Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Law
Margins Of Empire: The Sakhalin Koreans’ Long Saga Home, Timothy Webster
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 …
The Minds Behind The Movement: The Role Of Academics In East Asia’S War Reparations Litigation, Timothy Webster
The Minds Behind The Movement: The Role Of Academics In East Asia’S War Reparations Litigation, Timothy Webster
Faculty Scholarship
East Asia's war compensation litigation simultaneously unites diverse regional actors (lawyers, survivors, activists) and fray international relations (as recent verdicts from South Korea attest). However, one view of the merits of these lawsuits is that they have reconfigured transnational activism in East Asia, exhumed forgotten and suppressed histories of Japanese aggression, and on occasion compensated victims of World War II. This Article highlights the role of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese activists, lawyers and scholars in researching, filing, litigating and appealing over 80 lawsuits between 1972 and the present.
South Korea Shatters The Paradigm: Corporate Liability, Historical Accountability, And The Second World War, Timothy Webster
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
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
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 …
The Japanese International Law 'Revolution': International Human Rights Law And Its Impact In Japan, Kenneth L. Port
The Japanese International Law 'Revolution': International Human Rights Law And Its Impact In Japan, Kenneth L. Port
Faculty Scholarship
Some observers have argued that because of a lack of enforcement powers, international law has relatively little impact on the conduct of nations and, in fact, may not be "law" at all. Others have inquired whether legal norms which underlie international human rights law have any influence on the domestic law of signatory nations. This article argues that international law can profoundly influence the development of the domestic laws of nations regardless of the lack of coercive enforcement powers. This point becomes clear through a consideration of Japan's experience in adopting and internalizing international law norms.