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Where Custom Dictates: A Comparison Of The Integration Of Customary Law In Nigeria And South Africa As Applicable To Custody And Family Law Dispute, Madelyn Cameron Jan 2024

Where Custom Dictates: A Comparison Of The Integration Of Customary Law In Nigeria And South Africa As Applicable To Custody And Family Law Dispute, Madelyn Cameron

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.


Introduction: International Law Governing Armed Conflict, Christian Marxsen, Anne Peters Jan 2020

Introduction: International Law Governing Armed Conflict, Christian Marxsen, Anne Peters

Book Chapters

Wars are emergency situations, but in contrast to the saying according to which necessity knows no law, they are not lawless situations at all. Quite to the contrary, an extensive body of international treaties and customary international law provides detailed regulations. However, which rules do and should apply to what kinds of situation is a hotly debated issue and the subject of this book. Different regulatory paradigms are competing for how wartime situations shall be regulated – with significant legal, practical and institutional implications. This book approaches the legal issue in a Trialogue. The characteristic feature of a Trialogue is …


International Civil Individual Responsibility And The Security Council: Building The Foundations Of A General Regime, Vincent-Joël Proulx Jan 2019

International Civil Individual Responsibility And The Security Council: Building The Foundations Of A General Regime, Vincent-Joël Proulx

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article focuses on a few tools at the disposal of the United Nations Security Council (“UNSC”) to enhance individual (read: civil) responsibility concerning nonstate terrorist actors with a view to opening other avenues of inquiry regarding other subversive nonstate actors (“NSAs”), for instance in the areas of transnational torts, human rights (“HR”) violations, and environmental damage caused by business entities. As discussed in Part V, recent developments surrounding the application of the Alien Tort Claims Act (“ATCA”) in the United States and the prospect of establishing a basis for universal civil jurisdiction further signal that no such solid basis …


Urbanization, Land Rights And Development: A Case Study Of Waterfront Communities In Lagos, Nigeria., Gideon Olaniyi Omoniyi Dec 2017

Urbanization, Land Rights And Development: A Case Study Of Waterfront Communities In Lagos, Nigeria., Gideon Olaniyi Omoniyi

Master's Theses

The aim of this study is to examine the root causes of forced evictions and displacement through the current urbanization process in Lagos, Nigeria. My particular attention is devoted to the legal complexities and how ethnolinguistic identities shape land laws, influence land tenure, and construct urban citizenship. Through this process, competing claims to land ownership provide fertile ground for forced evictions and displacement. Existing scholars suggest that poor urban residents lack rights to stay in their neighborhoods, while a powerful capitalist class has emerged and dispossessed the poor from their lands. Yet these existing approaches derived from the neoclassical and …


The Applicability Of The Humanitarian Intervention 'Exception' To The Middle Eastern Refugee Crisis: Why The International Community Should Intervene Against Isis, Milena Sterio Jul 2015

The Applicability Of The Humanitarian Intervention 'Exception' To The Middle Eastern Refugee Crisis: Why The International Community Should Intervene Against Isis, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The refugee crises in Iraq and Syria, which has been evolving over the past decade as a result of both ongoing conflict in these countries and the recent surge of Islamic State-led violence, has morphed into a true humanitarian catastrophe. Tens of thousands of refugees have been subjected to violence and have been dispersed and forced to live under dire conditions; such massive population flows have destabilized the entire region and have threatened the stability of neighboring countries. The United States and several other countries have been engaged in a military air strike campaign against the Islamic State, but the …


Internal Colonialism And Humanitarian Intervention, M. Sornarajah Apr 2015

Internal Colonialism And Humanitarian Intervention, M. Sornarajah

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.


Humanitarian Law And Internal Armed Conflicts, G.I.A.D. Draper Apr 2015

Humanitarian Law And Internal Armed Conflicts, G.I.A.D. Draper

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.


Sexual Assault And Rape In The Military: The Invisible Victims Of International Gender Crimes At The Front Lines, Stella Cernak Jan 2015

Sexual Assault And Rape In The Military: The Invisible Victims Of International Gender Crimes At The Front Lines, Stella Cernak

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In the past several years in particular, intra-military sexual assault and rape in the U.S. armed forces have been the focus of frequent media attention and intense congressional debate. Despite reforms, the rate of intra-military sexual crimes continues to remain high, as does soldiers’ wariness to report instances of sexual violence to military commanders. These problems and others have invigorated the position taken by some that outside judicial review of intra- military sexual crimes is necessary to provide justice to victims and lower the rate of intra-military sexual assault and rape. This Note argues that one of the primary contributors …


Civilian Starvation And Relief During Armed Conflict: The Modern Humanitarian Law, Charles A. Allen Dec 2014

Civilian Starvation And Relief During Armed Conflict: The Modern Humanitarian Law, Charles A. Allen

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.


The Relevance Of Customary International Norms To The Death Penalty In The United States, Joan Fitzpatrick Oct 2014

The Relevance Of Customary International Norms To The Death Penalty In The United States, Joan Fitzpatrick

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.


The Effect Of Treaties And Other Formal International Acts On The Customary Law Of Human Rights, Arthur M. Weisburd Oct 2014

The Effect Of Treaties And Other Formal International Acts On The Customary Law Of Human Rights, Arthur M. Weisburd

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.


Human Rights And State "Sovereignty", Louis Henkin Oct 2014

Human Rights And State "Sovereignty", Louis Henkin

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.


The Growing Importance Of Customary International Human Rights Law, Richard B. Lillich Oct 2014

The Growing Importance Of Customary International Human Rights Law, Richard B. Lillich

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.


Law And Atrocity: Settling Accounts In Rwanda, Mark A. Drumbl Jan 2013

Law And Atrocity: Settling Accounts In Rwanda, Mark A. Drumbl

Mark A. Drumbl

Ten years ago, genocide ravaged the tiny African nation of Rwanda. In the wake of this violence, Rwanda has struggled to reconstruct, rebuild, and reconcile. Law-in particular, criminal trials for alleged perpetrators of genocide- has figured prominently among various policy mechanisms in postgenocide Rwanda. Criminal trials for Rwandan genocidaires' aspire to achieve several goals. These include exacting retribution, promoting reconciliation, deterring future violence, expressing victims' outrage, maintaining peace, and cultivating a culture of human rights.2 In this Lecture, I examine the extent to which these trials attain these multiple, often competing, and largely overwhelming goals. Part I begins by setting …


The Gacaca Experiment: Rwanda's Restorative Dispute Resolution Response To The 1994 Genocide, Jessica Raper Mar 2012

The Gacaca Experiment: Rwanda's Restorative Dispute Resolution Response To The 1994 Genocide, Jessica Raper

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Since its rise to power in July of 1994, the Rwandan government has been committed to prosecuting all those accused of genocide. To prosecute the approximately 130,000 defendants, Rwanda has adopted a program called gacaca, based on Rwanda's traditional customary dispute resolution system. The gacaca law provides a reconciliation component that allows defendants to trade confessions of past genocide crimes for indemnification, as well as a prosecution component that holds the most serious offenders accountable in a Western style prosecution in a formal court of law. One of the main goals of gacaca is to end the so-called "culture …


An Emerging Norm - Determining The Meaning And Legal Status Of The Responsibility To Protect, Jonah Eaton Jan 2011

An Emerging Norm - Determining The Meaning And Legal Status Of The Responsibility To Protect, Jonah Eaton

Michigan Journal of International Law

The responsibility to protect, from its recent nativity in the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), is the latest round in an old debate pitting the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of states against allowing such intervention to prevent gross and systematic violations of human rights. Advocates for the concept see it as an important new commitment by the international community, injecting new meaning into the tragically threadbare promise to never again allow mass atrocities to occur unchallenged. ICISS offered the concept of responsibility to protect as a new way to confront …


African Customary Law, Customs, And Women's Rights, Muna Ndulo Jan 2011

African Customary Law, Customs, And Women's Rights, Muna Ndulo

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The sources of law in most African countries are customary law, the common law and legislation both colonial and post-independence. In a typical African country, the great majority of the people conduct their personal activities in accordance with and subject to customary law. Customary law has great impact in the area of personal law in regard to matters such as marriage, inheritance and traditional authority, and because it developed in an era dominated by patriarchy some of its norms conflict with human rights norms guaranteeing equality between men and women. While recognizing the role of legislation in reform, it is …


When Is The Past Not The Past? Reflections On Customary Law Under South Africa’S Constitutional Dispensation, Sanele Sibanda Jan 2010

When Is The Past Not The Past? Reflections On Customary Law Under South Africa’S Constitutional Dispensation, Sanele Sibanda

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.


Rational Choice, Reputation, And Human Rights Treaties, Alex Geisinger, Michael Ashley Stein Apr 2008

Rational Choice, Reputation, And Human Rights Treaties, Alex Geisinger, Michael Ashley Stein

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this Review sets forth Guzman's general theory of international law with specific consideration of the way reputation influences state behavior. Part II then tests Guzman's overarching thesis by applying it to human rights treaties and concludes that explaining states' entry into human rights treaties requires a broader conception of reputation than Rational Choice allows.


Law And Atrocity: Settling Accounts In Rwanda, Mark A. Drumbl Jan 2005

Law And Atrocity: Settling Accounts In Rwanda, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Ten years ago, genocide ravaged the tiny African nation of Rwanda. In the wake of this violence, Rwanda has struggled to reconstruct, rebuild, and reconcile. Law-in particular, criminal trials for alleged perpetrators of genocide- has figured prominently among various policy mechanisms in postgenocide Rwanda. Criminal trials for Rwandan genocidaires' aspire to achieve several goals. These include exacting retribution, promoting reconciliation, deterring future violence, expressing victims' outrage, maintaining peace, and cultivating a culture of human rights.2 In this Lecture, I examine the extent to which these trials attain these multiple, often competing, and largely overwhelming goals. Part I begins by setting …


A Property Rights Approach To Sacred Sites Cases: Asserting A Place For Indians As Nonowners, Kristen A. Carpenter Jan 2005

A Property Rights Approach To Sacred Sites Cases: Asserting A Place For Indians As Nonowners, Kristen A. Carpenter

Publications

Although the Free Exercise Clause prohibits governmental interference with religion, American Indians have been unsuccessful in challenging government actions that harm tribal sacred sites located on federal public lands. The First Amendment dimensions of these cases have been well studied by scholars, but this Article contends that it is also important to analyze them through a property law lens. Indeed, the Supreme Court has treated the federal government's ownership of public lands as a basis for denying Indian religious freedoms claims. This Article contends that such holdings rely on an "ownership model" of property law wherein the rights of the …


The Place Of Human Rights Law In World Trade Organization Rules, Stephen Joseph Powell Feb 2004

The Place Of Human Rights Law In World Trade Organization Rules, Stephen Joseph Powell

Stephen Joseph Powell

WTO rules routinely are linked to the inability of nations to make meaningful progress in sharpening environmental and other human rights protections, for example, the failure of the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development to usher in any new treaties despite the bright promise of the Rio Earth Summit of the previous decade. The common brief of environmental, medical, and development interest groups is that the market principles of supply and demand, comparative advantage, and non-discrimination on which global trade rules are built have encumbered pursuit by nations of fundamental non-economic objectives that must in any reasoned legal hierarchy …


Normative Surrender, Jerome B. Elkind Jan 1988

Normative Surrender, Jerome B. Elkind

Michigan Journal of International Law

It is submitted, at the risk of being accused of idealism, that those who most conspicuously don the mantle of realism are also guilty of normative sloppiness, a form of sloppiness which deserves the name "normative surrender" because it concedes large areas of the law to the will and whim of States. This article will examine the phenomenon of normative surrender and provide some examples of it.


The Development Of Refugee Law, Paul Weis Jan 1982

The Development Of Refugee Law, Paul Weis

Michigan Journal of International Law

In customary international law, nationality provides the principal link between the individual and the law of nations. Refugees are commonly understood to be persons who have been compelled to leave their homes on account of natural catastrophes or because of political events; they may be inside or outside their country of origin. Refugees may be stateless or not; most present-day refugees are not stateless. Only international political refugees-persons who are outside their country of origin for political reasons-are discussed in this article, an overview of sources of refugee law, and a preface to the articles in this volume which take …