Law Commons^™

Against Settlement In Transnational Business And Human Rights Litigation, Hassan M. Ahmad

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In Against Settlement, Owen Fiss argued that settlement may not always be the optimal result of civil suits, particularly those that involve novel or ambiguous areas of law or ostensible power imbalances. That work spurred a range of scholarship around the merits and demerits of settlement. And although the settlement versus litigation debate is now almost four decades old, its currency persists in common law systems in which courts are, at times, called upon to expand or even re-envision doctrines or procedural rules. This article revisits that debate. It applies Against Settlement to transnational business and human rights litigation that …

Judicial Activism In Transnational Business And Human Rights Litigation, Hassan M. Ahmad

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This article explores a more expansive adjudicative role for domestic judiciaries in the U.S., U.K., and Canada in private law disputes that concern personal and environmental harm by multinational corporations that operate in the Global South. This expansive role may confront—although not necessarily upend—existing understandings around the separation of powers in common law jurisdictions. I canvass existing literature on judicial activism. Then, I detail legality gaps in the selected common law home states, which can be broken down into four categories: i) failed legislation; ii) deficient legislation; iii) judicial restraint; and iv) judicial deference.

I suggest three ways to actualize …

Solitary Confinement, Prisoner Litigation, And The Possibility Of A Prison Abolitionist Lawyering Ethic, Debra Parkes

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This paper considers the role that litigation might play in ending the human rights crisis of solitary confinement in Canada while also examining the relationship of prisoner rights litigation to broader, anti-carceral social movements. The paper proceeds in four parts. The first section provides a brief overview of the widespread use of solitary confinement in Canada’s federal prisons and in provincial and territorial jails. Next, current litigation seeking an end to solitary confinement in the federal prisons system is located in the context of a long history of prisoner rights litigation in both the US and Canada. The third section …