Law Commons^™

Human Rights Violations As Mass Torts: Compensation As A Proxy For Justice In The United States Civil Litigation System, Elizabeth J. Cabraser

Vanderbilt Law Review

On July 26, 2000, final approval was granted to a landmark $1.25 billion settlement of the claims of an international class of Holocaust victims against Swiss Banks that engaged in massive looting and misappropriation of assets entrusted to them by hundreds of thousands of Jews and other groups imprisoned, murdered, and dislocated by the Nazi regime. The Swiss Banks complaints linked the actions of Swiss financial institutions to the Nazi regime and its program of genocide.

The Swiss Banks litigation was brought and settled under federal class action rules in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of …

Brown, The Civil Rights Movement, And The Silent Litigation Revolution, Stephen C. Yeazell

Vanderbilt Law Review

One doubts that Robert Carter, Thurgood Marshall, Spottswood Robinson, Jack Greenberg and the rest of the legal team that argued Brown v. Board of Education spent much time thinking about mass torts. Nonetheless, it is entirely appropriate that a commemoration of their achievements include not only that topic but also international human rights and health care, as well as the more expected ones of education and social welfare. Brown was part of a revolution, and revolutions often have collateral effects as important as their immediate consequences. The civil rights movement followed the same pattern.

As an immediate consequence, that movement …

Laying One Bankrupt Critique To Rest: "Sosa V. Alvarez-Machain" And The Future Of International Human Rights Litigation In U.S. Courts, Ralph G. Steinhardt

Vanderbilt Law Review

In offering a form of civil redress to the victims of international human rights violations, litigation under the Alien Tort Statute ("ATS") has come to reflect in microcosm the ways that international law and practice have changed in the last half century. Specifically, the successful ATS cases since the Second Circuit's seminal decision in Fildrtiga v. Peia-Irala illustrate the blurring of certain structural distinctions that had long given international law its characteristic shape, especially the distinctions between public and private international law, between treaties and custom, between state and nonstate actors, between international and domestic law, and between lex lata …

With All Deliberate Speed: Civil Human Rights Litigation As A Tool For Social Change, Beth Van Schaack

Vanderbilt Law Review

It has been said that Fildrtiga v. Peha-Irala is the Brown v. Board of Education of human rights litigation. Like Brown, Fildrtiga presents one of those rare "breakthrough moments" in law. In Fildrtiga, the Second Circuit confirmed that victims of human rights abuses abroad could seek legal redress in United States courts under the then-obscure Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). Fildrtiga thus inaugurated a steady line of cases in U.S. courts invoking the ATCA and related statutes to adjudicate international human rights claims. For a variety of reasons, including the very existence of these statutes, civil litigation has emerged as …

"Accommodations" For The Learning Disabled: A Level Playing Field Or Affirmative Action For Elites?, Craig S. Lerner

Vanderbilt Law Review

A growing number of students in American higher education are being diagnosed as "learning disabled" and then using that diagnosis to secure beneficial "accommodations," such as extra time on exams. These accommodations are often said to be mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This Article challenges the premise that the ADA necessarily requires educational institutions to provide learning disabled students with any accommodations. The ADA defines "disability" as an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. Whether one is substantially limited is determined with reference not to one's innate abilities, but to the skills of the average …

Return To Europe? The Czech Republic And The Eu's Influence On Its Treatment Of Roma, Matthew D. Marden

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Czech Republic has faced much criticism in the past fifteen years for the treatment of its Romani minority community. The European Union has successfully applied informal, non-legal means of pressuring the Czech Republic into making some changes necessary to improve living conditions for Roma. With the Czech Republic's recent accession to the European Union, legal human rights institutions will likely play a larger role in ensuring that the Czech Republic continues to improve conditions for Czech Roma. The Author uses a case brought by a group of Roma at the European Court of Human Rights to demonstrate the potential …

The Lives Of Animals, The Lives Of Prisoners, And The Revelations Of Abu Ghraib, Charles H. Brower, Ii

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In this Article, Professor Brower suggests that the images depicting inhuman treatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison contain timely lessons about the function and the importance of legal personality. To illustrate this thesis, the Author first identifies animals as a population condemned to an existence bereft of the protections that accompany legal personality. Next, the Author describes the chilling similarities between the treatment of animals and the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and in the so-called "Global War on Terror." Finally, the Author discusses three potential lessons for a nation widely perceived to have retreated from its commitment …