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Full-Text Articles in Law and Politics

Armenia And Azerbaijan's Struggle With Occupation In Nagorno-Karabakh, Carolyn Morway Dec 2018

Armenia And Azerbaijan's Struggle With Occupation In Nagorno-Karabakh, Carolyn Morway

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The corrupt occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and its surrounding areas has resulted in displaced civilians, chaotic military violence, poor judicial law-making, and hostile international relations. Analyzing the international law of occupation’s purposes and its humanitarian requirements illustrates that there is a need for change. Set against the backdrop of Nagorno-Karabakh’s precarious situation, the international community should take this opportunity to reformulate the international law of occupation with sovereignty and humanitarian principles guiding the change. The effort could prevent another such “frozen conflict.”


Moving From Management To Termination: A Case Study Of Prolonged Occupation, David Hughes Dec 2018

Moving From Management To Termination: A Case Study Of Prolonged Occupation, David Hughes

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In 2017, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories reached a half-century in duration. This reignited a conversation amongst legal scholars. In articles and books, lawyers questioned the efficacy of occupation law. They asked whether it had become an anachronism. Across Israel and the Palestinian territories, those that directly invoke the law of occupation sought a more effective means of adapting the law to meet the exigencies of a fifty-year-old occupation. The accompanying debates recalled questions concerning the legal treatment of prolonged occupation. This article seeks to fundamentally alter the recurring discourse. Built around a detailed case study of Israel’s …


From Discretion To Law: Rights-Based Concerns And The Evolution Of International Sanctions, Christopher Roberts Dec 2018

From Discretion To Law: Rights-Based Concerns And The Evolution Of International Sanctions, Christopher Roberts

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

This Article considers the manner in which rights-based concerns have increasingly impacted upon the nature of international sanctions regimes. First, this Article considers two better-known instances of this impact—the manner in which general sanctions became more targeted, and the manner in which due process concerns came to receive greater respect in the context of targeting decisions. Following these investigations, this Article turns to explore a third, under-recognized development—the gradual evolution of a sense that sanctions may be required in certain instances. It explores this development by highlighting the growing scope of understandings of responsibility within various bodies of public international …


Analyzing The Potential For Universal Disarmament Of Autonomous Weapons Systems Or How I Learned To Stop Working And Love The Killer Robot, Frank Nicholas Kelly Dec 2018

Analyzing The Potential For Universal Disarmament Of Autonomous Weapons Systems Or How I Learned To Stop Working And Love The Killer Robot, Frank Nicholas Kelly

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) have recently become the subject of debate among scholars, world leaders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the popular media. While the dangers of autonomous robotics have existed for decades in science fiction, technology has only recently made the implementation of robots capable of military combat a real possibility. With the advent of this technology, many government leaders, politicians, scientists, and business leaders are advancing the argument that just because autonomous weapons can exist does not mean they should. Some countries, however, have demonstrated a strong interest in the continued developing LAWS, making universal disarmament unlikely. This …


Venezuela: A Uniquely Senian Insight Into A Human Rights Crisis, Andrea I. Scheer Dec 2018

Venezuela: A Uniquely Senian Insight Into A Human Rights Crisis, Andrea I. Scheer

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

For over twenty decades, Venezuelan political leaders have blatantly disregarded their citizens’ human rights, leading to the downfall of Venezuela’s economy and democratic institutions, including severe food and medicine shortages, as well as staggering inflation rates. As a result, Venezuela provides a unique affirmation of the Capabilities Approach introduced by Professor Amartya Sen, which focuses not only on the freedoms that individuals possess, but also on what individuals are capable of doing as possessors of these freedoms. This Note seeks to use Sen’s Capabilities Approach to understand the nature and scope of Venezuela’s multidimensional crisis, arguing that a Senian approach …


Judicializing History: Mass Crimes Trials And The Historian As Expert Witness In West Germany, Cambodia, And Bangladesh, Rebecca Gidley, Mathew Turner Dec 2018

Judicializing History: Mass Crimes Trials And The Historian As Expert Witness In West Germany, Cambodia, And Bangladesh, Rebecca Gidley, Mathew Turner

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Henry Rousso warned that the engagement of historians as expert witnesses in trials, particularly highly politicized proceedings of mass crimes, risks a judicialization of history. This article tests Rousso’s argument through analysis of three quite different case studies: the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial; the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; and the International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh. It argues that Rousso’s objections misrepresent the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, while failing to account for the engagement of historical expertise in mass atrocity trials beyond Europe. Paradoxically, Rousso’s criticisms are less suited to the European context that represents his purview, and apply more …


Righting A Wrong: Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, And The Espionage Act Prosecutions, David Forte Jul 2018

Righting A Wrong: Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, And The Espionage Act Prosecutions, David Forte

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This is a story of excess and reparation. It is a chronicle of one President from the elite intellectual classes of the East, and another from a county seat in the heartland. Woodrow Wilson was the college president whose contribution to the art of government lay in the principle of expertise and efficiency. When he went to war, he turned the machinery of government into a comprehensive and highly effective instrument for victory. For Wilson, it followed that there could be little tolerance for those who impeded the success of American arms by their anti-war propaganda, draft resistance, or ideological …


“Indian” As A Political Classification: Reading The Tribe Back Into The Indian Child Welfare Act, Allison Krause Elder May 2018

“Indian” As A Political Classification: Reading The Tribe Back Into The Indian Child Welfare Act, Allison Krause Elder

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

In the summer of 2018, the Ninth Circuit will consider an appeal from the dismissal of a constitutional challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Brought by a conservative think-tank, this case frames the ICWA as race-based legislation, violating equal protection by depriving Indian children of the same procedures as non-Indian children in child custody cases. In reality, the ICWA seeks to protect the interests of tribes, Indian families, and Indian children by establishing special procedures and obligations in Indian child custody cases. On its face, the ICWA is concerned not with the race of children, but with the …


Reconsidering Selective Conscientious Objection, Andrew J. Haile May 2018

Reconsidering Selective Conscientious Objection, Andrew J. Haile

University of Richmond Law Review

In 1971, in the midst of the Vietnam War, the United States Supreme Court decided that to qualify as a conscientious objector (“CO”) one must oppose all war, and not just a particular war. The Court’s decision in Gillette v. United States turned on its interpretation of section 6(j) of the Military Selective Service Act. Section 6(j) provided, in relevant part, that no person shall “be subject to combatant training and service in the armed forces of the United States who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form.” According to …


The Failure Of International Law In Palestine, Svetlana Sumina, Steven Gilmore May 2018

The Failure Of International Law In Palestine, Svetlana Sumina, Steven Gilmore

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming


Property Musings At The U.S.-Mexico Border, Gerald S. Dickinson Jan 2018

Property Musings At The U.S.-Mexico Border, Gerald S. Dickinson

Articles

President Donald J. Trump issued an Executive Order calling for “a physical wall on the southern border” of the United States in January, 2017. In his address before Congress, the President stated, “[W]e will soon begin the construction of a great wall along our southern border.” The political response to the Executive Order has been swift. Representative Lamar Smith of Texas views the Executive Order as a testament to the President “honoring his commitment” to immigration enforcement. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin favorably compares the border mandates in Israel and Egypt as successful examples of how to mitigate illegal immigration. …