Digital Commons Network^™

Recommended Amendments To The Truth And Reconciliation Act As The Government Of Nepal Considers Prosecuting 65,411 Human Rights Cases From The Armed Conflict (1996- 2006), Sophia Ottoni-Wilhelm

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The bloody Armed Conflict in Nepal (1996-2006) left an estimated 16,729 dead, 78,689 displaced, and 2,506 victims of enforced disappearance. In the seventeen years since the resolution of the Conflict, none of the 65,411 complaints brought by Conflict victims and their families have been resolved. This article argues that the Truth and Reconciliation Act (the Act) can be blamed for the stalled justice process. The Act, which created two commissions charged with the investigation and prosecution of Conflict crimes—Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Commission on the Investigation of Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP)—must be amended so that victims and …

Anti-Human Trafficking Training For Law Enforcement: An Assessment Of Practice In A Southern State, Patricia Ann Southerland

Dissertations

Human trafficking, a crime hidden in plain sight, does not answer to civility or the inherent human rights established within societal norms. While several factors influence this heinous crime, the absence of training and the incorporation of best practices among law enforcement personnel impairs the proper identification of victims, as well as the arrest and prosecution of facilitators, traffickers, and buyers (Clawson, Dutch, & Cummings, 2006; Dandurand, 2017; Darwinkel, Powell, & Tidmarsh, 2013; Davy, 2016; Efrat, 2015; Farrell, 2014; Farrell, McDevitt, Fahy, 2010; Farrell, McDevitt, Pfeffer, Fahy, Owens, Dank, & Adams, 2012; Farrell & Pfeffer, 2014, Grubb & Bennet, 2012; …

Local Human Rights Governance To Advance Migrants' Rights, Camilo Mantilla

Refugee Law & Migration Studies Brief

No abstract provided.

Toward Recognizing An International Human Right To Claim Innocence, Brandon Garrett, Laurence R. Helfer, Jayne C. Huckerby, Mark Godsey, Luca Lupària

Judicature International

No abstract provided.

A Call To Abolish Determinate-Plus Sentencing In Washington, Rachel Stenberg

Washington Law Review

For certain incarcerated individuals who commit sex offenses, Washington State’s determinate-plus sentencing structure requires a showing of rehabilitation before release. This highly subjective “releasability” determination occurs after an individual has already served a standard sentence. A review of recent releasability determinations reveals sentences are often extended on arbitrary and inconsistent grounds—especially for individuals who face systemic challenges in prison due to their identity or condition. This Comment shows that the criteria to determine whether individuals are releasable is an incomplete picture of their actual experience in the carceral setting, using the distinct example of incarcerated individuals with mental illness. While …

Expanding Judicial Discretion To Grant Compassionate Release During Covid-19, Deborah Wang

Washington Law Review

In the 1980s, Congress introduced compassionate release to counteract the increased rigidity of our federal sentencing system. This mechanism allowed courts, through a motion filed by the Bureau of Prison’s director, to reduce a prisoner’s sentence if “extraordinary and compelling” circumstances warrant such a reduction. However, because the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) seldom brought these motions, few people were released early via compassionate release. At the same time, public discourse and concerns regarding mass incarceration have continued to grow, causing lawmakers to revisit and revise compassionate release through the First Step Act of 2018 to ensure that this mechanism’s potential …

Committed To Commitment: The Problem With Washington State’S Involuntary Treatment Act, Hannah Garland

Washington Law Review

Washington State utilizes the Involuntary Treatment Act (ITA) to civilly commit individuals experiencing behavioral health crises. Although civil commitment involves stripping away fundamental rights, it receives less attention than criminal incarceration. The ITA is meant to protect not just the general community, but also the rights of people with behavioral health disorders who utilize the ITA system. Yet, its implementation tells a different story. Individuals in King County are detained and committed repeatedly, without receiving consistent care. Furthermore, the ITA disproportionately impacts unhoused individuals and Black individuals. As the ITA continues to grow both in utilization and expense, other community-based …

Obstacles To Proving 24-Hour Lighting Is Cruel And Unusual Under Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence, Lauren Jaech

Washington Law Review

Twenty-four-hour lighting causes sleep deprivation, depression, and other serious disorders for incarcerated individuals, yet courts often do not consider it to be cruel and unusual. To decide if prison conditions violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, courts follow a two-part inquiry that requires examining the intent of prison officials (known as the subjective prong) as well as the degree of seriousness of the alleged cruel or unusual condition (the objective prong). Incarcerated individuals often file complaints challenging 24-hour lighting conditions. Whether they succeed on these claims may depend on the circuit in which they reside. Judges …

Speculations On Criminal Justice Mechanisms To Address The North Korean Regime's Human Rights Violations: Icc, Ad Hoc Tribunals, Or Something Else?, Yun Ju Kang

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Human Rights In The Era Of Artificial Intelligence “Figures, Opinions And Solutions”, Dr. Heidi Issa Hassan

مجلة جامعة الإمارات للبحوث القانونية UAEU LAW JOURNAL

Technology has cast its shadow on us in most aspects of our lives and nothing has escaped its grip even human intelligence. Human intelligence now has a major rival known as "artificial intelligence" (AI). The main question is can machines think like humans?!

Since AI involves, in part, the dispensation with humans, then it is a matter that affects human rights, regardless of the manifestations, consequences or even scope of this dispensation.

Accordingly, this study has several problems to tackle: 1) the absence of adequate binding national and international provisions governing AI, 2) AI systems involve changing the way businesses …

International Human Rights As A Vehicle For Achieving Rural Health, David H. Moore, Emily Lowder, Cami Schiel

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Should Prison Be Abolished? 10-6-2022, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Kukin Program Newsletter – Fall 2022, Kukin Program For Conflict Resolution

Kukin Program Newsletters

The Kukin Program Newsletter – Fall 2022 celebrates leadership transitions, achievements, and initiatives at Cardozo Law School's Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution. Andrea Kupfer Schneider joins as Director, succeeding founding director Lela Love, with Robyn Weinstein taking on key roles in the Mediation Clinic. Faculty aided Ukrainian law students with skills training, and ADR Competition Honor Society members achieved international and domestic victories. The program awarded Boskey Restorative Justice Fellowships to students working on impactful community projects. Events like the Melnick Symposium explored critical topics, while William Ury received the International Advocate for Peace Award for his global conflict resolution …

Atkins V. Virginia At Twenty: Still Adaptive Deficits, Still In The Developmental Period, Sheri Lynn Johnson, John H. Blume, Brendan Van Winkle

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Twenty years ago, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Eighth Amendment prohibited states from executing persons with intellectual disability. While the Court’s decision is laudable and has saved many of the most vulnerable persons from the executioner, its effect has been undermined by recalcitrant states attempting to exploit language in the opinion permitting states to create procedures to implement the (then) new categorical prohibition. In this article, we examine how some states have adopted procedures which are fundamentally inconsistent with the clinical consensus understanding of the disability and how one state, …

Revisiting The Ox-Bow Incident: The Almost Forgotten Western Classic About The Lynching Of Three Innocent Men Is As Relevant As Ever, Marc Bookman

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The concept of lynching, several hundred years old and unclear in its origins, has never really left the lexicon. The word itself, however, has taken on different meanings over the years, from a mob’s taking the law into its own hands, to an organized utilization of racial violence as a means of societal control and intimidation; and finally to the more casual and defensive use of the word (“high tech lynching”) by current Supreme Court justices Thomas and Kavanaugh and others after being questioned about their past behaviors. Many academics have opined that the modern system of capital punishment is …

Checking Out Indefinitely: Supporting Survivors Of Sex Trafficking Alongside Training And Education For Lodging Employees, Alyssa M. Grzesiak

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

There are roughly five million victims of sex trafficking in the United States. Over the course of a decade, over 3,500 instances of human trafficking involved a hotel or motel. Traffickers are relying on unaware lodging establishment employees, as well as complicit employees and managers, to successfully carry out their crimes. Despite the vital role the lodging industry plays in human trafficking, only seven states have implemented mandatory training for hotel and motel employees. This Note posits that the implementation of mandatory training and education programs for employees of lodging establishments could increase awareness and responsiveness to human trafficking, thus …

Prohibiting Slavery & The Slave Trade, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Articles

Slavery and the slave trade stubbornly persist in our time, but they receive insufficient attention in international human rights law. Even when courts adjudicate slavery violations, they often fail to characterize slave trade conduct that nearly always precedes slavery. Courts also characterize acts that meet the definition of slavery or the slave trade only as other human rights harms, such as forced labor or human trafficking. This failure to accurately characterize violations also as slavery and the slave trade perpetuates impunity and denies victims full expressive justice. This Article argues for reviving international human rights law’s prohibitions of slavery and …

#Includetheirstories: Rethinking, Reimagining, And Reshaping Legal Education, Leslie P. Culver, Elizabeth A. Kronk Warner

Utah Law Review

This symposium gathered scholars and practitioners who have been deeply engaged in the work to examine historical roots of the legal profession and discuss best practices for exploring ethnic, gender, and related inequities alongside our law students. It is well established that the legal profession and legal education neither reflect the community they serve nor swiftly respond to the social shifts within the broader society.3 As 2020 grossly revealed, ethnic partiality and division are aches we have yet to really confront and bear. For example, the casebook method format of legal education continues to model Christopher Langdell’s Gilded Age curriculum, …

State Immunity And Inter-State Negotiations On Korean Comfort Women, Dimitris Liakopoulos

Indonesian Journal of International Law

This study aims to analyze the situation of comfort women and the acquired jurisprudence, as well as a comparison regarding slavery and the protection of human rights at the international level. It also examines the protection of human rights, international responsibility, crimes committed with impunity, interstate agreements, state immunity, victim reparation, and international jurisprudence. A comparative method was used to analyze tribunal sentences at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or the national level of Italian constitutional law. However, international responsibility is important because it helps to protect slavery and human rights. The argument of comfort women includes the right …

Foreword: Centering Intersectionality In Human Rights Discourse, Johanna Bond

Washington and Lee Law Review

In the last decade, intersectionality theory has gained traction as a lens through which to analyze international human rights issues. Intersectionality theory is the notion that multiple systems of oppression intersect in peoples’ lives and are mutually constitutive, meaning that when, for example, race and gender intersect, the experience of discrimination goes beyond the formulaic addition of race discrimination and gender discrimination to produce a unique, intersectional experience of discrimination. The understanding that intersecting systems of oppression affect different groups differently is central to intersectionality theory. As such, the theory invites us to think about inter-group differences (i.e., differences between …

The Distant Ships Of Liberty: Why Criminology Needs To Take Seriously International Human Rights Laws That Apply To Persons With Disabilities, Michael L. Perlin, Alison Lynch, Kelly Frailing, Ashley Juneau

Articles & Chapters

Persons institutionalized in forensic psychiatric facilities have been hidden from the public view for decades – physically, socially, and legally. The forensic population also faces multiple forms of discrimination, both for their criminal history and mental illness. This reality must be radically reconsidered in light of the ratification of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the first legally binding instrument devoted to the comprehensive protection of the rights of persons with disabilities. There has been, however, virtually no attention paid by criminologists to the potential impact of this Convention on forensic populations. In this …

Biometrics And An Ai Bill Of Rights, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

This Article contends that an informed discussion on an AI Bill of Rights requires grappling with biometric data collection and its integration into emerging AI systems. Biometric AI systems serve a wide range of governmental purposes, including policing, border security and immigration enforcement, and biometric cyberintelligence and biometric-enabled warfare. These systems are increasingly categorized as "high-risk" when deployed in ways that may impact fundamental constitutional rights and human rights. There is growing recognition that high-risk biometric AI systems, such as facial recognition identification, can pose unprecedented challenges to criminal procedure rights. This Article concludes that a failure to recognize these …

The Inappropriate Use Of Juvenile Records In Immigration Discretion, Sarah Diaz, Lisa Jacobs

Center for the Human Rights of Children

No abstract provided.

Gender-Based Violence In Pakistan And Public Health Measures: A Call To Action, Azza Sarfraz, Zouina Sarfraz, Muzna Sarfraz, Zul Qarnain

Department of Paediatrics and Child Health

No abstract provided.

Babe In The Woods: Why The Federal Rules Of Evidence Should Adopt A New Hearsay Exception To Protect Children, Marlee Rowe

Arkansas Law Notes

Child abuse is a public health problem affecting millions of children across the United States. Many states have adopted hearsay exceptions to prevent child victims of abuse from being forced to testify in front of their abusers. However, not all states provide these protections, and the exceptions vary widely from state to state. Because many states draft their rules of evidence to accord with the Federal Rules of Evidence, Congress should enact a hearsay exception on the federal level to promote uniformity and to ensure child victims of abuse are protected from further traumatization, regardless of what state they live …

Defining Sexual Orientation: A Proposal For A New Definition, Andrew Park

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation are becoming more common in all parts of the world. Few of these laws provide useful definitions of the term sexual orientation. As a result, the meaning and impact of these laws remains unclear. This Article reviews past and current definitions of sexual orientation according to how well they incorporate current empirical knowledge of sexual orientation, and how their use in human rights laws impacts the dignity, right to equality, and human development of sexual minorities. The Article gives particular attention to the definition of sexual orientation found in the Yogyakarta Principles which …

Victims As Instruments, Rachel J. Wechsler

Faculty Publications

Crime victims are often instrumentalized within the criminal legal process in furtherance of state prosecutorial interests. This is a particularly salient issue concerning victims of gender-based violence (GBV) because victim testimony is typically considered essential for successful prosecution of these types of crimes. Since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington, courts require declarants to be available for cross-examination on "testimonial" hearsay evidence. Consequently, criminal legal actors are further incentivized to employ highly coercive practices aimed at securing GBV victims' participation in the criminal legal process as evidentiary tools. These practices include arresting and incarcerating victims through …

World War I And The Armenian Genocide: Laying The Groundwork For Crimes Against Humanity, Julia Koch

Pace International Law Review

For all of its advancements in international law, including delivering justice to the war criminals of the Second World War, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg has long been tainted with accusations of victors’ justice and criticized for violating the principle of nullem crimen sine lege. Such is the case for crimes against humanity, a crime that did not exist in positive international law until the 1945-46 legal proceedings in Nuremberg. But the historiography of the First World War—an era where punishment for war crimes is generally viewed as a wholesale failure—provides an additional, indeed novel, basis for understanding …

Disposable Immigrants: The Reality Of Sexual Assault In Immigration Detention Centers, Valerie Gisel Zarate

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

The Duty To Protect Survivors Of Gender-Based Violence In The Age Of Covid-19: An Expanded Human Rights Framework, Caroline Bettinger-López, R. Denisse Córdova Montes, Max Zoberman

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

Many commentators have referred to domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence (GBV) in the age of COVID-19 as a “double pandemic.” Based on results of a mixed-methods study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on GBV in South Florida, conducted by the Human Rights Clinic of the University of Miami School of Law, in close collaboration with community-based organizations,1 this article offers a proposal for an expanded normative human rights framework to address domestic violence and other forms of GBV. The local study sought to elucidate the pathways that link pandemics such as COVID-19 and GBV, highlight …