Law Commons^™

Interview With Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Iachr Rapporteur On The Rights Of The Child, Human Rights Brief

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

International Legal Updates, Anna Naimark, Christina Fetterhoff, Kyle Bates, Saralyn Salisbury, Rachael Curtis, Megan Wakefield, Thais-Lyn Trayer

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Updates From The International And Internationalized Criminal Courts, Claire Grandison, Benjamin Watson, Brynn Weinstein, Adam Dembling, Yaritza Velez, Michelle Flash

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Updates From The Regional Human Rights Systems, Anna Taylor, Matthew Lopas, Sarone Solomon

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Updates From Inter-Governmental Organizations, Marie Soueid

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Adoption Of The Responsibility To Protect, William W. Burke-White

All Faculty Scholarship

This book chapter traces the legal and political origins of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine from its early origins in the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty through the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document and up to January 2011. The chapter examines the legal meaning of the Responsibility to Protect, the obligations the Responsibility imposes on states and international institutions, and its implications in for the international legal and political systems. The chapter argues that while the Responsibility to Protect has developed with extraordinary speed, it is still a norm in development rather than a binding legal rule. Its …

A Critique Of Rights In Transitional Justice: The African Experience, Makau Wa Mutua

Contributions to Books

Published in Rethinking Transitions: Equality and Social Justice in Societies Emerging from Conflict, Gaby Oré Aguilar & Felipe Gómez Isa, eds.

This chapter interrogates the concept and application of transitional justice as a medium for the reclamation of post-conflict states in Africa. While it argues that transitional justice is an important – often indispensable – process in reconstructing post-despotic and battered societies, it nevertheless casts a jaundiced eye at traditionalist human rights approaches. It contends that individualist, non-collective, or non-community, approaches to transitional justice have serious limitations. It posits that the Nuremberg model, on which the ICTR and ICTY were …

First, Do No Harm: Response To “If You Prick Me”, Patricia A. Broussard

Journal Publications

Brianna Lennon makes several cogent and persuasive arguments about Female Genital Mutilation (“FGM”) in her recently published Student Note entitled, If You Prick Me: The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Female Genital Cutting Policy Turnabout. She successfully articulates why she believes that by prohibiting FGM, opponents are in effect reinforcing it as a tie to the former culture or country. However, although Ms. Lennon makes some sound points, she overlooks and thereby, fails to answer the most obvious question which is, who owns a woman’s body? If one reaches the conclusion that a woman owns her body, then the logical extension …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Firm Compliance: Lessons From The International Law-International Relations Discourse, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There has been a long and fruitful discourse between and among legal academics and political scientists, known as international law (IL)-international relations (IL) scholarship. A great deal of that scholarship has discussed the effectiveness of particular IL regimes, usually as part of a larger discourse regarding the question of compliance with IL or international institutions, more generally, including agreed norms and soft law. This field of IL-IR scholarship has taken a fairly Westphalian and Weberian view of international law and of international relations, viewing states as the subjects of international law and, thus, seeing states as its subjects of study. …

Democracy Promotion In The Obama Administration: An Opportunity To Match Action To Rhetoric, Patrick J. Glen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article addresses whether and to what extent the Obama administration should continue the Bush administration policies relating to democracy promotion. The focus of the article is on the ADVANCE Act of 2007, a legislative enactment that institutionalized democracy promotion in the State Department. After explicating the key provisions of this Act, as well as their implementation status, the article addresses key critiques leveled at democracy promotion, as well as areas where the Obama administration can expand on what has been accomplished thus far in this field. In the end, democracy promotion should continue to be an integral component of …

Carl Schmitt And The Critique Of Lawfare, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

“Lawfare” is the use of law as a weapon of war against a military adversary. Lawfare critics complain that self-proclaimed “humanitarians” are really engaged in the partisan and political abuse of law—lawfare. This paper turns the mirror on lawfare critics themselves, and argues that the critique of lawfare is no less abusive and political than the alleged lawfare it attacks. Radical lawfare critics view humanitarian law with suspicion, as nothing more than an instrument used by weak adversaries against strong military powers. Casting suspicion on humanitarian law by attacking the motives of humanitarian lawyers, they undermine disinterested argument, and ultimately …

The Advance Democracy Act And The Future Of United States Democracy Promotion Efforts, Patrick J. Glen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article addresses whether and to what extent the Obama administration should continue the Bush administration policies relating to democracy promotion. The focus of the article is on the ADVANCE Act of 2007, a legislative enactment that institutionalized democracy promotion in the State Department. After explicating the key provisions of this Act, as well as their implementation status, the article addresses key critiques leveled at democracy promotion, as well as areas where the Obama administration can expand on what has been accomplished thus far in this field. In the end, democracy promotion should continue to be an integral component of …

Between Minimum And Optimum World Public Order: An Ethical Path For The Future, Steven Ratner

Book Chapters

Among the most significant contributions of policy-oriented jurisprudence to our understanding of international legal process is its identification of minimum and optimum world public order as the overarching goals of international law. Minimum public order in its essence refers to the global state of affairs with limited recourse to unauthorized violence to solve disputes, while optimum public order is synonymous with a world in which human dignity is maximally protected. These two concepts, augmented by other pairings now second-nature to us (for example, authority and control, and myth system and operational code), have also permeated—in the latter case, germinated in—the …

Advantaging Aggressors: Justice & Deterrence In International Law, Paul H. Robinson, Adil Ahmad Haque

All Faculty Scholarship

Current international law imposes limitations on the use of force to defend against unlawful aggression that improperly advantage unlawful aggressors and disadvantage their victims. The Article gives examples of such rules, governing a variety of situations, showing how clearly unjust they can be. No domestic criminal law system would tolerate their use.

There are good practical reasons why international law should care that its rules are perceived as unjust. Given the lack of an effective international law enforcement mechanism, compliance depends to a large degree upon the moral authority with which international law speaks. Compliance is less likely when its …

El Derecho Para Decir “Sí, Quiero”: El Movimiento Lgbtq En Los Ee.Uu., España, Y La Argentina, Jamila A. Humphrie

Hispanic Studies Honors Projects

This Honors Project reflects my four years of experiences as a student of the Hispanic Studies Department. The project incorporates my experience and research conducted during my study abroad experience in Argentina, Spanish, and critical study and theory. Throughout the project, I examine the dichotomy between assimilation and liberation as a framework for the LGBTQ movement, and the commonalities in the histories of the three countries. My thesis states that: as a result of globalization and what I call the transatlantic trade of ideas, the LGBTQ movements in Spain, Argentina and the U.S. have all adapted a limited and ultimately …

Coercion's Common Threads: Addressing Vagueness In The Federal Criminal Prohibitions On Torture By Looking To State Domestic Violence Laws, Sarah H. St. Vincent

Michigan Law Review

Under international law, the United States is obligated to criminalize acts of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. However, the federal criminal torture laws employ several terms whose meanings are so indeterminate that they inhibit the statutes' effectiveness and fail to provide adequate guidance regarding precisely which forms of mistreatment may result in prosecution. These ambiguous terms have given rise to serious and prolonged controversies within the executive branch regarding what torture is-controversies that confirm, and may further compound, the uncertainty of liability under the laws in question.

In order to solve this problem of vagueness and provide definitive …

Introduction To Special Symposium Feature: Successes And Failures In International Human Trafficking Law, Bridgette A. Carr

Articles

The Essays in this issue of the Michigan Journal of International Law showcase the results of an important and historic symposium held at the University of Michigan Law School in February 2011. Acknowledging the ten-year anniversary of both the international Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons (Trafficking Protocol), and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in the United States, the conference brought together an extraordinary group of legal scholars, government officials, and practitioners to examine the successes and failures in international human trafficking law. The need to evaluate both the successes and failures in antitrafficking law is …

Slavery And The Law In Atlantic Perspective: Jurisdiction, Jurisprudence, And Justice, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

The four articles in this special issue experiment with an innovative set of questions and a variety of methods in order to push the analysis of slavery and the law into new territory. Their scope is broadly Atlantic, encompassing Suriname and Saint-Domingue/Haiti, New York and New Orleans, port cities and coffee plantations. Each essay deals with named individuals in complex circumstances, conveying their predicaments as fine-grained microhistories rather than as shocking anecdotes. Each author, moreover, demonstrates that the moments when law engaged slavery not only reflected but also influenced larger dynamics of sovereignty and jurisprudence.

Redefining Human Rights Lawyering Through The Lens Of Critical Theory: Lessons For Pedagogy And Practice, Caroline Bettinger-López, Davida Finger, Meetali Jain, Jonel Newman, Sarah Paoletti, Deborah M. Weissman

Articles

No abstract provided.

Hiv And Women: Incongruent Policies, Criminal Consequences, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

UN Women must take an aggressive role in the standardization of laws and policies at the global and national level where their incongruence has negative and often criminal consequences for the health and lives of women and girls. This article focuses in on three such examples: opt-out testing for HIV, criminalization of vertical transmission, and the new World Health Organization guidelines on breastfeeding.

When Men Are Harmed: Feminism, Queer Theory, And Torture At Abu Ghraib, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article I explore the assertions of "anti-imperialist" feminist scholars who critique "imperial feminism" for its support of the war on terror (WOT). I bring into this analysis the proposition by queer theorists that feminist reliance on male/ female subordination has the potential to not only obscure harm in times of war but also to perpetuate it. As a case study, I focus on the Abu Ghraib prison photos that depict, in part, female soldiers torturing male Iraqi prisoners. In conducting this analysis, I reveal the analytical limitations of dominance and cultural feminists, particularly with regard to male harm …

Human Rights And Southern Realities, Tamara Relis

Scholarly Works

The proliferation of international human rights treaties, committees and courts over the last sixty years represents enormous achievement. International human rights laws are now asserted throughout the world by individuals of many cultures and traditions. Yet, at the same time international human rights ideas and principles continue to have difficulty in manifesting their relevance in the daily lives of those who are geographically and culturally distant from international institutions Two new books - William Twining’s Human Rights, Southern Voices: Francis Deng, Abdullahi An-Na’im, Yash Ghai, Upendra Baxi, and Helen Stacy’s Human Rights for the 21st Century - address aspects of …

Twenty Years Of Critical Race Theory: Looking Back To Move Forward, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

This Article revisits the history of Critical Race Theory (CRT) through a prism that highlights its historical articulation in light of the emergence of postracialism. The Article will explore two central inquiries. This first query attends to the specific contours of law as the site out of which CRT emerged. The Article hypothesizes that legal discourse presented a particularly legible template from which to demystify the role of reason and the rule of law in upholding the racial order. The second objective is to explore the contemporary significance of CRT's trajectory in light of today's "post-racial" milieu. The Article posits …

Blood Transfusions, Jehovah’S Witnesses, And The American Patients’ Rights Movement, Charles Baron

Charles H. Baron

The litigation to protect Jehovah’s Witnesses from unwanted blood transfusions, which their theology considers a violation of the biblical prohibition against drinking blood, has produced important changes in both the right to refuse treatment and in the preferred treatment methods of all patients. This article traces the evolution of the rights of competent medical patients in the United States to refuse medical treatment. It also discusses the impact this litigation has had on the medical community’s realization that blood transfusions were neither as safe nor as medically necessary as medical culture posited.

Review Of Paul Farmer's 'Partner To The Poor', Anthony Chase

Anthony Chase

No abstract provided.

Lessons From Movements For Rights Regarding Sexual Orientation In The Arab World” In Monshipour, Anthony Chase

Anthony Chase

No abstract provided.

Information Warfare And Civilian Populations: How The Law Of War Addresses A Fear Of The Unknown, Lucian Dervan

Lucian E Dervan

Imagine a civilian communications system is being temporarily relied upon by an opposing military force for vital operations. If one launches a computer network attack against the communications system, the operation may disable the opposing force’s ability to function adequately and, as a result, prompt their surrender. The alternative course of action is to launch a traditional kinetic weapons attack in the hopes of inflicting enough casualties on the troops to induce surrender. Given these options, the law of war would encourage the utilization of the computer network attack because it would result in less unnecessary suffering. But is the …

Bed Och Arbeta – Om Religionsfrihet I Arbetsliv Och Skola. Juridik + Samhälle + Praktik [Work And Pray – On Freedom Of Religion In Working Life And In Schools], Reinhold Fahlbeck

Reinhold Fahlbeck

No abstract provided.

The Right To Education For Roma Children Under The European Convention On Human Rights, Ida Elisabeth Koch

Ida Elisabeth Koch

No abstract provided.

Finding Home In The World: A Deontological Theory Of The Right To Be Adopted, Paulo Barrozo

Paulo Barrozo

Because of the continued dominance of consequentialist views, the deontological paradigm that emerges in the form of a human rights approach to adoption faces two major and partially connected obstacles. First, and despite the fact that the human rights approach has found compelling advocates, its jurisprudential basis has yet to be fully articulated. And in part because of insufficient theorization, the emerging deontological adoption is constantly at risk of being rhetorically and practically subsumed or engulfed by the resilient consequentialist-cum-charity paradigm. This article addresses these two obstacles, laying out the foundations of a deontological theory of adoption.After the Introduction, Part …