Human Rights Law Commons^™

Racial Indirection, Yuvraj Joshi

Yuvraj Joshi

Editor's Note, Caden Hayes

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Masthead

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Cycles Of Failure: The War On Family, The War On Drugs, And The War On Schools Through Hbo’S The Wire, Zachary E. Shapiro, Elizabeth Curran, Rachel C.K. Hutchinson

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Freamon, Bodie, and Zenobia’s statements cut straight to the heart of The Wire’s overarching theme: Individuals are trapped in a complex “cycle of harm” where social problems of inequality, crime, and violence are constantly reinforced. The Wire was a television drama that ran on HBO from 2002 through 2008, created by David Simon. The show focuses on the narcotics scene in Baltimore through the perspective of different stakeholders and residents of the city. The Wire highlights how self-perpetuating, interconnected, and broken social institutions act in concert to limit individual opportunity. These institutions squash attempts at reform by punishing ...

Bytes Bite: Why Corporate Data Breaches Should Give Standing To Affected Individuals, Caden Hayes

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

High-profile data hacks are not uncommon. In fact, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, there have been at least 7,961 data breaches, exposing over 10,000,000,000 accounts in total, since 2005. These shocking numbers are not particularly surprising when taking into account the value of information stolen. For example, cell phone numbers, as exposed in a Yahoo! hack, are worth $10 a piece on the black market, meaning the hackers stood to make $30,000,000,000 from that one hack. That dollar amount does not even consider copies the hackers could make and later resell. Yet ...

“Just When I Thought I Was Out . . . .”: Post-Employment Repayment Obligations, Stuart Lichten, Eric M. Fink

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The common law doctrine of “employment at will” has dominated U.S. employment law for over a century. Pursuant to this concept, an employer may discharge an employee at any time for any reason, or for no reason at all. An employee may similarly resign at any time for any reason, or for no reason at all. Despite the rule’s facial even-handedness, it operates against the background of “the deeply rooted conception of the employment relation as a dominant-servient relation rather than one of mutual rights and obligations.” Within that relationship, “the employer [has] the right to impose any ...

Dignity And Discrimination In Sexual Harassment Law: A French Case Study, L. Camille Hébert

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In 2012, France adopted new prohibitions on sexual harassment into its Labor and Penal Codes. That enactment, which significantly broadened the definition of actionable harassment, was based on a model of harassment law that defines sexual harassment as a form of discrimination, while the French have traditionally conceived of sexual harassment as a form of sexual violence. Cases decided under the new prohibitions, as well as additional legislation adopted in France in 2016 and 2018, the latter prompted by France’s “#MeToo” movement, suggest that the French are beginning to perceive sexual harassment as implicating issues of both dignity and ...

Punishing Poverty: Robinson & The Criminal Cash Bond System, Lauren Bennett

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The current cash bail system works in a way that punishes poverty. In Robinson v. California, the Supreme Court held that it is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment to punish an individual for a status or condition. Poverty is a status. The cash bail system is unconstitutional under Robinson and the Eighth Amendment because it punishes the status of poverty. Similar to drug addiction, poverty “may be contracted innocently or involuntarily or it might even take hold from the moment of a person’s birth.” Kalief Browder had no control over his family’s financial position. Yet, this financial position ...

Healthtech: How Blockchain Can Simplify Healthcare Compliance, Kathryn M. Bennett

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note broadly explores solutions to modern-day accessibility and security problems latent in electronic health records. Specifically, this Note discusses HIPAA and HITECH, the current law in place, and how blockchain technology can be used to fix the accessibility and security problems of current electronic health records. This Note proposes that blockchain technology can help a healthcare industry struggling to adhere to the current rule of law in an era of Big Data. Further, Blockchain technology can help individual consumers, particularly those with significant health issues, obtain the best possible medical care while simultaneously keeping their private and sensitive information ...

Dogs Of War Get A New Lease On Life: Why The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act Violates The Eighth Amendment In Light Of United States V. Slatten, Michael D. Stinnett-Kassoff

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The United States has relied on Private Military Firms (PMFs) extensively to carry out its numerous overseas military missions since the end of the Cold War. Civilians and contractors have always had a place in American wars, even during the American Revolution and beyond. But the recent American incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq brought an unprecedented number of private contractors into the forefront of these conflict zones, the discussions surrounding them, and the legal questions arising from their ashes. Particularly, private contractors in Iraq seemed to be operating in a legal grey area—they clearly were not soldiers, and they ...

The New-Breed, “Die-Hard” Chinese Lawyer: A Comparison With American Civil Rights Cause Lawyers, James E. Moliterno, Rongjie Lan

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In times of social upheaval, lawyers can mark the way toward social change. In particular, when lawyers become more aggressive than traditional lawyers in the cause of fighting injustice, they face backlash from multiple sources, including government and their own profession. Such was the case during the U.S. civil rights movement. Unusually aggressive behavior by cause lawyers was met with hostility from their own profession and from government action. Those lawyers, while battered at times with physical violence, bar ethics charges, contempt of court, and state hostility, survived and changed social conditions at the same time they altered the ...

Gender And Religious Dress At The European Court Of Human Rights: A Comparison Of Șahin V. Turkey And Arslan V. Turkey, Bronwyn Roantree

Fordham Law Review Online

This paper examines the regulation of the religious dress of men and women in two decisions by the European Court of Human Rights: Şahin v. Turkey and Arslan v. Turkey. In Şahin, the Court upheld a ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf, an article of clothing worn exclusively by women, at a public university. In Arslan, the Court rejected a ban on the wearing of a type of religious uniform worn only by men who were members of a politically subversive Islamic group. In both cases, the Court asserted that its decision was necessary to protect ...

What Italian Sexual Violence Law Can Teach Us Law In The #Metoo Era, Rachel A. Van Cleave

Publications

On International Women’s Day, with women facing challenges on equal pay, reproductive rights, sexual harassment and violent sexual assault, the topic of sudden, forced and unwanted kisses initially seems trivial, unworthy of consideration. However, Alva Johnson’s recent civil complaint against Donald Trump for kissing her on the side of her mouth, raises the question of whether such conduct should be criminal in the United States.

Easing “[T]He Burden Of The Brutalized”: Applying Bystander Intervention Training To Corporate Conduct, Jena Martin

Catholic University Law Review

The last few years have borne witness to a shift regarding how to address issues of oppression and social injustice. Across many different advocacy points—from police brutality to sexual violence—there seems to be a consensus that simply engaging the oppressor or the victim is not enough to effect real social change. The consensus itself is not new: it has been at the heart of many social justice movements over the years. However, what is new is the explicit evocation of the bystander within this framework. Too often, in conversations on conflicts generally (and negative human rights impact specifically ...

Comparative Perspectives Of Adult Content Filtering: Legal Challenges And Implications, Adam Szafranski, Piotr Szwedo And Malgorzata Klein

Catholic University Law Review

The internet is virtually ubiquitous and is becoming more accessible to young people all over the world. Along with the many benefits it brings, the internet poses serious risks to the human rights of its most vulnerable users, viz. children. The United Kingdom, Poland and the U.S. State of Utah have already started to mitigate this risk through a variety of regulatory mechanisms. A priori, both self-regulation and hard law can satisfy international requirements on freedom of services and freedom of expression, but each requires careful scrutiny. Neither self-regulation nor soft law appear to be sufficient. It would seem ...

Bloody Hell: How Insufficient Access To Menstrual Hygiene Products Creates Inhumane Conditions For Incarcerated Women, Lauren Shaw

Texas A&M Law Review

For thousands of incarcerated women in the United States, dealing with menstruation is a nightmare. Across the country, many female prisoners lack sufficient access to feminine hygiene products, which negatively affects their health and rehabilitation. Although the international standards for the care of female prisoners have been raised in attempt to eliminate this issue, these stan- dards are often not followed in the United States. This Comment argues that denial of feminine hygiene products to female prisoners violates human de- cency. Additionally, this Comment considers possible constitutional violations caused by this denial, reviews current efforts to correct this problem, and ...

Universal Human Rights And Constitutional Change, David Sloss, Wayne Sandholtz

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

Many Americans believe that the United States has a tradition of federal constitutional protection for fundamental human rights, dating back to adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791. That belief is mostly wrong. For most of U.S. history, protection for fundamental rights depended primarily on state law, not federal law. This article documents the transfer of regulatory authority over human rights from the states to the federal government, which we call the “federalization” of human rights. Before 1930, state governments exercised primary or exclusive regulatory authority for most fundamental rights. Federalization occurred in two phases: from 1930 to ...

The Constitutional Rights Of Advanced Robots (And Of Human Beings), R. George Wright

Arkansas Law Review

Constitutional rights create and destroy otherwise available options for the rights-bearer, for governments, and for affected third parties. Thus, conferring a constitutional right always requires at least some minimal defense. But conferring a constitutional right can certainly be appropriate if the recipient of the right seems to deserve or otherwise qualify for the right in question, or if conferring the right makes sense on other, perhaps partly pragmatic, grounds.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.