Law Commons^™

Bringing In The State: Toward A Constitutional Duty To Protect From Mob Violence, Susan S. Kuo

Faculty Publications

Mob violence can inflict devastating costs. Although typically wrought by private individuals, the incidence of riot as well as extent of riot harm often turn on the adequacy of police preparation and planning. Under the English common law, local governments were responsible for providing riot protection for their denizens. In keeping with the English tradition, early state laws in the United States also provided for communal riot responsibility, and when the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, state obligations in the riot context were well-established. Despite the common law underpinnings of the governmental duty to protect citizens from mob violence, however, …

Contemplating Failure And Creating Alternatives In The Balkans: Bosnia's Peoples, Democracy And The Shape Of Self-Determination, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A decade after Dayton, Bosnia is a fictive, failed state held together by outsiders' weapons and outsiders' will. All parties recognize that Bosnia's current constitutional dispensation is dysfunctional and are calling for change, but how should the international community respond? In deciding, we should recognize that we may owe Bosnians much, but we owe Bosnia nothing.

This Article argues that traditional self-determination doctrine is unable to justify either further claims for secession from Bosnia or Bosnia's own original secession. It examines the processes used by the international community to frame the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the recognition process for Bosnia, …

Book Review. Journal Of The National Human Rights Commission, India, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Human Rights And National Security: The Strategic Correlation, William W. Burke-White

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Revisioning The Oversight Of Research Involving Humans In Canada, Jocelyn Downie, Fiona Mcdonald

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

When individuals are asked to participate in research they should be able to assume that the research "is well designed and well executed, that the investigator is competent to undertake the study, that the study will be run efficiently, safely, and ethically and that the deviations from good practice will be identified and corrected." The central question that we focus on in this paper is whether the governance mechanisms that are currently in place to regulate the conduct of research involving humans are adequate to enable those who are approached to participate in research to make these assumptions. This review …

'I Do' Kiss And Tell: The Subversive Potential Of Non-Normative Sexual Expression From Within Cultural Paradigms, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Using a comparative analysis of the equality movements of sexual minorities in Canada and India the author identifies a symbiosis between the subversive benefits of a deconstructionist approach to equality and the practical achievements to be gained by a rights-based model of social justice. The analysis is conducted through an examination of the role that the expression of same-sex desire plays in the legal and social positions of sexual minorities in Canada and India. The author argues that the acquisition of rights can provide sexual minorities with greater access to dominant cultural rituals and that such access provides opportunities to …

The Alien Tort Statute, Civil Society, And Corporate Responsibility, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

The topic of this panel is civil participation in the global trading system, with a particular focus on Doe v. Unocal Corp. and use of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) to enforce fundamental human rights norms against multinational corporations. These comments will therefore attempt to locate Doe v. Unocal and other ATS litigation in the broader efforts of civil society to establish and maintain normative principles for corporate responsibility in the global trading regime. This comment first explains the role of ATS litigation in the broader civil society context and the contribution of ATS cases to the development and enforcement …

The Human Rights Of Persons With Mental Disabilities: A Global Perspective On The Application Of Human Rights Principles To Mental Health, Lawrence O. Gostin, Lance Gable

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article examines the human rights of persons with mental disabilities and the application and development of these rights by the various international and regional systems that have been established to protect human rights. An international system of human rights with universal application has been developed under the auspices of the United Nations. Regional human rights systems have applied additional human rights protections to their respective geographic regions. Both the international and regional systems have addressed the human rights of persons with mental disabilities through treaties, declarations, and thematic resolutions. Moreover, regional institutions have incrementally formulated a body of law …

Constitutional Dialogue And Human Dignity: States And Transnational Constitutional Discourse, Vicki C. Jackson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The U.S. Supreme Court has been slower than some other national courts to become familiar with and discuss, distinguish, or borrow from related constitutional approaches of other nations and systems. The growth in transnational judicial discourse, especially on constitutional issues relating to human rights, has been remarked by many. National courts in Argentina, Botswana, Canada, Germany, India, South Africa, and elsewhere not infrequently refer to the constitutional jurisprudence of other nations in resolving domestic constitutional questions. Although such references are not unheard of in the United States, transnational discourse involving national courts, supranational and international tribunals is still subject to …

Development Decision Making And The Content Of International Development Law, Daniel D. Bradlow

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

International development law deals with the rights and duties of states and other actors in the development process. As the consensus view of the development process disintegrated during the 1970s and 1980s, the agreement on the content of international development law also began to break down. Today there are two competing idealized views of development. The first, the traditional view, maintains that development is about economic growth, which can be distinguished from other social, cultural, environmental, and political development issues in society. The second, the modern view, maintains that development is an integrated process of change involving intertwined economic, social, …

A Theory Of Crimes Against Humanity, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The answer I offer in this Article is that crimes against humanity assault one particular aspect of human being, namely our character as political animals. We are creatures whose nature compels us to live socially, but who cannot do so without artificial political organization that inevitably poses threats to our well-being, and, at the limit, to our very survival. Crimes against humanity represent the worst of those threats; they are the limiting case of politics gone cancerous. Precisely because we cannot live without politics, we exist under the permanent threat that politics will turn cancerous and the indispensable institutions of …

Paradoxes Of Health And Equality: When A Boy Becomes A Girl, Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the fall of 2000, six-year-old male Zachary from a small town in Ohio, claimed that s/he was a girl and requested, from now on, to be called Aurora. When the child's parents honored this unusual wish and made efforts to make official the child's feminine identity, the case turned into a custody battle between the parents and the state of Ohio. Although the child was occasionally treated as a girl at home from the age of two, the attempt to register the child in public school as a girl motivated the state dissolution of this family. At the …