Law Commons^™

Legal, Policy, And Environmental Scholars Discuss Global Food Systems At Indiana Law Symposium, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law and its Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies are hosting scholars from around the country Friday and Saturday (Jan. 19-20) for an interdisciplinary discussion on one of the world’s most prevalent problems—food insecurity.

Data from the World Bank estimate more than 780 million people around the world suffered from chronic hunger in 2022. As climate change affects agricultural production and water accessibility, the problem could worsen in coming years.

“A Fragile Framework: How Global Food Systems Intersect with the International Legal Order, the Environment, and the World’s Populations” will bring together legal, policy, …

Meet Our New Faculty: Yvette Butler, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Associate Professor Yvette T. Butler joined the Indiana Law faculty this summer. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota, Morris, and her law degree from The George Washington University Law School.

Policing Pregnancy "Crimes", Valena Beety, Jennifer Oliva

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization held that there is no right to abortion healthcare under the United States Constitution. This Essay details how states prosecuted pregnant people for pregnancy behaviors and speculative fetal harms prior to the Dobbs decision. In this connection, it also identifies two, related post-Dobbs concerns: (1) that states will ramp up their policing of pregnancy behaviors and (2) that prosecutors will attempt to substantiate these charges by relying on invalid scientific evidence. This Essay examines the faulty forensic science that states have used to support fetal harm allegations and reminds …

Collective Data Rights And Their Possible Abuse, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Human Rights, Constitutional Rights, And Judicial Review: Comparing And Assessing Michael Perry's Early And Contemporary Arguments, Daniel O. Conkle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this Essay, I explore, compare, and evaluate two theoretical models of judicial review in individual rights cases, each proposed by Professor Michael J. Perry, albeit in books separated by three and a half decades. In his 1982 book, The Constitution, the Courts, and Human Rights: An Inquiry into the Legitimacy of Constitutional Policymaking by the Judiciary, Early Perry embraced an aggressive form of judicial activism, urging the Supreme Court to test political judgments through an open-ended search for political-moral truth. Contemporary Perry, by contrast, takes a very different approach. In his 2017 book, A Global Political Morality: Human Rights, …

Nature's Rights, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Do forests and rivers possess standing to sue? Do mountain ranges have substantive rights? A recent issue of The Judges’ Journal, a preeminent publication for American judges, alerts the bench, bar, and policymakers to the rapidly emerging “rights of nature,” predicting that state and federal courts will increasingly see claims asserting such rights. Within the United States, Tribal law has begun to legally recognize the rights of rivers, mountains, and other natural features. Several municipalities across the United States have also acted to recognize the rights of nature. United States courts have not yet addressed the issue, though in 2017, …

Compensating Victims Of Police Violence, Valena Beety

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Victims of police violence suffer physical trauma and their families suffer mental trauma “born from the violation of a certain social trust.” Their losses are also financial, including medical expenses and mental health treatment, as well as lost income. While scholars and citizens have advocated for accountability and justice, this is the first essay to advocate for the simple act of victims’ compensation for victims of police violence.

To be considered for compensation, victims must first prove that they cooperated with law enforcement and were “innocent” of wrongdoing. Yet, victims of police violence are inordinately and openly blamed for their …

Changed Science Writs And State Habeas Relief, Valena Beety

Articles by Maurer Faculty

For decades now, the 1996 federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) has limited the scope and influence of federal courts in post-conviction case review, forcing convicted individuals to rely instead on state habeas proceedings for conviction relief. Due in large part to the 2009 National Academy of Sciences Report, petitions for conviction relief increasingly include challenges to the government’s scientific evidence at trial. These petitions analyze that evidence by comparing the trial evidence to the advancement of scientific findings and scientific knowledge in the years since the trial. State habeas petitions thus provide an avenue for relief from …

Business & Human Rights: Optimism And Concern From The U.S. Perspective, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Forty-five years passed between the release of the first major United Nations report referencing the need to regulate transnational corporations and the release of the Zero Draft. Those years were accompanied by vibrant scholarly work and debate, as well as a significant jurisprudence, corporate engagement, and civil society discourse and activism that, cumulatively, has resulted in a much better understanding of how the once very distinct ideas of “business” and “human rights” are now merged by an ampersand. The field of business & human rights signifies the introduction of polycentric governance and law that binds businesses, sometimes softly and sometimes …

Constructing Citizenship Through War In The Human Rights Era, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

War's historical relationship to the creation of territorial nation-states is well known, but what empirical and normative role does war play in creating the citizen in a modern democracy? Although contemporary theories of citizenship and human rights do not readily acknowledge a legitimate, generative function for war - as evidenced by restrictions on aggression, annexation of occupied territory, expulsions, denationalization, or derogation of fundamental rights - an empirical assessment of state practice, including the interpretation of international legal obligations, suggests that war plays a powerfully transformative role in the construction of citizenship, and that international law and norms implicitly accept …

Le Concept Dé Dignité Le Droit Américain, Elisabeth Zoller

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Kiobel's Broader Significance: Implications For International Legal Theory, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Making The World In Atlanta's Image: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Morris Abram, And The Legislative History Of The United Nations Race Convention, H. Timothy Lovelace

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Kiobel, Unilateralism, And The Retreat From Extraterritoriality, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

State Court International Human Rights Litigation: A Concerning Trend?, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The brief symposium contribution explores human rights litigation in U.S. state courts under state law. Faced with higher hurdles to successfully asserting Alien Tort Statute claims in U.S. courts and reluctant to re-embrace more traditional international lawmaking, human rights advocates have begun to experiment with alternative strategies for redressing human rights violations. One strategy involves state court litigation. Some commentators believe that state courts may prove more amenable to enforcing and advancing human rights. This symposium contribution explores the parallels between the recent willingness to consider state court litigation to remedy human rights violations occurring abroad and other state court …

Book Review. The Legacy Of The International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia Edited By B. Swart, A. Zahar And G. Sluiter, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Rehabilitating Territoriality In Human Rights, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

For many years, territorial principles anchored an international system organized around nation-states. Recently, however, the human rights movement has sought to change the state-centric focus of international law and overcome the limitations of a system where the territorial state is the primary actor. The field of human rights has promoted a new legal orthodoxy that places the person at the center of the international legal system. Within this orthodoxy, non-state actors play a prominent role, unilateral domestic lawsuits are promoted, and territorial borders give way when necessary for humanitarian intervention. In contrast, territorial conceptions of international law are viewed as …

Regulating Information Flows, Regulating Conflict: An Analysis Of United States Conflict Minerals Legislation, Christiana Ochoa, Patrick J. Keenan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The connection between conflict and commercial activity is the focus of this paper. In particular, it focuses on the ongoing conflict in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that is funded, in large part, by the sale of conflict commodities – minerals, metals and petroleum that fund violent groups at their source and then enters legitimate markets and products around the world. Recently, attention has turned to how to regulate conflict commerce as a tool for divesting from violent conflict. In the United States, for example, the recently-adopted Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act include a provision …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Firm Compliance: Lessons From The International Law-International Relations Discourse, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There has been a long and fruitful discourse between and among legal academics and political scientists, known as international law (IL)-international relations (IL) scholarship. A great deal of that scholarship has discussed the effectiveness of particular IL regimes, usually as part of a larger discourse regarding the question of compliance with IL or international institutions, more generally, including agreed norms and soft law. This field of IL-IR scholarship has taken a fairly Westphalian and Weberian view of international law and of international relations, viewing states as the subjects of international law and, thus, seeing states as its subjects of study. …

The Future Of Corporate Accountability For Violations Of Human Rights, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Human Rights Potential Of Sovereign Wealth Funds, Christiana Ochoa, Patrick Keenan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In April, 2008, World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, called for sovereign wealth funds to invest one percent of their capital in Africa. The result will be the International Finance Corporation's Sovereign Funds Initiative and is an attempt to nurture the potential of sovereign wealth funds to contribute to economic development and improved well-being in a number of countries in Africa and elsewhere. This article explores the actual potential of the Sovereign Funds Initiative to realize its desired goals. After exploring and demonstrating the disappointing effects of natural resource wealth, development aid and foreign direct investment on some developing countries, the …

The 2008 Ruggie Report: A Framework For Business And Human Rights, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In June 2008, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, John Ruggie, submitted the final report of his initial three-year mandate. The Report, titled Protect, Respect and Remedy: A Framework for Business and Human Rights, provides a governance-based set of findings and recommendations on the issue of business and human rights. This essay provides a concise description and brief analysis of the Report.

Towards A Cosmopolitan Vision Of International Law: Identifying And Defining Cil Post Sosa V. Alvarez-Machain, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, future Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) litigants seemingly will be asked to demonstrate that the norms giving rise to their actions are violations of clearly established Customary International Law (CIL). Given the mutable character of CIL, especially in the area of human rights, this will surely fuel the already voluminous literature on the content of the CIL of human rights.

While debate will certainly arise over the norms that have been become CIL, significant attention must be also be devoted to the problems inherent in the CIL of …

Book Review. Companies, International Trade And Human Rights By Janet Dine, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This is a book review of Janet Dine's Companies, International Trade and Human Rights (2005). While this 9-page review is quite positive, it does offer some criticisms of Dine's analysis and views.

Remembering Sudetenland: On The Legal Construction Of Ethnic Cleansing, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What is the true shape of our commitment to prohibit ethnic cleansing? This Article explores that question by considering a case observers have almost universally decided does not constitute ethnic cleansing. It examines the recent controversy in the European Union, when Sudeten Germans demanded that the Czech Republic apologize for having expelled them after WWII before being admitted to the EU. Their demands were almost universally rejected and the legality of the expulsions was reconfirmed by all relevant actors. So what is the consequence for customary international law's rules on ethnic cleansing?

The Article derives the customary legal norms logically …

Migrating Towards Minority Status: Shifting European Policy Towards Roma, Timothy W. Waters, Rachel Guglielmo

Articles by Maurer Faculty

During the 1990s, European policy towards Roma evolved from concern about migration toward rhetoric about rights. In this article we trace that shift across two OSCE reports. Following rhetorical-action models, we show how the EU's commitment to enlargement and "common values" compelled it to elaborate an internal approach to minority protection. Concerns about migration persist, but Europe now has to consider how to integrate Roma as minorities.

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.

Fighting The Axis Of Illness: Hiv/Aids, Human Rights, And U.S. Foreign Policy, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Rights Of The New Untouchables: A Constitutional Analysis Of Hiv Jurisprudence In India, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

It is believed that India will soon have the highest number of HIV/AIDS cases of any country. Some reports project that 37 million people will be infected within the next two decades. Sadly, few studies have examined the legal claims of those who suffer with this disease in this, the world's largest democracy. In this article, I systematically examine how the courts in India have responded to rights-based claims brought by people who have HIV. The conventional wisdom is that the Indian judiciary frequently protects the rights of the poor, the under-represented, and the ill. But my findings reveal that, …