Law Commons^™

A Global Water Apartheid: From Revelation To Resolution, Itzchak Kornfeld

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

It is well settled in international human rights law that a human right to water exists. Nevertheless, to date, there has been little scholarship about what the practical contours of the right should be. If legal tools are to benefit the world's poor and disenfranchised, they cannot be void due to the impossibility of implementation. This is the problem with the purported human right to water: it is quixotic.

This Article proposes a pragmatic solution to the potable water problem for the world's poor. The solution offered here is based on a model of privatized access to water grounded in …

Refugee Credibility Assessment And The "Religious Imposter" Problem, Michael Kagan

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Credibility assessment in refugee status determination (RSD) poses unique challenges when the outcome of asylum applications turns on the question of whether an asylum seeker is actually a member of a persecuted religious minority. These cases require secular adjudicators to delve into matters of religious identity and faith that are, by their nature, subjective and beyond the realm of objective analysis. This Article explores practical means of addressing this challenge through a case study of the RSD interviews of Eritrean asylum seekers in Egypt who based their refugee claims on Pentecostal religious associations. Analysis of the interview methods used in …

One New President, One New Patriarch, And A Generous Disregard For The Constitution:, Robert C. Blitt

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The government of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC)--the country's predominant religious group--recently underwent back-to-back changes in each institution's respective leadership. This coincidence of timing affords a unique opportunity to reassess the status of constitutional secularism and church-state relations in the Russian Federation. Following a discussion of the presidential and patriarchal elections that occurred between March 2008 and January 2009, the Article surveys recent developments in Russia as they relate to the nation's constitutional obligations. In the face of this analysis, the Article argues that the government and the ROC alike continue to willfully undermine the constitutional principles of …

The Conflict Between The Alien Tort Statute Litigation And Foreign Amnesty Laws, Carlee M. Hobbs

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Since the landmark case Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, foreign individuals have increasingly utilized the Alien Tort Statute to raise claims of human rights violations in the United States federal courts. Defendants, however, have alleged that principles of international comity necessitate dismissal of the suit when the foreign country in which the human rights violations occurred has granted defendants amnesty. While the doctrine of international comity permits dismissal if the case requires a federal court to adjudicate the internal affairs of a foreign country, the Supreme Court held, in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, that the Alien Tort Statue grants U.S. courts jurisdiction over …

The Responsibility To Protect And The Decline Of Sovereignty: Free Speech Protection Under International Law, William Magnuson

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

State sovereignty has long held a revered post in international law, but it received a blow in the aftermath of World War II, when the world realized the full extent of atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis on their own citizens. In the postwar period, the idea that individuals possessed rights independent of their own states gained a foothold in world discussions, and a proliferation of human rights treaties guaranteeing fundamental rights followed. These rights were, for the most part, unenforceable, though, and in the 1990s, a number of humanitarian catastrophes (in Kosovo, Rwanda, and Somalia) galvanized the international community to …

Missed Opportunity: Congress's Attempted Response To The World's Demand For The Violence Against Women Act, Brenton T. Culpepper

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Morrison struck down, as a violation of the Commerce Clause, § 13,981 of the Violence Against Women Act, that provided a private right of action for victims of gender-motivated violence to assert against their abusers. However, § 13,981 should have been affirmed as implementing legislation designed to fulfill U.S. obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and customary international law. Recognizing § 13,981 as implementing legislation serves as a foundation for the United States to restore itself as a legitimate human rights leader capable of both appreciating its own international …