battle when she requested her embryos be donated for scientific research. The restrictive legislation in place in Italy, inevitably influenced by the Catholic Church, mandated that she either implant the embryos or store them indefinitely. After a long drawn out battle with the Italian courts, she desperately sought assistance from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), a court tasked with protecting the rights of individuals such as Parrillo from the overreaching of Member States. The ECtHR) acknowledged that this decision, to donate her unused embryos to medical research, was within the …

Refugees Without Borders: Legal Implications Of The Refugee Crisis In The Schengen Zone, Bridget Carr

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note will first examine current practices utilized by Member States and their strategic partners outside the Zone to manage flows of third-country nationals from the Middle East and North Africa. It will then explore how these practices are not compatible with principles of protection from degrading and inhuman treatment, non-refoulement, and non-discrimination as codified in the Schengen Borders Code, European Convention on Human Rights, and the Refugee Convention, among others. Finally, this Note will propose targeted reforms for the Schengen Zone’s internal and external border management aimed at protecting the human rights of displaced persons and modifying incentive structures …

The Michigan Guidelines On Risk For Reasons Of Political Opinion

Michigan Journal of International Law

The Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (“Convention”) recognizes as refugees those who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted on the basis of inter alia “political opinion,” are unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of their home country

Toward A New Framework For Understanding Political Opinion, Catherine Dauvergne

Michigan Journal of International Law

This paper was written to frame the work of the Seventh Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law, held at the University of Michigan Faculty of Law, on March 27–29, 2015. To some extent, therefore, it has already served its purpose. It is somewhat tempting in the wake of the Colloquium to completely reconstruct the paper in light of the conversations and conclusions of that event. Such reconstruction, however, would be misleading. Instead, I have chosen to publish the paper in a form that is very similar to its earlier iteration, with a few corrections, clarifications, and explanatory notes about …