Human Rights Law Commons^™

Introduction: Indigenous Rights In The Pacific Rim, Jonathan A. Franklin

Librarians' Articles

The four articles in this issue all contribute to the dialogue surrounding the intersection of indigenous people's rights within international law and domestic actions that conflict with those rights. While the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international law instruments are explicit about how states should act towards indigenous populations, in many cases these nternational instruments conflict with domestic law. There are several reasons for this discrepancy, including states' self-interest, paternalism, and lack of resources needed to address both national concerns and the rights of indigenous peoples.

Your View: The Stateless State Of Caribbean Residents, Irene Scharf

Faculty Publications

On the Caribbean island of Hispanola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, grave human rights concerns affecting those of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic have recently erupted. Over the years, thousands of Haitians have come to the Dominican Republic to work the farms there and provide cheap construction and other manual labor. Recently, with the economic and natural disasters that have befallen Haiti, more Haitians have been arriving in the Dominican Republic. Many have put down roots and are raising families. Today, an estimated 200,000 people born in the Dominican Republic have parents who were born in …

Fairness And Politics At The Icty: Evidence From The Indictments, 39 N.C. J. Int'l L. & Com. Reg. 45 (2013), Stuart K. Ford

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Consular Notification For Dual Nationals, 38 S. Ill. U. L.J. 73 (2013), Mark E. Wojcik

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

In a case against the United States brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Mexico sought to protect the rights of fifty-four Mexican nationals who had been arrested in the United States for various crimes and put on trial without being informed of their rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR). These fifty-four Mexican nationals all faced the death penalty in various states of the United States. Shortly after filing its case in Avena and Other Mexican Nationals, however, Mexico dropped from the case one Mexican national who was also a citizen of the United States. The …

Beyond China’S Human Rights Exceptionalism In Africa: Leveraging Science, Technology And Engineering For Long-Term Growth, James T. Gathii

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Panel Iv: Challenges To Proving Cases Of Torture Before The Committee Against Torture, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Networks In Non-International Armed Conflicts: Crossing Borders And Defining "Organized Armed Group", Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities: Reflection On Four Flaws That Tarnish Its Promise, Lucia A. Silecchia

Scholarly Articles

On December 13, 2006, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (“CRPD”). Widely touted as the “first comprehensive human rights treaty of the 21st century,” and effusively praised for its open negotiation process, the CRPD was opened for signature on March 30, 2007. The CRPD quickly entered into force on May 3, 2008. As it rapidly amassed signatories, the CRPD inspired great hope that its comprehensive approach would do much to overcome the consistent failure to promote the dignity of those with disabilities in meaningfully concrete ways.

The CRPD has garnered much recent and …

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.

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 …

The Global Land Rush: Markets, Rights, And The Politics Of Food, Smita Narula

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In the past five years, interest in purchasing and leasing agricultural land in developing countries has skyrocketed. This trend, which was facilitated by the 2008 food crisis, is led by state and private investors, both domestic and foreign. Investors are responding to a variety of global forces: Some are securing their own food supply, while others are capitalizing on land as an increasingly promising source of financial returns. Proponents argue that these investments can support economic development in host states while boosting global food production. But critics charge that these “land grabs” disregard land users' rights and further marginalize already …

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 …

Corporate Law Tools And The Guiding Principles For Business And Human Rights, Sara Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper, written in 2012, provides a summary of the corporate law tools project undertaken as part of the mandate of Professor John Ruggie as Special Representative for Business and Human Rights. The author was one of the co-convenors of a multi-stakeholder consultation on corporate law tools held in 2009 and designed to inform the Ruggie mandate. This paper provides her assessment of the scope and limitations of this project, the extent to which it may have informed aspects of the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and an agenda for future research.

Juvenile Pirates: "Lost Boys" Or Violent Criminals?, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has flourished over the past decade, and has both caused a global crisis in maritime shipping and destabilized regional security in East Africa. In addition, piracy attacks have spread more recently to the coast of West Africa, and in particular, the Gulf of Guinea. Thus, piracy is an ongoing global issue that should continue to occupy many maritime nations in the near future, and one that should command continuous scholarly attention.

This article examines the issue of juvenile piracy, with a specific focus on the treatment of juvenile piracy suspects by both the capturing …

Enunciating Genocide: Crime, Rights And The Impact Of Judicial Intervention, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As a consequence of recent decisions from the ICJ and the ICTR, it is clear that genocide can be pursued through the international courts both in terms of criminal liability and also rights/responsibility legal paradigms. This article suggests that this duality in possible contexts and processes of judicial determination, while being procedurally problematic, is in keeping with the human rights direction of international criminal justice. In addition, by opening the legal consideration of genocide to questions of individual liability as well as state-sponsored rights abuse, judges are now able to consider the more realistic complexity of genocide atrocity and thereby …

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 …

Children And The First Verdict Of The International Criminal Court, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Child soldiers were a central concern in the first decade of the International Criminal Court; indeed, the court’s first trial, Prosecutor v. Lubanga, dealt exclusively with the war crimes of conscripting, enlisting, and using child soldiers. This article compares the attention that the court has paid to children – an attention that serves the express terms of the ICC Statute – with the relative inattention in post-World War II international instruments such as the statutes of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. The article then analyzes the Lubanga conviction, sentence, and reparations rulings. It recommends that the ICC focus attention on …

Corporate Law Tools And The Guiding Principles For Business And Human Rights, Sara L. Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper, written in 2012, provides a summary of the corporate law tools project undertaken as part of the mandate of Professor John Ruggie as Special Representative for Business and Human Rights. The author was one of the co-convenors of a multi-stakeholder consultation on corporate law tools held in 2009 and designed to inform the Ruggie mandate. This paper provides her assessment of the scope and limitations of this project, the extent to which it may have informed aspects of the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and an agenda for future research.

Book Review, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

LIBERTY & SECURITY, authored by Human Rights Law Professor Conor Gearty, is a book that is relevant and fills a void through the question it explores. Gearty, while admitting that the terms liberty and security are susceptible to a host of meanings, does not seek in this book to define a more precise meaning for these terms. Rather, the book focuses on the “for how many” question (p.2). Gearty asks and answers whether liberty and security are “to be for all or just the few?”

Theories Of State Compliance With International Law: Assessing The African Union’S Ability To Ensure State Compliance With The African Charter And Constitutive Act, Stacy-Ann Elvy

Articles & Chapters

May 26, 2011, marked the ten-year anniversary of the establishment of the African Union, and with the sudden death of Muammar al Gaddafi, who was instrumental in the creation of the African Union, the time is ripe to fully re-assess the ability of the African Union to ensure state compliance with the Constitutive Act of the African Union (Constitutive Act) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter). The African continent has a long history of massive human rights abuses. Prior to 2001, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was responsible for ensuring that African states complied …

The Mighty Work Of Making Nations Happy: A Response To James Davison Hunter, Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Working Paper Series

This article is an invited response to James Davison Hunter’s much-discussed book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010). Hunter, a sociologist at UVA and a believing Protestant, claims that law’s capacity to contribute to social change is “mostly illusory” and that Christians, therefore, should practice “faithful presence” in the public square rather than seek to influence law directly. My response is that it is, in fact, law’s stunning ability to alter and limit available choices that makes it an object of deservedly fierce contest. The wild …

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 Supreme Court And The Alien Tort Statute: Kiobel V. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., Ingrid W. Brunk

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Alien Tort Statute litigation has generated a growing number of questions about the the scope of statute, but in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. the Supreme Court finally answered one of them: the presumption against extraterritoriality applies to the statute. Going forward, courts may apply a robust version of the presumption, effectively ending ATS litigation as we currently know it. Or, they may not. The Court’s citations to Morrison v. Nat’l Austl. Bank Ltd. suggest the former; some language in the various opinions suggests the latter. This article explores these uncertainties and also discusses additional factors that may be …

Lessons For International Law From The Arab Spring, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Not all that begins in hope ends in happiness. In Egypt, the exuberance of Tahrir Square has given way to frustration over the resilience of the security state; in Libya, the anti-Qaddafi movement has fractured along tribal and factional lines; in Syria, as of this writing, calls for reform continue to be met with gunfire from government forces. Throughout the Middle East—from Egypt, Libya and Syria to Yemen, Tunisia, Bahrain and elsewhere—the heady excitement of 2010 has given way to a more sober awareness that enduring political change may take years, if not generations. The Arab Spring brought both progress …

The Geography Of The Battlefield: A Framework For Detention And Targeting Outside The 'Hot' Conflict Zone, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The U.S. conflict with al Qaeda raises a number of complicated and contested questions regarding the geographic scope of the battlefield and the related limits on the state’s authority to use lethal force and to detain without charge. To date, the legal and policy discussions on this issue have resulted in a heated and intractable debate. On the one hand, the United States and its supporters argue that the conflict — and broad detention and targeting authorities — extend to wherever the alleged enemy is found, subject to a series of malleable policy constraints. On the other hand, European allies, …

Owning Justice And Reckoning With Its Complexity, Diane Orentlicher

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

A series of developments, both doctrinal and political, seem to signify a retreat from earlier innovations in the law and practice of international justice. On closer examination, however, recent developments in international justice cannot be reduced to a single trend line. Even as various actors and processes continue to work out the ground rules for exercising jurisdiction in respect of human rights violations that international law condemns as criminal, and as international and national courts work through the inherently challenging project of redressing mass atrocities, states have increasingly internalized, owned and acted on the principle that they should ensure accountability …

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 …

A Janus Look At International Criminal Justice, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Invoking the name of Janus, the Roman god who looked simultaneously at the past and the future, this article examines international criminal justice at a watershed moment, when a number of 20-year-old ad hoc tribunals were winding down even as the International Criminal Court was entering its teen years. First explored are challenges posed by politics – that is, the need to secure cooperation from states and from the U.N. Security Council – and economics – that is, the need to work within budgetary constraints. The article then surveys significant developments in each of a half-dozen international criminal courts and …

Kiobel, Unilateralism, And The Retreat From Extraterritoriality, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Migrant Smuggling: Canada's Response To A Global Criminal Enterprise, Benjamin Perrin

All Faculty Publications

Migrant smuggling is a dangerous, sometimes deadly, criminal activity. Failing to respond effectively to migrant smuggling and deter it will risk emboldening those who engage in this illicit enterprise, which generates proceeds for organized crime and criminal networks, funds terrorism and facilitates clandestine terrorist travel, endangers the lives and safety of smuggled migrants, undermines border security, and undermines the integrity and fairness of immigration systems. Introduced in the Canadian House of Commons in June 2011, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act (Bill C-4) includes proposed amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that would enhance …