International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

Regional Immigration Enforcement, Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

Regional disparities in immigration enforcement have existed for decades, yet they remain largely overlooked in immigration law scholarship. This Article theorizes that bottom-up pressure from states and localities, combined with top-down pressures and policies established by the President, produce these regional disparities. The Article then provides an empirical analysis demonstrating enormous variations in how Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s twenty-four field offices engage in federal enforcement around the United States. By analyzing data related to detainers, arrests, removals, and detention across these field offices, the Article demonstrates substantial differences between field offices located in sanctuary and anti-sanctuary regions, as well as …

Environmental Law, Disrupted By Covid-19, Rebecca Bratspies, Vanessa Casado-Pérez, Robin Kundis Craig, Lissa Griffin, Keith Hirokawa, Sarah Krakoff, Katrina Kuh, Jessica Owley, Melissa Powers, Shannon Roesler, Jonathan Rosenbloom, J.B. Ruhl, Erin Ryan, David Takacs

Faculty Scholarship

As we were in the final phases of editing a book on disruption in environmental law, a pandemic swept across the world disrupting daily life and the functioning of society to an extent unprecedented in living memory. The novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 was identified in China in late 2019 and by late February 2020, it had spread to every continent except Antarctica; as of April, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that over 148 million people had been infected worldwide with over 3 million deaths. Scientists and public health experts have raced to understand the virus—how is it …

Intellectual Property Exhaustion And Parallel Imports Of Pharmaceuticals: A Comparative And Critical Review, Irene Calboli

Faculty Scholarship

This Chapter addresses the topic of intellectual property (IP) exhaustion in the context of the parallel trade of pharmaceuticals. These imports, which are controversial in general, are more complex with respect to pharmaceuticals, which require additional marketing and import authorizations. Nevertheless, individual countries remain free to accept these imports under the flexibility of Article 6 of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects to Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). This Chapter reviews several national approaches—in developed, developing, and least developed countries (LDCs)—from the perspective of the exhaustion of patent rights as well as other IP rights. Through this review, it highlights …

When Drills And Pipelines Cross Indigenous Lands In The Americas, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

From the Missouri River, passing through the Sonora Desert, all the way down to the Amazon Forest and the Andean Mountains, drills and pipelines are crossing over indigenous lands. In an energy-thirsty continent, there is no land left to spare, not even tribal land. Many of these energy infrastructure projects involve international investments that are protected by treaties and enforced by arbitral tribunals. At the same time, tribal communities have an internationally recognized right to receive prior and informed consultation before they are affected by projects of this nature. The Article focuses on the clash of rights between energy extraction …

Becoming Unconventional: Constricting The 'Particular Social Group' Ground For Asylum, Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

Part I of this Article provides a brief background about the evolution of the PSG ground in the United States and how it has become increasingly complicated and constricted over time. Part II discusses several ways that recent administrative decisions have imposed uniquely strict requirements for PSG-based asylum claims, both procedurally and substantively. Namely, the recent decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA") in Matter of W-Y-C- & H-O-B- creates two new procedural restrictions. First, it imposes an exceedingly strict pleading standard in PSG cases by requiring "exact delineation" of the PSG. Second, Matter of W-Y-Cprohibits asylum seekers from …

Fulfilling U.S. Commitment To Refugee Resettlement: Protecting Refugees, Preserving National Security, & Building The U.S. Economy Through Refugee Admissions, Harvard Immigration And Refugee Clinical Program

Texas A&M Law Review

At a time when the U.S. refugee admissions program is under serious threat and the world’s displaced population is at its highest, this Report sets forth extensive recommendations regarding the United States’ role in protecting vulnerable refugees and compliance with its commitments under domestic and international law that together safeguard people fleeing persecution and fearing return to torture. The Report also identifies key national security reasons for supporting and enhancing the refugee program in keeping with U.S. foreign policy priorities. Additionally, the Report provides an in-depth discussion of the robust, multistep security-assessment mechanisms already in place for screening refugees; offers …

Response To Professor Holper's Article, "Redefining 'Particularly Serious Crimes' In Refugee Law", Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

An individual who faces a significant risk of persecution in her home country is barred from asylum in the United States if she is convicted of a “particularly serious crime” (“PSC”). Despite the grave consequences of such a conviction, there is relatively little scholarship exploring how a PSC should be defined. The term, which comes from the UN Refugee Convention, was incorporated into the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1980.

Professor Holper’s article, Redefining “Particularly Serious Crimes” in Refugee Law, makes an important contribution to the literature by showing how the historical trajectory of the PSC definition mirrors the “severity …

The Role Of Foreign Authorities In U.S. Asylum Adjudication, Fatma E. Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

U.S. asylum law is based on a domestic statute that incorporates an international treaty, the U.N. Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. While Supreme Court cases indicate that the rules of treaty interpretation apply to an incorporative statute, courts analyzing the statutory asylum pro- visions fail to give weight to the interpretations of our sister signatories, which is one of the distinctive and uncontroversial principles of treaty interpretation. This Article highlights this significant omission and urges courts to examine the interpretations of other States Parties to the Protocol in asylum cases. Using as an example the current debate over …

Access To Medicines, Brics Alliances, And Collective Action, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

Most discussions on the public health implications of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights focus on the right of less developed countries to issue compulsory licenses and the need for these countries to exploit flexibilities within the TRIPs Agreement. However, there are other means by which countries can enhance access to essential medicines. To provide an illustration of these other means, this article explores the possibility for greater collaboration among the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and between these countries and other less developed countries.

This article begins by offering a brief …

Legitimacy As An Assessment Of Existing Legal Standards: The Case Of The 2003 Iraq War, Charlotte Ku

Faculty Scholarship

The Iraq war was a multiple assault on the foundations and rules of the existing UN-centered world order. It called into question the adequacy of the existing institutions for articulating global norms and enforcing compliance with the demands of the international community. It highlighted also the unwillingness of some key countries to wait until definitive proof before acting to meet the danger of the world's most destructive weapons falling into the hands of the world's most dangerous regimes. It was simultaneously a test of the UN's willingness and ability to deal with brutal dictatorships and a searching scrutiny of the …