Human Rights Law Commons^™

Punitive Military Strikes On Syria Risk An Inhumane Intervention, Jennifer Moore

Faculty Scholarship

The 1949 Geneva Conventions do not justify US missile strikes in Syria in response to chemical weapons attacks on the civilian population.

Gauging The Gender Divide In The Middle East’S Educational System: Causes, Concerns, And The Impetus For Change, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Just Who Are Humanitarian Workers?, Jennifer Moore

Faculty Scholarship

On the 19th of August, World Humanitarian Day, we honor the contributions of humanitarian workers around the world, especially those who have lost their lives helping people in war-torn societies.

Global Legal Responses To Prenatal Gender Identification And Sex Selection, Seema Mohapatra

Faculty Scholarship

Over one hundred million women in the world are estimated to be “missing” from the world’s population due to some form of gendercide. Gendercide exists on almost every continent and affects every class of people. Gendercide has traditionally taken the form of sex-selective abortion, infanticide, or death caused by neglect. Sex-selective abortions occur when a pregnancy is terminated due to the sex of the fetus. In the last few decades, technological advances have allowed potential parents to identify the gender of their baby early in the first trimester. Recently, with the advent of newer technology that allows one to choose …

"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 …

Religions As Sovereigns: Why Religion Is "Special", Elizabeth Clark

Faculty Scholarship

Commentators increasingly challenge religion’s privileged legal status, arguing that it is not “special” or distinct from other associations or philosophical or conscientious claims. I propose that religion is “special” because it functions metaphorically as a legal sovereign, asserting supreme authority over a realm of human life. Under a religion-as-sovereign theory, religious freedom can be understood as at least partial deference to a religious sovereign in a system of shared or overlapping sovereignty. This Article suggests that federalism, which also involves shared sovereignty, can provide a useful heuristic device for examining religious freedom. Specifically, the Article examines a range of federalism …

Formalism And State Secrets, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

The state secrets privilege has received a tremendous amount of scholarly attention in the U.S. in the last decade. In September 2009, the Obama administration created a new policy that mandated a more rigorous internal administrative review prior to invoking the state secrets privilege. It appears as though this internal review process has resulted in little difference with regard to the invocation of the privilege at the pleadings stage in cases that allege torture and other human rights abuses. This chapter of the forthcoming comparative law volume Secrecy, National Security and the Vindication of Constitutional Law (David Cole, Federico Fabbrini …

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.

Freedom From Ignorance: The International Duty To Provide Public Education, Areto A. Imoukhuede

Faculty Scholarship

This paper argues that public education is an international human right that the U.S. ought to recognise and protect. Recognising a right to public education would correct a major inconsistency in U.S. law by bringing education rights docrtine more in line with international human rights law. This piece discusses how current U.S. education rights doctrine is inconsistent with U.S. tradition and legal precedent. It then demonstrates how international law recognises public education as a fundamental duty of government before arguing for why the U.S. is obligated to follow international law regarding the right to public education.

The Politics Of Religious Establishment: Recognition Of Muslim Marriages In South Africa, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

This paper explores the normative dissonances and antinomies generated by the politics around religious establishment by examining post-apartheid law reform efforts in South Africa to recognize Muslim marriages. Since the late 1990s, the South African Law Reform Commission has initiated various projects to recognize the claims of and redress past discrimination against different religious communities, including tribal groups living under customary law and religious minorities with their own family and personal status laws. It is striking how the norms and assumptions underpinning this debate differ from engagements involving the claims of religious communities in Europe and North America where broadly …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The Case For Decriminalization Of Sex Work In South Africa, Chi Adanna Mgbako, Katherine G. Bass, Erica Bundra, Mehak Jamil, Jere Keys, Lauren Melkus

Faculty Scholarship

Activists for sex worker rights in South Africa are leading a sophisticated national campaign to decriminalize sex work. This Article serves as an act of solidarity with these activists’ continued efforts to fight for and realize sex workers’ human rights by examining the negative impact that criminalizing prostitution has on sex workers’ rights and presenting evidence-based arguments to show that South Africa should enact legislation to fully decriminalize sex work. South African sex workers’ real-life experiences with violence, police abuse, and lack of access to health care and the justice system, highlighted through interviews conducted by the authors during fieldwork …

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 …

Firearms Policy And The Black Community: An Assessment Of The Modern Orthodoxy, Nicholas J. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

The heroes of the modern civil rights movement were more than just stoic victims of racist violence. Their history was one of defiance and fighting long before news cameras showed them attacked by dogs and fire hoses. When Fannie Lou Hamer revealed she kept a shotgun in every corner of her bedroom, she was channeling a century old practice. And when delta share cropper Hartman Turnbow, after a shootout with the Klan, said “I don’t figure I was being non-nonviolent, (yes non-nonviolent) I was just protecting my family”, he was invoking an evolved tradition that embraced self-defense and disdained political …

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.

Liberalism In Decline: Legislative Trends Limiting Religious Freedom In Russia And Central Asia, Elizabeth Clark

Faculty Scholarship

Religious freedom, among other human rights, has increasingly been restricted in Russia and Central Asia. Recent empirical research has shown that increased governmental regulation of religion causes increased social hostilities over religion and has shown the connections between religious freedom and numerous other civil rights and social goods. The U.S. government has particularly recognized the importance of religious freedom in Russia, mandating significant restrictions on aid based on the Russian interpretation of restrictive religion legislation passed in 1997. Since that time, however, virtually no attention has been given to draft legislation in this area in Russia and common trends seen …

Intersectionality: Mapping The Movements Of A Theory, Devon Carbado, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Vicki M. Mays, Barbara Tomlinson

Faculty Scholarship

Very few theories have generated the kind of interdisciplinary and global engagement that marks the intellectual history of intersectionality. Yet, there has been very little effort to reflect upon precisely how intersectionality has moved across time, disciplines, issues, and geographic and national boundaries. Our failure to attend to intersectionality’s movement has limited our ability to see the theory in places in which it is already doing work and to imagine other places to which the theory might be taken. Addressing these questions, this special issue reflects upon the genesis of intersectionality, engages some of the debates about its scope and …

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 …

Human Rights Obligations To The Poor, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

Poverty unquestionably detracts fromthe human rights mission.Modern human rights law recognizes a broad range of rights – for example, “to life, liberty, and security of person” and to adequate “food, clothing, and medical care.”1 Any number of those rights might go unrealized in conditions of extreme poverty. However, human rights law has always been partly aspirational. For those seeking to improve the lives of the poor, the key question is not what rights exist but how to make those rights operational.What does human rights law actually require of states? And how might its obligations benefit the poor?

The Right To Plea Bargain With Competent Counsel After Cooper And Frye: Is The Supreme Court Making The Ordinary Criminal Process Too Long, Too Expensive, And Unpredictable In Pursuit Of Perfect Justice, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of criminal defendants who were deprived of a favorable plea offer because of their lawyers’ professional lapses. In dissent, Justice Scalia complained that “[t]he ordinary criminal process has become too long, too expensive, and unpredictable,” because of the Court’s criminal procedure jurisprudence; that plea bargaining is “the alternative in which...defendants have sought relief,” and that the two new decisions on the Sixth Amendment right to effective representation in plea bargaining would add to the burden on the criminal process. This essay examines several aspects of …

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 …

Minnesota Bounties On Dakota Men During The U.S.-Dakota War, Colette Routel

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S.-Dakota War was one of the formative events in Minnesota history, and despite the passage of time, it still stirs up powerful emotions among descendants of the Dakota and white settlers who experienced this tragedy. Hundreds of people lost their lives in just over a month of fighting in 1862. By the time the year was over, thirty-eight Dakota men had been hanged in the largest mass execution in United States history. Not long afterwards, the United States abrogated its treaties with the Dakota, confiscated their reservations along the Minnesota River, and forced most of the Dakota to remove …

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 …