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Human Rights Law

Western New England University School of Law

World War II

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

Margins Of Empire: The Sakhalin Koreans’ Long Saga Home, Timothy Webster Jan 2022

Margins Of Empire: The Sakhalin Koreans’ Long Saga Home, Timothy Webster

Faculty Scholarship

Migration carries with it many risks, from perilous journeys along risky corridors to hostile environments in one's adopted country. But what happens when migrants cannot return home? This Article examines the difficulties endured by Sakhalin Koreans, a group of ethnic Koreans who emigrated to Sakhalin Island during the Japanese colonial period and found themselves stranded in a foreign country (the Soviet Union) for the next half century. After recounting the migration of Koreans to Sakhalin, and analyzing lawsuits filed in Japan to repatriate them, it analyzes the infirmities of the international human rights system and the challenges of repatriating a …


South Korea Shatters The Paradigm: Corporate Liability, Historical Accountability, And The Second World War, Timothy Webster Jan 2022

South Korea Shatters The Paradigm: Corporate Liability, Historical Accountability, And The Second World War, Timothy Webster

Faculty Scholarship

South Korea is currently revising its interpretation of Japanese colonialism, and the fallout from World War II more generally. In 2018, the Supreme Court of South Korea issued two opinions that staked new ground in this process of legal revision. First, by holding Japanese multinational enterprises legally liable for events that took place in the early 20th century, the verdicts fissure a wall of corporate impunity that courts in Japan, the United States and many Western jurisdictions have erected over the past three decades. Second, by situating the decisions within Korea’s own colonial past, the judgments advance a post-colonial jurisprudence …


The Long Tail Of World War Ii: Jus Post Bellum In Contemporary East Asia, Timothy Webster Jan 2020

The Long Tail Of World War Ii: Jus Post Bellum In Contemporary East Asia, Timothy Webster

Faculty Scholarship

The shadow of World War II still looms over East Asia. Unlike the West, issues of state accountability, corporate liability, and individual reparation roil the victims, governments, and civil society organizations. It stills form a critical, often controversial, backdrop for international relations among China, Japan, Korea, and other Asian nations. This chapter fills an important gap by focusing on jus post bellum outside of the West. The chapter examines the results, motivations, and achievements of civil litigation, namely approximately one hundred World War II reparations lawsuits filed in Japan. In so doing, it answers three related questions. Why does World …


Disaggregating Corporate Liability: Japanese Multinationals And World War Ii, Timothy Webster Jan 2020

Disaggregating Corporate Liability: Japanese Multinationals And World War Ii, Timothy Webster

Faculty Scholarship

The past two decades have witnessed unprecedented attention to corporate legal liability for human rights abuses. Yet the supporting jurisprudence is relatively thin. Scholars generally agree that corporations can incur legal liability for serious violations of international human rights law. But courts find any number of ways to avoid such a result. This Article finds qualified support for an emergent norm of corporate civil liability from recent litigation in Japan. Specifically, the transnational war reparations litigation of the past three decades has yielded a consistent jurisprudence of qualified liability. Courts detail the abuses committed by Japan's largest multinational corporations, and …