Law Commons^™

Lifting Our Veil Of Ignorance: Culture, Constitutionalism, And Women's Human Rights In Post-September 11 America, Catherine Powell

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

While we live in an Age of Rights, culture continues to be a major challenge to the human rights project. During the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in the 1940s and during the Cold War era, the periodic disputes that erupted over civil and political rights in contrast to economic, social and cultural rights could be read either explicitly or implicitly as a cultural debate.

Gender has figured prominently in this perceived culture clash, for example, with the Bush administration's use of Afghan women as cultural icons in need of liberation--a claim that helped justify the …

Failed States, Or The State As Failure?, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article seeks to challenge a basic assumption of international law and policy, arguing that the existing state-based international legal framework stands in the way of developing effective responses to state failure. It offers an alternative theoretical framework designed to spark debate about better legal and policy responses to failed states. Although the article uses failed states as a lens to focus its arguments, it also has broad implications for how we think about sovereignty, the evolving global order, and the place of states within it.

State failure causes a wide range of humanitarian, legal, and security problems. Unsurprisingly, given …

Refugee Protection In The United States Post-September 11, Andrew I. Schoenholtz

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The U.S. refugee resettlement program, was the first refugee protection casualty of the terrorist attacks. American officials perceived resettlement as being particularly vulnerable to security problems. That was not the case with the other major U.S. refugee protection program, the asylum system. That system was effectively revamped in 1995 to address a variety of abuses, in part connected to individuals involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yet, even though official attention did not focus on asylum, subtle, significant changes have occurred. This article delineates and assesses these changes by closely examining data and developments at all levels of …

Protecting Rights In The Age Of Terrorism: Challenges And Opportunities, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Depending on whom you speak to these days (and the mood in which you find them), international law is either practically moribund, or it's more vibrant and important than it has been for years. To take the good news story first, international law issues have been at the forefront of public discourse over the past few years. Pick your issue: the U.N. Charter and the international law on the use of force? The Convention Against Torture? The Geneva Conventions? You'll find it on the front page these days. Journalists are phoning international law professors for background briefings, and students are …

Liberalism, Torture, And The Ticking Bomb, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Torture used to be incompatible with American values. Our Bill of Rights forbids cruel and unusual punishment, and that has come to include all forms of corporal punishment except prison and death by methods purported to be painless. Americans and our government have historically condemned states that torture; we have granted asylum or refuge to those who fear it. The Senate ratified the Convention Against Torture, Congress enacted antitorture legislation, and judicial opinions spoke of "the dastardly and totally inhuman act of torture.” Then came September 11.

Direct Vs. Indirect Obligations Of Corporations Under International Law, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

International law today addresses the conduct of private corporations in a variety of areas. With very few exceptions, however, international law regulates corporate conduct indirectly--that is, by requiring states to enact and enforce regulations applicable to corporations and other non-state actors. Only a small number of international legal norms--primarily those relating to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and forced labor--apply directly to non-state actors. Scholars have argued forcefully that international law should move in the direction of directly imposing obligations on corporations. These arguments overlook important aspects of the problem. If international legal norms were extended to corporations and backed …

The Politics Of The Geneva Conventions: Avoiding Formalist Traps, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Geneva Conventions were drafted in 1949, in another world. The world of the Geneva Conventions' "framers" is still familiar to all of us, though increasingly it is familiar from movies and books rather from the evening news or, still less, our own lived experience. The world in which the Conventions were drafted was a world of states: powerful states, weak states, predatory states, law-abiding states, but states all the same. Soldiers wore uniforms designed by their states, carried weapons issued by their states, obeyed orders given by their commanders, and fought against the armies of other states.

Well--most of …

Torture's Truth, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Article, I argue that the obstacles to having a serious conversation about torture are exacerbated by a truth that torture teaches us - a truth that we cannot afford fully to know and, so, frantically try to obscure. Law is about respect for commitments and limits, and the existence of torture challenges the possibility of such respect. If we are prepared to torture, then, it would seem, we are prepared to do anything, and the restraint that law purports to impose upon us is a fraud. Torture's truth, then, is that all of our promises to ourselves and …