Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Youth Activism, Art And Transitional Artist: Emerging Spaces Of Memory After The Jasmin Revolution, Arnaud Kurze

Arnaud Kurze

This project explores the creation of alternative transitional justice spaces in post-conflict contexts, particularly concentrating on the role of art and the impact of social movements to address human rights abuses. Drawing from post-authoritarian Tunisia, it scrutinizes the work of contemporary youth activists and artists to deal with the past and foster sociopolitical change. Although these vanguard protesters provoked the overthrow of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, the power vacuum was quickly filled by old elites. The exclusion of young revolutionaries from political decision-making led to unprecedented forms of mobilization to account for repression and injustice under …

Group Rights: A Defense, David Ingram

David Ingram

Human rights belong to individuals in virtue of their common humanity. Yet it is an important question whether human rights entail or comport with the possession of what I call group-specific rights (sometimes referred to as collective rights), or rights that individuals possess only because they belong to a particular group. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) says they do. Article 15 asserts the right to nationality, or citizenship. Unless one believes that the only citizenship compatible with a universal human rights regime is cosmopolitan citizenship in a world state – a conception of citizenship that is not countenanced …

'Listen To What You Say': Rwanda’S Postgenocide Language Policies, Lynne Tirrell

Lynne Tirrell

Freedom of expression is considered a basic human right, and yet most countries have restrictions on speech they deem harmful. Following the genocide of the Tutsi, Rwanda passed a constitution (2003) and laws against hate speech and other forms of divisionist language (2008, 2013). Understanding how language shaped “recognition harms” that both constitute and fuel genocide also helps account for political decisions to limit “divisionist” discourse. When we speak, we make expressive commitments, which are commitments to the viability and value of ways of speaking. This article explores reasons a society would decide to say, “We don’t talk that way …

Carl Cohen’S ‘Kind’ Arguments For Animal Rights And Against Human Rights, Nathan Nobis

Nathan M. Nobis, PhD

Carl Cohen’s arguments against animal rights are shown to be unsound. His strategy entails that animals have rights, that humans do not, the negations of those conclusions, and other false and inconsistent implications. His main premise seems to imply that one can fail all tests and assignments in a class and yet easily pass if one’s peers are passing and that one can become a convicted criminal merely by setting foot in a prison. However, since his moral principles imply that nearly all exploitive uses of animals are wrong anyway, foes of animal rights are advised to seek philosophical consolations …

Inciting Genocide With Words, Richard Ashby Wilson

Richard Ashby Wilson

This article calls for a rethinking of the causation element in the prevailing international criminal law on direct and public incitement to commit genocide. After the conviction of Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity, the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide was established in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide in 1948. The first (and thus far, only) convictions for the crime came fifty years later at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The ICTR’s incitement jurisprudence is widely recognized as problematic, but no legal commentator has thus …

Piercing The Prison Uniform Of Invisibility For Black Female Inmates, Michelle S. Jacobs

Michelle S Jacobs

In Inner Lives: Voices of African American Women In Prison, Professor Paula Johnson has written about the most invisible of incarcerated women — incarcerated African American women. The number of women incarcerated in the United States increased by seventy-five percent between 1986 and 1991. Of these women, a disproportionate number are black women. The percentages vary by region and by the nature of institution (county jail, state prison or federal facility), but the bottom line remains the same. In every instance, black women are incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their percentage in the general population. In Inner Lives, Professor Johnson …

Human Rights, Women, And Third World Development, Winston E. Langley

Winston E. Langley

As part of the effort to inaugurate a new international socio-political order after World War II, international emphasis was given to certain moral and legal entitlements we have come to call human rights. That emphasis initially found its most forceful expression in the Charter of the United Nations, which not only asserts its members' faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, as well as in the equal rights of men and women of all nations, but also recites its members' commitment to employ international machinery for the promotion of the social and economic …

Rtop's Second Pillar: The Responsibility To Assist In Theory And Practice In Solomon Islands, Charles Hawksley, Nichole Georgeou

Nichole Georgeou

This paper explores the implementation of a regional capacity-building program in Solomon Islands, a state that experienced significant violence and political tension between 1998 and 2003. The July 2003 intervention of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) is a useful and relevant case study for understanding the operationalization of Pillar II of RtoP, which the authors have termed the “Responsibility to Assist” (RtoA). While RAMSI has not consciously adopted RtoP language in its operations, the rationale for the intervention included humanitarian as well as wider regional security concerns. The mission’s emphasis on developing the state’s capacities in policing …

Reconciling Positivism And Realism: Kelsen And Habermas On Democracy And Human Rights, David Ingram

David Ingram

It is well known that Hans Kelsen and Jürgen Habermas invoke realist arguments drawn from social science in defending an international, democratic human rights regime against Carl Schmitt’s attack on the rule of law. However, despite embracing the realist spirit of Kelsen’s legal positivism, Habermas criticizes Kelsen for neglecting to connect the rule of law with a concept of procedural justice (Part I). I argue, to the contrary (Part II), that Kelsen does connect these terms, albeit in a manner that may be best described as functional, rather than conceptual. Indeed, whereas Habermas tends to emphasize a conceptual connection between …

Of Sweatshops And Human Subsistence: Habermas On Human Rights, David Ingram

David Ingram

In this paper I argue that the discourse theoretic account of human rights defended by Jürgen Habermas contains a fruitful tension that is obscured by its dominant tendency to identify rights with legal claims. This weakness in Habermas’s account becomes manifest when we examine how sweatshops diminish the secure enjoyment of subsistence, which Habermas himself (in recognition of the UDHR) recognizes as a human right. Discourse theories of human rights are unique in tying the legitimacy of human rights to democratic deliberation and consensus. So construed, their specific meaning and force is the outcome of historical political struggle. However, unlike …

Making Sure We Are True To Our Founders: The Association Of The Bar Of The City Of New York, 1970-95, Jeffrey Morris

Jeffrey B. Morris

No abstract provided.

Migration, Human Rights And Development: A Global Anthology, Anne T. Gallagher Ao

Anne T Gallagher

Migration, Human Rights, and Development presents a unique collection of important, accessible, and sometimes provocative writing in the area of migration—with a particular focus on the human rights and development aspects of modern migration trends and responses. A detailed introduction by the editor is followed by four thematic sections that address: (i) the relationship and connections between human rights, migration, and development; (ii) key issues in migration and development, including impacts on source and destination countries, social costs, and the role of remittances; (iii) key issues in migration and human rights: the legal and policy frameworks and the rights of …

Global Feminism: Feminist Theory’S Cul-De-Sac, Elora Halim Chowdhury

Elora Halim Chowdhury

Global feminism has been critical of the earlier notion of "global sisterhood" and its uncritical attachment to commonalities of women's oppression around the world. However, in this article I argue that global feminism curiously remains inadequately accountable for its differential attitude toward issues of difference and inequality among communities within the U.S. versus those alleged differences and inequalities across the U.S. borders. Consequently, global feminism, using a universal human rights paradigm, constructs for itself the role of the heroic savior, reminiscent of colonialist civilizing mission (Abu-Lughod 2002) and in line with current U.S. imperialist interventions. Strategies for countering this newly …

Natural Rights To Welfare, Siegfried Van Duffel

Siegfried Van Duffel

No abstract provided.

Legal Lines In Shifting Sand: Immigration Law And Human Rights In The Wake Of September 11, Daniel Kanstroom

Daniel Kanstroom

In March of 2004, a group of legal scholars gathered at Boston College Law School to examine the doctrinal implications of the events of September 11, 2001. They reconsidered the lines drawn between citizens and noncitizens, war and peace, the civil and criminal systems, as well as the U.S. territorial line. Participants responded to the proposition that certain entrenched historical matrices no longer adequately answer the complex questions raised in the “war on terror.” They examined the importance of government disclosure and the public’s right to know; the deportation system’s habeas corpus practices; racial profiling; the convergence of immigration and …

Human And Fundamental Rights And Duties In Portuguese Constitution. Some Reflections, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

The Portuguese Constitution (1976) came after a period of 48 years of authoritarianism and a closed society, in which some happy few enjoyed great privileges while the great majority of people were charged with heavy duties So, by a very understandable "law of human nature", the constituent law givers could not reasonably impose constitutionally many obligations, in an autonomous way. As rights and duties are the twin sides of the same coin, the juridical formulation under the sign of rights also implies obligations, related to those same rights. This is kinder and more pleasant to do by a liberating Constitution...

Waiting For Some Angel: Indigenous Rights As An Ethical Imperative In The Theory And Practice Of Human Rights, Sam Grey

Sam Grey

This article uses the stalled Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the impetus for an examination of arguments championing and opposing the framing of Indigenous rights as human rights. Failings both theoretical and practical – in the conceptualisation, promulgation and interpretation of human rights – have long left Aboriginal peoples at a disadvantage. The dual focus of Indigenous claims is unique in the rights lexicon, asserting the right to be simultaneously different from and equal to the majority population. Yet Indigenous rights are often perceived, by governments with the power to block their progress, as a threat …

Buffalo's "Prophet Of Protest": The Political Leadership And Activism Of Reverend Dr. Bennett W. Smith, Sr., Sherri Wallace

Sherri L. Wallace

Between Irua And "Female Genital Mutilation" : Feminist Human Rights Discourse And The Cultural Divide, Hope Lewis

Hope Lewis

“Irua,” or female genital surgery (“FGS”), involves the most private aspects of individual female physical and cultural identity. Yet, the health risks caused by FGS raised concern in cultures in which FGS is not traditionally practiced. There has been extensive dialogue regarding the implications of FGS for cross-cultural feminist approaches to human rights. This Article examines the controversy over FGS terminology as it reflects more complex debates over FGS as a violation of international human rights. It further assesses the reasons offered to justify Western feminists’ participation in cross-cultural strides to address FGS through human rights law. In addition, the …