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Human Rights Law Commons

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Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Human Rights Law

The New Pornography Wars, Julie A. Dahlstrom Jan 2023

The New Pornography Wars, Julie A. Dahlstrom

Faculty Scholarship

The world’s largest online pornography conglomerate, MindGeek, has come under fire for the publishing of “rape videos,” child pornography, and nonconsensual pornography on its website, Pornhub. As in the “pornography wars” of the 1970s and 1980s, lawyers and activists have now turned to civil remedies and filed creative anti-trafficking lawsuits against MindGeek and third parties, like payment processing company, Visa. These lawsuits seek not only to achieve legal accountability for online sex trafficking but also to reframe a broader array of online harms as sex trafficking.

This Article explores what these new trafficking lawsuits mean for the future regulation of …


Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights In Canada, Joanna Erdman Jan 2018

Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights In Canada, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article endeavours to understand the feminist activism from which constitutional abortion rights in Canada were born in the landmark Supreme Court case of R v Morgentaler 1988, and the influence of these rights on continued feminist activism for reproductive justice. Part I reviews abortion practice in the ‘back-alley’ prior to and immediately after the 1969 criminal reform with attention to the direct service activism of liberation feminists in their campaign to repeal the abortion law as a matter of constitutional justice. Part II turns to adjudication in the courts to study how judicial reasoning channelled these constitutional claims, exploring …


Rescuing Trafficking From Ideological Capture: Prostitution Reform And Anti-Trafficking Law And Policy, Janie Chuang Jan 2010

Rescuing Trafficking From Ideological Capture: Prostitution Reform And Anti-Trafficking Law And Policy, Janie Chuang

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In the decade since it became a priority on the United States' national agenda, the issue of human trafficking has spawned enduring controversy. New legal definitions of “trafficking” were codified in international and U.S. law in 2000, but what conduct qualifies as “trafficking” remains hotly contested. Despite shared moral outrage over the plight of trafficked persons, debates over whether trafficking encompasses voluntary prostitution continue to rend the anti-trafficking advocacy community - and are as intractable as debates over abortion and other similarly contentious social issues. Attempts to equate trafficking with slavery invite both disdain and favor: they are often rejected …


Regarding Rights: An Essay Honoring The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights Introduction: Locating Culture, Identity, And Human Rights Symposium In Celebration Of The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Tracy E. Higgins Jan 1998

Regarding Rights: An Essay Honoring The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights Introduction: Locating Culture, Identity, And Human Rights Symposium In Celebration Of The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

The half-century since the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights' has been famously heralded as the "Age of Rights" and the concept of human rights described as "the only political-moral idea that has gained universal acceptance." During the same period, however, both terms defining the subject-human and rights-have become increasingly contested. Informed by the emergence of identity-based political movements, critics have attacked the category human has as bearing the baggage of Western Enlightenment assumptions about personhood and community, inherently racist, sexist, and classist. Theorists across the political spectrum have criticized the concept of rights as indeterminate, destructive of …