Law Commons^™

Human Rights And Humanitarian Law - Conflict Or Convergence, Christopher Greenwood Sir

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor…And Your Convicted? Teaching “Justice” To Law Students By Defending Criminal Immigrants In Removal Proceedings, Michael S. Vastine

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

No abstract provided.

Not Child's Play: Revisiting The Law Of Child Soldiers, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This brief commentary discusses child soldiers in general and Omar Khadr, a 15 yr old whom the United States military captured during armed conflict in Afghanistan, in particular. I suggest the conversation should be broadened and to move past misperceptions of the applicable law and norms concerning detention and prosecution of child belligerents.

Reimagining Human Rights Law: Toward Global Regulation Of Transnational Corporations, Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

This article takes a new look at a perennial question of human rights: how to prevent corporate-related human rights abuses and provide remedies for victims. It argues that transnational corporations require specialized and targeted regulations and laws, and that the conflation of human rights law and international human rights law should be reversed to allow the advancement of other forms of human rights law. It makes two proposals. First, reimagine human rights law and international human rights law as separate categories. Specifically, classify international human rights law as a sub-category of human rights law. This distinction highlights the need to …

Sources, Christine Chinkin

Book Chapters

This chapter outlines the sources of international human rights law that are listed in Article 38(1) Statute of the International Court of Justice: treaties, custom, general principles of law, and, as subsidiary sources, judicial decisions and the writings of jurists. The chapter also considers how so-called 'soft law' instruments such as resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the work of human rights expert bodies may also be regarded as sources of human rights law.

Eleventh Annual Grotius Lecture Response: Commentary On Achim Steiner's 2009 Grotius Lecture, Dinah L. Shelton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This commentary discusses the impact of the 2009 Grotius Lecture delivered by Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Program (“UNEP”). The commentary elaborates on a fundamental lesson of the lecture: law can be a conduit for transformative economic change. The commentary emphasizes the need for international entities such as UNEP to address global environmental crises that result from pollution largely generated by industrial countries. The commentary encourages leaders to consider these environmental challenges as possible threats to human rights.

Intergenerational Equity, Dinah L. Shelton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This essay analyzes the legal meaning of “intergenerational equity” and evaluates the practical implementation of the concept. The essay begins by considering the meaning of the two terms in the phrase: “intergenerational” and “equity.” It then looks at the various rationales given for concern with this topic and how they link to the topic of solidarity, followed by an overview of some of the main subject areas in which the issue of intergenerational equity arises. It proceeds to assess the status of intergenerational equity in international law and to identify various principles associated with the concept. Finally, it turns to …

Liberty Lost: The Moral Case For Marijuana Law Reform, Eric Blumenson, Eva Nilsen

Indiana Law Journal

Marijuana policy analyses typically focus on the relative costs and benefits of present policy and its feasible alternatives. This Essay addresses a prior, threshold issue: whether marijuana criminal laws abridge fundamental individual rights, and if so, whether there are grounds that justify doing so. Over 700, 000 people are arrested annually for simple marijuana possession, a small but significant proportion of the 100 million Americans who have committed the same crime. In this Essay, we present a civil libertarian case for repealing marijuana possession laws. We put forward two arguments corresponding to the two distinct liberty concerns implicated by laws …

Treaties As Law And The Rule Of Law: The Judicial Power To Compel Domestic Treaty Implementation, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

The Supremacy Clause makes the Constitution, federal statutes, and ratified treaties part of the "supreme law of the land." Despite the textual and historical clarity of the Supremacy Clause, some courts and commentators have suggested that the "non-self-executing treaty doctrine" means that ratified treaties must await implementing legislation before they become domestic law. The non-self-executing treaty doctrine has in particular been used as a shield to claims under international human rights treaties.

This Article does not seek to provide another critique of the non-self-executing treaty doctrine in the abstract. Rather, I suggest that a determination that a treaty is non-self-executing …

Human Rights And American Bioethics: Resistance Is Futile, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The Borg are always confident that humans will be assimilated into their collective hive and therefore that, as they say, “resistance is futile.” In Star Trek, of course, the humans always successfully resist. Elizabeth Fenton and John Arras, like the Borg, resist the idea that humans are uniquely special as well as the utility of the human rights framework for global bioethics. I believe their resistance to human rights is futile, and I explain why in this essay. Let me begin with their subtitle, because we do seem to agree that popular culture is a powerful aid to understanding human …

Enhancing Enforcement Of Economic, Social And Cultural Rights Using Indicators: A Focus On The Right To Education In The Icescr, Sital Kalantry, Jocelyn E. Getgen, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

Nearly fifteen years ago, Audrey R. Chapman emphasized the importance of ascertaining violations of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as a means to enhance its enforcement. Today, the violations approach is even more salient given the recent adoption of the ICESCR’s Optional Protocol, a powerful tool to hold States parties accountable for violations.

Indicators are essential tools for assessing violations of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs) because they are often the best way to measure progressive realization. Proposed guidelines on using indicators give guidance on the content of States parties reports to treaty monitoring …

Human Rights For Hedgehogs?: Global Value Pluralism, International Law, And Some Reservations Of The Fox, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, a contribution to the Boston University Law Review’s symposium on Ronald Dworkin’s forthcoming book, Justice for Hedgehogs, critiques the manuscript’s account of international human rights on five grounds. First, it is vague: it fails to offer much if any guidance relative to many of the most difficult concrete issues that arise in the field of international human rights law and policy - precisely the circumstances in which international lawyers might benefit from the guidance that moral foundations supposedly promise. It is also troubling, and puzzling given Dworkin’s well-known commitment to the right-answer thesis, that his account of human …

Do Constitutions Make A Difference In The Protection Of Fundamental Human Rights? Comparing The United States And Israel, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

This is a tale of two states: one with a constitution and one without. It is a tale that has no moral but ends with the question whether, from the perspective of fundamental human rights, a constitution makes a significant difference? The tale compares the United States of America, a country with a robust, well-entrenched federal Constitution that forms the fundamental compact of its society, with Israel, a country without a formal constitution, but with a set of ‘basic laws’, that operates with two distinct legal systems for the two national entities residing within its jurisdiction.

This chapter can only …

Louis Henkin: Courage And Convictions, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

Louis Henkin was a man of courage and of convictions. His students at Columbia, who engaged with him inside and outside the classroom during the course of five decades, had many opportunities to learn of his convictions, which were manifest in his teaching, writing and activism. But Henkin would not have spoken in the classroom of his own acts of courage, exemplified by (but not limited to) his combat service in the Second World War, nor would he have drawn attention to other personal virtues. This brief tribute (complementary to others being written by colleagues at Columbia for publication here …

A Lucky Child: A Memoir Of Surviving Auschwitz As A Young Boy, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

Many readers of this Journal would readily identify the young boy in lederhosen, hands tightly clasped by his mother, who is in turn enfolded in the father's embrace – all three smiling on what is perhaps the child's third birthday – in the cover photograph of the American edition of the book under review. In this memoir he is Tommy, Tom, Tomek, or Tommyli; in later life he is known to us (and recognized worldwide) as Thomas Buergenthal, judge of the International Court of justice since 2000 and honorary president of the American Society of International Law from 2001 to …

Indivisibility And Linkage Arguments: A Reply To Gilabert, James W. Nickel

Articles

This reply discusses Pablo Gilabert's response to my article, "Rethinking Indivisibility." It welcomes his distinction between conceptual, normative, epistemic, and causal forms of support from one right to another. It denies, however, that "Rethinking Indivisibility" downplayed linkage arguments for human rights (although it did call for careful evaluation of such arguments), and rejects Gilabert's suggestion that we understand the indivisibility of two rights as two rights being highly useful to each other (interdependence) rather than as mutual indispensability. In the final section, I offer two new worries about the system-wide indivisibility of human rights.

The Human Rights Of Non-Citizens. By David Weissbrodt. (Book Review), Caroline Bettinger-López, Bassina Farbenblum

Articles

No abstract provided.

Embedded International Law And The Constitution Abroad, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the role of "embedded" international law in U.S. constitutional interpretation, in the context of extraterritorial application of the Constitution. Traditional U.S. understandings of the Constitution's application abroad were informed by nineteenth-century international law principles of jurisdiction, which largely limited the authority of a sovereign state to its geographic territory. Both international law and constitutional law since have developed significantly away from strictly territorial understandings of governmental authority, however. Modern international law principles of jurisdiction and state responsibility now recognize that states legitimately may exercise power in a number of extraterritorial contexts, and that legal obligations may apply …

Introduction Symposium: Russia And The Rule Of Law: New Opportunities In Domestic And International Affairs , Michael Scheimer

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Multilateral Development Banks And The Human Right Responsibility , Leonardo A. Crippa

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Binary: What Can Feminists Learn From Intersex And Transgender Jurisprudence?, Marybeth Herald

Marybeth Herald

This panel discussion focuses on recent developments in the intersex and transsexual communities. Recently, both movements have undergone profound changes and each has provided new and unique theoretical and practical perspectives that can potentially benefit other social justice groups. This dialogue describes these developments. It also emphasizes the importance of feminist, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex activists becoming aware of the goals that they share and areas where their interests may diverge. As each of these movements develops their legal strategies, they need to be conscious of the potentially positive and negative ramifications that their approaches may have on …

Climate Change Consensus: Emerging International Law, Prof. Elizabeth N. Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

This article focuses on emerging international law addressing climate change. Providing a background on international negotiations, it considers the greenhouse gas emissions targets needed to avert catastrophic climate change. Assessing the funding debate, this article concludes that agreement in Copenhagen must result in a comprehensive instrument with which to maintain global emissions below 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Multilateral coordination can develop an effective framework for climate stabilization.

Who Watches The Watchmen? 'Vigilant Doorkeeping,' The Alien Tort Statute, & Possible Reform, Keith A. Petty

Keith A. Petty

The Alien Tort Statute (ATS) allows alien plaintiffs to file civil actions in U.S. district courts for torts violating the law of nations or U.S. treaties. After the 2nd Circuit’s Filartiga decision in 1980, the debate began as to whether the ATS was a useful tool against human rights violators or an intrusion into U.S. foreign relations. In 2004, the Supreme Court in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain resolved some of the questions left open by Filartiga.

Sosa concluded that ATS claims must be limited to law of nations violations as well defined as those recognized in 1789. The Court tasked the …