Digital Commons Network^™

Economic Hardship As Coercion Under The Protocol On International Trafficking In Persons By Organized Crime Elements, Linda A. Malone

Linda A. Malone

No abstract provided.

Shadow Economy: Definitions, Terms And Theoretical Considerations, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Pran Justice: Social Order, Dispute Processing, And Adjudication In The Venezuelan Prison Subculture, Manuel A. Gomez

Manuel A. Gómez

No abstract provided.

Mexico, Mark E. Wojcik, Javier Zenteno Gomez, Jorge G. De Presno, David W. Austin

Mark E. Wojcik

No abstract provided.

International Human Rights, Mark E. Wojcik, Cris Revaz, Lois A. Gochnauer

Mark E. Wojcik

No abstract provided.

International Courts, Cindy Galway Buys, Stephanie Macuiba, Mark E. Wojcik

Mark E. Wojcik

No abstract provided.

The Relevance Of Fatf’S Recommendations And Fourth Round Of Mutual Evaluations To The Legal Profession, Laurel S. Terry, José Carlos Llerena Robles

Laurel S. Terry

Paramilitary Politics And Corruption Talk In Colombia, Winifred L. Tate

Winifred L. Tate

The Human Security Dimension Of China’S Belt And Road Initiative, Rosita Dellios, R. James Ferguson

R. James Ferguson

Despite the geopolitical calculations associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and how this will allow Beijing greater influence in transregional relations, the human security dimension goes to the heart of China’s wider regional strategy. The importance of development cannot be understated even as the “rise of China” attracts the headlines. How well Beijing can engage wider human security concerns will be crucial for the success of this megaproject. It is argued that the human security aspect of China’s Belt and Road Initiative requires a stronger ethical base—one which draws on China’s own Confucian heritage. This allows for both cultural …

Channeling Unilateralism, Maggie Gardner

Maggie Gardner

When crime reaches across borders to threaten human security or undermine democracy, states often respond by adopting multilateral treaties that obligate each of them to suppress the transnational crime at home. These treaties help, but only to the extent that parties comply with them. Because states generally cannot enforce their laws outside their own territory, transnational criminals can evade prosecution as long as some states are unable or unwilling to meet these treaty commitments. One solution for improving compliance with these treaties may be, counterintuitively, more unilateralism. Using case studies on transnational bribery and drug trafficking, as well as thick …

The Human Security Dimension Of China’S Belt And Road Initiative, Rosita Dellios, R. James Ferguson

Rosita Dellios

Despite the geopolitical calculations associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and how this will allow Beijing greater influence in transregional relations, the human security dimension goes to the heart of China’s wider regional strategy. The importance of development cannot be understated even as the “rise of China” attracts the headlines. How well Beijing can engage wider human security concerns will be crucial for the success of this megaproject. It is argued that the human security aspect of China’s Belt and Road Initiative requires a stronger ethical base—one which draws on China’s own Confucian heritage. This allows for both cultural …

Lost And Found: Immigrant Conversion Stories, The New Evangelization, And Parish Life, Brett C. Hoover

Brett Hoover

The author reflects on a conversion narrative that emerged in the context of a yearlong ethnographic study of a Catholic parish in the Midwest. The study was intended to uncover the practices and understandings of parish life in a shared parish, that is, a parish with two or more distinct cultural communities with their own masses and ministries but sharing the same parish facilities. The “lost and found” narrative of conversion that emerged in the parish’s Latino/a community has roots in Latin American manifestations of the new evangelization but has taken particular form here in the United States. It frames …

The Future Of The Economic Analysis Of Law In Latin America: A Proposal For Model Codes, Juan Javier Del Granado, M. C. Mirow

M. C. Mirow

Nothing excites civilian lawyers and judges more than commissions for codification. Codification is more than an academic enterprise. Codification projects directly cut across the interface between law and life. ALACDE intends to harness this Latin American interest in codification to bring the economic approach to Latin America. A new-generation law and economics civil and commercial code will be a conscious project to restate Roman law's usefulness for coping with today's problems. Through law and economics, Roman law will renew itself. As a paradigmatic private-law system, Roman law is eminently amenable to a state-of-the-art fusion with law and economics. Sensitivity to …

All In The Family: The Influence Of Social Networks On Dispute Processing, Manuel A. Gómez

Manuel A. Gómez

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Approach To Economic Espionage: Is Any Nation Effectively Dealing With This Global Threat?, Melanie M. Reid

Melanie M. Reid

The Anatomy Of The Russian Elite, Peter Rutland

Peter Rutland

The Cookie Cutter Syndrome: Legal Reform Assistance Under Post-Communist Democratization Programs, Cynthia Alkon

Cynthia Alkon

Communism ended in most parts of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union over ten years ago. However, the legal and judicial systems in many of these nations seemingly defy reform efforts. What I call in this article the "Cookie Cutter Syndrome" describes the standard approach Western nations developed to assist legal reform in the former Communist world.' Despite vastly different conditions in these countries, the model for judicial reform remains very similar, and is rooted in litigation and adversarial practices. The question of whether an adversarial-based approach is appropriate becomes even more acute as assistance efforts focus more on …

Human Trafficking And Film: How Popular Portrayals Influence Law And Public Perception, Jonathan Todres

Jonathan Todres

No abstract provided.

Crime, Institutions And Sector-Specific Fdi In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Isabel Ruiz, W. Charles Sawyer, Rossitza Wooster

Luisa Blanco

In this article, we explore how crime and institutions affect the flow of capital in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Latin American and Caribbean countries in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors during the 1996-2010 period. We use three different variables related to violent crime: homicides, crime victimization, and an index of organized crime. We find that there is a correlation between the institutional and crime variables, where the significance of institutional variables tends to disappear when the crime variables are added to the model. We find that higher crime victimization and organized crime are associated with …

Women In Robes, Sital Kalantry

Sital Kalantry

This article presents statistics on the number of women in the judiciary and argues for gender parity to further equality, enhance courts' legitimacy, and strengthen the rule of law.

Human Trafficking Victim Identification: Should Consent Matter, 45 Ind. L. Rev. 483 (2012), Samuel Vincent Jones

Samuel V. Jones

It is widely accepted that human trafficking is a global phenomenon that poses a significant problem within the United States. Despite its wealth and sophisticated law enforcement paradigms, the United States is the third largest destination country for human trafficking victims. In fact, human trafficking in the United States is increasing. Scholars have advanced a myriad of reasons to explain this problem. For example, some have pronounced the conscious neglect of men and boys in the investigation, reporting, and publicity of human trafficking a serious impediment to progress in combating trafficking. The ease with which corporations avoid prosecution under the …

“Ya Me Canse”: How The Iguala Mass Kidnapping Demonstrates Mexico’S Continued Failure To Adhere To Its International Human Rights Obligations, Justin A. Behravesh

Justin A. Behravesh

This article addresses the recent kidnapping and disappearance of forty-three college students from Iguala, Mexico (the “Iguala Mass Kidnapping”), under the lens of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (the “Convention”). While Mexico’s reporting documents on its compliance with the Convention paint a positive picture of how that country is adhering to Convention, any notion that the country was in compliance with the Convention was completely shattered through the Iguala Mass Kidnapping. The article concludes that the actions of state officials during the Iguala Mass Kidnapping violated articles one, six, and twenty-three of the …

Less Enforcement, More Compliance, Emily Ryo

Emily Ryo

A common assumption underlying the current public discourse and legal treatment of unauthorized immigrants is that unauthorized immigrants are lawless individuals who will break the law—any law—in search of economic gain. This notion persists despite substantial empirical evidence to the contrary. Drawing on original empirical data, this Article examines unauthorized immigrants and their relationship to the law from a novel perspective to make two major contributions. First, I demonstrate that unauthorized immigrants view themselves and their noncompliance with U.S. immigration law in a manner that is strikingly different from the prevalent view of criminality and lawlessness found in popular and …

After Amnesties Are Gone: Latin American National Courts And The New Contours Of The Fight Against Impunity, Naomi Roht-Arriaza

Naomi Roht-Arriaza

Latin America is the one region that, in the wake of massive and systematic violations of human rights, has made inroads into trying these crimes in national courts. After decades in which cases were dismissed on grounds of amnesty, statutes of limitations, or other impediments to trial, these barriers have, in a majority of countries, fallen. This turnaround—while fragile and incomplete—is remarkable. It provides important, and inspirational, lessons for lawyers, judges and advocates in other regions, and for international justice efforts. Cases involving international crimes in the courts of Latin American countries have gone through distinct phases. In the first, …

Violence As An Obstacle To Livelihood Resilience In The Context Of Climate Change, Beth Tellman, Ryan Alaniz, Andrea Rivera, Diana Contreras

Ryan C. Alaniz

Central America continues to be a violent region and is prone to increasing climatic shocks and environmental degradation. This paper explores the non-linear feedback loop between violence and climate shocks on livelihood resilience in El Salvador and Honduras, two countries experiencing high rates of violence. The nature of this complex feedback loop is examined by analysing case studies on the community scale, which include challenges in reconstructing community social capital post-Hurricane Mitch (1998) in Honduras and the importance of social capital in community resilience to Hurricane Ida (2009) in El Salvador. We conclude that social capital is central in communities …

North America Time For A New Focus, Daniel Cassidy

Daniel Cassidy

The United States, Canada, and Mexico are bound by a shared geography, history, and environment. In the twenty years since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the continent’s three economies and societies have become deeply intertwined, making relations between the United States and its immediate neighbors more important than ever. In 2005, in conjunction with counterpart organizations in Canada and Mexico, the Council on Foreign Relations published Building a North American Community, which proposed the establishment of a North American economic and security community by 2010, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external …

Rights Relationships And The Experience Of Children Orphaned By Aids, Jonathan Todres

Jonathan Todres

The global AIDS pandemic has left more than fifteen million children orphaned. These children constitute one of the most vulnerable populations, yet their situation has received relatively little scrutiny from legal scholars. This Article intends to fill that void by explicating the experience of children orphaned by AIDS, situating it in the broader context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and evaluating protections available under international human rights law. Analyzing human rights law as applied to children orphaned by AIDS exposes the extent to which rights are interrelated, particularly for marginalized populations. In current scholarship, the interrelationship among rights, for the most …

Hannibal At The Gate: Border Kids, Drugs, And Guns – And The Mexican Cartel War Goes On, Arthur Rizer

Arthur L. Rizer III

This article argues that the current cartel war in Mexico represents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States. Some have estimated Mexico, one of the United States’ closest allies, has lost more than 60,000 people in its drug war. That is approximately a murder every hour related to cartel violence. Some experts claim the death toll has been greatly soft-pedaled, with the government reducing violence by simply not reporting it, and that the actual death toll is over 100,000. These numbers do not even include the nearly 40,000 Americans who die each year from …

2014 Fifa World Cup Display, Maggie Mason Smith

Maggie Mason Smith

No abstract provided.

International Drug Trafficking And National Security Of Turkey, Doç.Dr. Behsat Ekici

Ekici Behsat

Drug trafficking is an ever growing international security conundrum. Transnational crime syndicates have proved to be extremely resilient to counter-narcotics initiatives. Despite the efforts of national and international institutions, enormous amounts of drugs are produced, trafficked and consumed throughout the world. Transnational crime syndicates manufacture new psychoactive substances when the governments increase controls over existing drugs. Annual number of drug-related deaths has increased to 250,000 globally. Illicit drug trade proved to be an insidious threat that finances terrorism, instigates corruption, undermines economic development and erodes state authority. Turkey is exposed to massive flows of narcotics as it lies at a …