Digital Commons Network^™

Hiding In Plain Sight: Black Panther, International Law And The “Development Frame”, Christopher Gevers

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article explores the “troubling antinomies” of the 2018 film Black Panther and its entanglements with the collective fantasies of the West—and those of international lawyers and development technocrats in particular—through its reliance on the “lost world” genre, as typified by H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines and John Buchan’s Prester John. The article then situates these troubling antinomies within the tradition of Black Internationalism and the novels of Pauline Hopkins, George S. Schuyler, and Peter Abrahams as practices of “poetic revolt.” Doing so, it is argued, reveals much about the conditions of possibility of the “development frame” and international …

Procedural Injustice: Indigenous Claims, Limitation Periods, And Laches, Kent Mcneil, Thomas Enns

All Papers

When Indigenous peoples go to court to seek justice for the historical wrongs they have endured, the Crown often tries to prevent their claims from even being heard by pleading statutes of limitations and laches. The application of these barriers raises serious constitution issues that have been taken account of by the Supreme Court only in the context of declarations of constitutional invalidity. Arguments based on the constitutional division of powers and section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982 have not been addressed by the Court. As a result, limitations statutes that vary from province to province have been applied …

The Instrumental Case For Corporate Diversity, Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

The moral case for diversity in businesses is compelling. The business case for diversity (that “diverse companies do better”) is mixed: studies in the business literature do not prove that simply adding diversity causes the improvement; instead, they posit that the improvement is likely to be “endogenous,” that is, the factors that encourage and sustain diversity, such as greater transparency, also improve financial performance. In this article, we make what we call “the instrumental case for diversity.” If the same factors that correlate with greater diversity also correlate with improved performance, then greater diversity can be a benchmark for better …

Threat And Emotions: Mobilizing And Attitudinal Outcomes Of A Ballistic Missile Scare, Kelly Bergstrand, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

This study examines the false ballistic missile alert that occurred in Hawaii in 2018, which presented a unique opportunity for assessing the civic and mobilizing outcomes of a threat. In the days that followed the scare, we conducted an online experiment to investigate its effects on willingness to engage in activism and concerns about broader issues. Our results show that emotions serve as an important mechanism for channeling threat experiences into concern about specific causes. Those most emotionally affected by the missile scare in Hawaii thought it more important to engage in activities to control the spread of nuclear weapons, …

Control, Allegiance, And Shame In Male Qing Dynasty Hairstyles, Carolle Pinkerton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is about the politicization of hairstyles in imperial China. They indicated conformity with social norms, or rebellion against them. This was especially true under the country’s last dynasty. The Manchu conquerors imposed their own hairstyle, the queue, on their Han Chinese subjects to make their rule palpable to China’s illiterate millions. “Hair martyrs” who refused to accept this “barbarous” hairstyle were ruthlessly eliminated. The Manchus had feared assimilation into the much larger Han population. But the introduction of one uniform male hair style for both Manchus and Han blurred the lines between the two groups. In this way …

Decolonizing The Environment: Third World Approaches To The Planetary Crisis, Kishan Khoday

Indonesian Journal of International Law

The colonial process transformed the landscape of the Earth with devastating consequence for communities and ecosystems. It also set the foundations of the planetary crisis that we see today. Using a TWAIL approach, this article argues for the relevance of colonial and post-colonial analysis in combatting today’s planetary crisis and advancing a more effective form of global environmental governance. Today’s global order of multilateral agreements is increasingly under criticism, ineffective in combating the planetary crisis and in halting the disproportionate impact of ecological change experienced across the global South. A TWAIL lens helps to understand the root causes of today’s …

The Peculiar Double-Consciousness Of Twail, Mohsen Al Attar

Indonesian Journal of International Law

Shunning the Eurocentrism that colours much mainstream scholarship, TWAIL has centred in international legal scholarship the views of peoples historically marginalised in the imperial-colonial process. In a single generation, its interventions have shifted perceptions of international law across the academy, forcing scholars to account for the partialities of our purportedly universal international legal regime. Yet, despite embracing iconoclasm and critique, TWAIL is also denoted by a formalist streak. Many of its scholars are committed to the regime, towing an orthodox line that appears counter-intuitive, even inconsistent. In this article, I use WEB Du Bois’ concept of double-consciousness to explain the …

How Alaska Native Corporations Can Better Support Alaska Native Villages, E. Barrett Ristroph Esq.

American Indian Law Journal

Since their formation in 1971 through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) have operated largely under a mission to build economic revenue for distribution to their shareholders, who are generally Alaska Native tribal members. While larger ANCs have formed foundations that provide scholarships to shareholders, ANCs generally do not have missions or entities associated with developing community infrastructure or promoting social programs in Alaska Native Villages, which are the communities of federally recognized Alaskan tribes. Until recently, the infrastructural and institutional needs of Alaska Native Villages have largely been met through State of Alaska funding, with …

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s …

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Pre-Event Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s …

Racial Discrimination In Life Insurance, William G. Gale, Kyle D. Logue, Nora Cahill, Rachel Gu, Swati Joshi

Law & Economics Working Papers

We examine the historical and statistical relationship between race and life insurance. Life insurance can play a central role in households’ financial security. Race has played an important and changing role in the provision of life insurance in the U.S. from slave insurance before the Civil War, to “Scientific Racism” continuing into the 20th century, to policies that do not explicitly mention race in recent decades. In empirical work using new data, we confirm earlier work showing that Black individuals have higher life insurance coverage rates than white individuals, controlling for observable characteristics. We find no difference in the likelihood …

Ethical, Legal, And Social Issues In The Earth Biogenome Project, Jacob S. Sherkow, Katharine B. Barker, Irus Braverman, Robert Cook-Deegan, Richard Durbin, Carla L. Easter, Melissa M. Goldstein, Maui Hudson, W. John Kress, Harris A. Lewin, Debra J. H. Mathews, Catherine Mccarthy, Ann M. Mccartney, Manuela Da Silva, Andrew W. Torrance, Henry T. Greely

Journal Articles

The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) is an audacious endeavor to obtain whole-genome sequences of representatives from all eukaryotic species on Earth. In addition to the project’s technical and organizational challenges, it also faces complicated ethical, legal, and social issues. This paper, from members of the EBP’s Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI) Committee, catalogs these ELSI concerns arising from EBP. These include legal issues, such as sample collection and permitting; the applicability of international treaties, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol; intellectual property; sample accessioning; and biosecurity and ethical issues, such as sampling from the …

English Courts And Transnational Islamic Divorces: What Role For Personal Liberty Of Muslim Women?, Ilias Bantekas

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

English courts consider the validity of a talaq obtained abroad on the basis of the lex matrimonii, without examining whether the circumstance of the divorce, both factual and legal, offend English public policy. An anthropological inquiry into talaq obtained in most Muslim nations reveals that androcentric culture – as opposed to religious prescription as such – largely distorts the Quranic vision of this institution. This author suggests that English courts and the scholarly/religious community should entertain the notion of the contractual nature of nikah (marriage) in order to assess the consequences of the talaq. If a nikah is entered into …

The Conceptual Problems Arising From Legal Pluralism, Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora

Journal Articles

This paper argues that analytical jurisprudence has been insufficiently attentive to three significant puzzles highlighted by the legal pluralist tradition: the existence of commonalities between different types of law, the possibility of a distinction between law and non-law, and the explanatory centrality of the state. I further argue that the resolution of these questions sets the stage for a renewed agenda of analytical jurisprudence and has to be considered in attempts for reconciliation between the academic traditions of analytical jurisprudence and legal pluralism, often called “pluralist jurisprudence.” I also argue that the resolution of these problems affects the empirical, doctrinal, …

A Call For The Library Community To Deploy Best Practices Toward A Database For Biocultural Knowledge Relating To Climate Change, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Abstract

Purpose – In this paper, a call to the library and information science community to support documentation and conservation of cultural and biocultural heritage has been presented.

Design/methodology/approach – Based in existing Literature, this proposal is generative and descriptive— rather than prescriptive—regarding precisely how libraries should collaborate to employ technical and ethical best practices to provide access to vital data, research and cultural narratives relating to climate.

Findings – COVID-19 and climate destruction signal urgent global challenges. Library best practices are positioned to respond to climate change. Literature indicates how libraries preserve, share and cross-link cultural and scientific knowledge. …

Social Truths In The Workplace: How Adversarialism Undermines Discrimination Litigation, Catherine Ross Dunham

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

“You Keep Using That Word”: Why Privacy Doesn’T Mean What Lawyers Think, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Scholarly Articles

This article explores how the need to define privacy has impeded our ability to protect it in law.

The meaning of “privacy” is notoriously hard to pin down. This article contends that the problem is not with the word “privacy,” but with the act of trying to pin it down. The problem lies with the act of definition itself and is particularly acute when the words in question have deep-seated and longstanding common-language meanings, such as liberty, freedom, dignity, and certainly privacy. If one wishes to determine what words like these actually mean to people, definition is the wrong tool …

Why Corporate Purpose Will Always Matter, Lyman P.Q. Johnson

Scholarly Articles

Business persons and lawyers (and law professors) perennially struggle over the question whether a business corporation does or should have a purpose other than advancing the interests of shareholders. After briefly setting the stage by describing the dispute over what the positive law of corporate purpose really is and the normative argument over what corporate purpose should be, this short article takes a different turn. It addresses why, in a dynamic, democratic, pluralist society, the foundational issue of corporate purpose remains so important and will not (and should not) go away. However adamantly divergent descriptive and prescriptive positions are held, …

Student Handbook 2022-2023, University Of Tennessee College Of Law

Catalog & Student Handbook

No abstract provided.

American Kaleidoscope: An Intersectional Approach To The Cultural Defense, Lillian Mobley

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

The cultural defense is a controversial legal strategy that allows criminal defendants to offer evidence of their native culture to mitigate culpability. While courts usually decline to formally consider these defenses, cultural influences are increasingly present in the courtroom, demanding recognition in the midst of a Eurocentric legal system. The cultural defense can be an important tool for achieving justice in minority and immigrant communities. In practice, however, the defense can slip dangerously off-course, reinforcing white American norms and reductive stereotypes. Ultimately, an “official” defense allowing cultural evidence at trial may cause more harm than good. Instead, this Comment advocates …

How Rhetoric Reveals Judicial Motives In Employment Discrimination Cases, Susan E. Provenzano

Tennessee Law Review

Employment discrimination plaintiffs tend to lose on summary judgment. In these cases, judges are acting like juries and undermining anti-discrimination legislation while paying lip service to the law and the judicial role. How and why are courts doing this? Legal scholars blame bad doctrine and biased judging. But neither one tells the full story. The tell is in the opinions' strategic use of language, which shows how the court, as an institution, "sized up" the case and the motives of key actors the parties, the lawmakers, other courts, and the court itself. Conducting the first-ever rhetorical analysis of this problem, …

The Global Rise Of International Commercial Courts: Typology And Power Dynamics, Weixia Gu, Jacky Tam

Chicago Journal of International Law

Over the past decade, there has been a proliferation of International Commercial Courts (ICCs) across the globe. ICCs are specialized tribunals within the domestic court hierarchy tailored for the adjudication of complicated cross-border commercial disputes. Most ICCs share similar features, such as a set of flexible procedural rules comparable to those in international arbitration, multilingual court proceedings, and the recruitment of overseas judges or foreign legal experts.

The global phenomenon calls for a systematic comparative study of the different generations of ICCs and their power dynamics. This Article will offer a unique typological framework to study the evolution of ICCs. …

Trauma As Inclusion, Raquel Aldana, Patrick M. Koga, Thomas O'Donnell, Alea Skwara, Caroline Perris

Tennessee Law Review

This article brings together a historian and law, public health, psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience faculty and researchers to document how trauma is understood across disciplines and how it has developed in U.S. immigration law largely to exclude but increasingly to include migrants whose lives have been uprooted or otherwise impacted by borders. Our aim is to document and assess the progress and the gaps in immigration law's embrace and understanding of trauma through metrics that include the science of trauma, compassion, and fairness. This analysis is made urgent by the travesty we are witnessing of borders completely shut to desperate …

The Efficacy Of Us-Mexico Border Enforcement In Relation To Crime Prevention, Samuel Klopstock

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

The Trump Administration brought substantive changes to United States immigration policies, and labeled undocumented immigrants as predisposed towards criminal behavior. This paper presents a brief historical perspective of three major waves of Mexican immigration to the United States: The Early 1900s – Before World War I, Post-World War I – World War II, End of Bracero Accord – Present, and considers the relationship between immigrants and crime. The author explores contemporary immigration enforcement, both conservative and liberal attitudes towards immigrants, and their effects on policy. Consequences of border enforcement policies and the efficacy of border enforcement in preventing crime are …

"Only To Have A Say In The Way He Dies": Bodily Autonomy And Methods Of Execution, Alexandra L. Klein

Scholarly Articles

Capital punishment is one of the most significant intrusions into a person's bodily autonomy; the state takes a person's life. Even though the state has stripped a person on death row of much of their autonomy and intends to kill them, removing all autonomy, a person sentenced to death may, in some circumstances, choose how they will die. While most states rely on a single method of execution, some states permit a condemned person to choose among two or more methods of execution. Constitutional challenges to methods of execution requires the challenger to demonstrate a substantial risk of severe pain …

The Visualities And Aesthetics Of Prosecuting Aged Defendants, Mark Drumbl, Caroline Fournet

Scholarly Articles

The prosecution—whether domestic or international—of international crimes and atrocities may implicate extremely aged defendants. Much has been written about the legalisms that inhere (or not) in trying these barely alive individuals. Very little however has been written about the aesthetics the barely alive encrust into the architecture of courtrooms, the optics these defendants suffuse into the trial process, and the expressive value of punishing them. This is what we seek to do in this project.

Plural Belonging: The Samaritans' Negotiation Of Space In The Occupied Palestinian Territory, Zeina Jallad

American University International Law Review

Created in 1993 in accordance with the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Accords, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has grappled with the administration and maintenance of a vortex of highly fragmented legal and judicial systems. These fractured frameworks are the result of centuries-old colonial and military administrations that have exercised jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). A self-governing entity whose sovereignty has been undermined since its inception, the PA idealizes a democratic modus-operandi for the nation’s future, while actively participating in and benefiting from an overarching network of laws, court systems, and regulatory frameworks designed to discriminate against and abuse their subjects. Palestinian …

Body Revolution In Comparative Perspective: Promoting Equality Through Adoption Of New Theory Of Bodiliness, 55 Uic L. Rev. 615 (2022), Arseny Shevelev, Georgy Shevelev

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

A New Feudalism: Selfish Genes, Great Wealth, And The Rise Of The Dynastic Family Trust (Dft), Eric Kades

Connecticut Law Review

Today’s record levels of economic inequality are infecting our future as the top 0.01% bequeath vast wealth to their descendants. With the death of the Rule Against Perpetuities (RAP), this inequality has the potential to harden social class lines—not just for a generation or two, but forever. Although it may sound implausible, interviews with estate lawyers serving very high-net-worth clients reveal that some members of the wealthiest tier of testators are already exploiting the RAP’s elimination, along with a tax loophole, to establish dynasty trusts that will financially empower their bloodline as long as it continues. Recent work in evolutionary …

The Rise And Fall And Rise Again Of Informal Justice And The Death Of Adr, Amy J. Cohen

Connecticut Law Review

Today, the field of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is often conceptualized and taught as an apolitical, institutional practice designed to enhance the effective and efficient settlement of legal disputes. But this was not always the case. In the 1970s, scholars imagined mediation as a technique of social and political transformation: a practice that might enable people to resolve disputes without reproducing the inequalities that shaped the society in which they lived. That view of ADR has largely disappeared from the American legal academy. But, as this Article shows, it has not disappeared entirely. Outside the legal academy, prison and police …