Law Commons^™

Participatory Fact-Finding: Developing New Directions For Human Rights Investigations Through New Technologies, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

This chapter considers the way in which broader participation in human rights fact-finding, enabled by the introduction of new technologies, will change the nature of fact-finding itself. Using the example of a participatory mapping project called Map Kibera, the chapter argues that new technologies will change human rights fact-finding by providing opportunities for ordinary individuals to investigate the human rights issues that affect them. Those who were formerly the ‘subjects’ of human rights investigations now have the potential to be agents in their own right. This ‘participatory fact-finding’ may not be as effective in ‘naming and shaming’ states and companies …

A Human Rights Perspective On U.S. Courts And The Constitutional Regulation Of The Internet, Molly K. Land

Molly K. Land

This chapter examines the approaches used by the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower U.S. federal courts to contend with the challenges presented by new Internet technologies for the protection of constitutional rights. The chapter first discusses judicial regulation of the Internet as a story of inter-branch power sharing. Regulation has been most effective, and most coherent, when Congress and the courts are engaged in dialogue with one another in ways that play to the strengths of each. Second, the chapter argues that although U.S. federal courts have been relatively effective in updating the individual constitutional protections to meet the …

Justice As Legitimacy In The European Court Of Human Rights, Molly K. Land

Molly K. Land

Using the example of the prisoner voting cases at the European Court of Human Rights, this chapter builds on existing literature regarding the legitimacy of judicial institutions to consider the role of justice with respect to the normative and sociological legitimacy of international human rights courts. The chapter identifies the pursuit of just outcomes as a significant independent influence on the legitimacy of these courts. Doing justice even when it requires expansive lawmaking in order to protect unpopular groups can be an affirmative source of legitimacy for these institutions. Although the legitimacy challenges faced by the European Court of Human …

Adjudicating Trips For Development, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

No abstract provided.

Human Rights Frames In Ip Contests, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

No abstract provided.

Region Codes And Human Rights, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

No abstract provided.

#Ict4hr—Information And Communication Technologies For Human Rights, Molly Land, Patrick Meier, Mark Belinsky, Emily Jacobi

Molly K. Land

No abstract provided.

Access To Health Information Under International Human Rights Law, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

This article discusses whether and, if so, to what extent states are obligated under international treaty law to provide individuals, lay healthcare providers, professional healthcare providers, and policymakers with appropriate health information. The article concludes that health information is an essential component of many identified and established human rights. States party to treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights must provide and guarantee access to health information. Appropriate health information fosters meaningful social and political participation and ensures that individuals achieve and enjoy the rights afforded to them by international human rights law. This article provides …

Rebalancing Trips, Molly K. Land

Molly K. Land

In recent years, global intellectual property scholarship has been preoccupied with “rehabilitating” the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). With some distance from the polarizing rhetoric that accompanied the early years of TRIPS, contemporary accounts laud the treaty as far more flexible and sensitive to the needs of developing countries than had previously been believed. This article argues that, contrary to these accounts, the fears of developing countries concerning TRIPS have indeed been realized—just not in the manner they imagined at the time of its conclusion. Although TRIPS does contain significant flexibilities, states have largely failed to take …

Intellectual Property Rights And The Right To Participate In Cultural Life, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

Although many contend that human rights law is a justification for intellectual property rights, precisely the opposite is true. Human rights law is far more a limit on intellectual property rights than a rationale for such regimes. In a variety of ways, human rights law requires states to take specific, concrete steps to limit the effects of intellectual property rights in order to protect international human rights. This powerful and emancipatory dimension of human rights law has unfortunately been overshadowed by those who claim human rights as a basis for granting exclusive rights.

The U.N. Committee on Economic, Social, and …

Networked Activism, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

The same technologies that groups of ordinary citizens are using to write operating systems and encyclopedias are fostering a quiet revolution in another area – human rights advocacy. On websites such as Avaaz.org and Wikipedia, ordinary citizens are reporting on human rights violations and organizing email writing campaigns, activities formerly the prerogative of professionals. The involvement of amateurs has been heralded as revolutionizing a variety of industries, from journalism to photography. This article asks whether it has the potential to make human rights organizations irrelevant.

In contrast to much of the recent literature, this article provides a decidedly more skeptical …

Peer Producing Human Rights, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

Can there be a Wikipedia for human rights? The growth of collaborative technologies has spurred the development of projects such as Wikipedia, in which large groups of volunteers contribute to production in a decentralized and open format. The author analyzes how these methods of peer-based production can be applied to advance international human rights as well as the limitations of such a model in this field. An underlying characteristic of peer-based production, amateurism, increases capacity and participation. However, the involvement of ordinary individuals in the production of human rights reporting is also its greatest disadvantage, since human rights reports generated …

Protecting Rights Online, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

Although the human rights and access to knowledge (A2K) movements share many of the same goals, their legal and regulatory agendas have little in common. While state censorship online is a central concern for human rights advocates, this issue has been largely ignored by the A2K movement. Likewise, human rights advocates have failed to examine the cumulative effect of expanding copyright protections on education and culture. These disparate agendas reflect fundamentally different views about what states should regulate and the role of international institutions. Overcoming this divide is critical to ensuring the movements can draw on their respective strengths to …

Functional Democracy: Responding To Failures Of Accountability, Molly K. Land

Molly K. Land

No abstract provided.