Law Commons^™

Brian H. Stuy (With Foreward By David Smolin), Open Secret: Cash And Coercion In China's International Adoption Program, Brian H. Stuy

David M. Smolin

Open Secret is a documentation and analysis of seriously abusive practices in China's intercountry adoption system. The article describes three kinds of abuses: baby-buying programs at Chinese orphanages, "confiscations" of children by population control officials, and "education" programs in which orphanages falsify the ages and family situation of teenagers in order to make them paper eligible for intercountry adoption. The article questions the effectiveness of the Hague legal regimen for intercountry adoption, particularly in the context of China. A brief foreward by David Smolin places Brian Stuy's extensively-researched article about adoptions from China in a broader context.

Cuba And China: A Comparative Study Of Digital Oppression, Katharine M. Villalobos

Katharine M. Villalobos

The Digital Age has introduced a new form of expression that totalitarian states are struggling to silence. With social sharing websites like Twitter and Youtube, political dissidents living under oppressive governments can expose governmental abuse to web-users worldwide in a matter of seconds. However, while digital media has proved more difficult to control than traditional, non-electronic media, dictatorships like Cuba and China are resolved to prevent its inhabitants from freely using and expressing themselves on the Internet—even if that means violating their obligations as signatories of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Both Cuba and China are …

The Political Question Doctrine In Uganda: A Reassessment In The Wake Of The Cehurd, David B. Dennison

David Brian Dennison

The political question doctrine protects certain governmental actions and decisions from judicial review. The doctrine emerged in the United States in the early 19th Century. It reached Ugandan jurisprudence in Ex parte Matovu in 1966. After Matovu, the doctrine existed in relative obscurity in Uganda. The doctrine made a dramatic resurgence in the Constitutional Court’s judgment in Centre of Health Human Rights & Development (CEHURD) and Three Others v. Attorney General.

In CEHURD, the Constitutional Court held that the political question doctrine prevented the court from reviewing government policy concerning the provision of maternal health care. The CEHURD judgment ruffled …

Surveillance, Speech Suppression And Degradation Of The Rule Of Law In The “Post-Democracy Electronic State”, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

None of us can claim the quality of original insight achieved by Alexis de Tocqueville in his early 19th Century classic Democracy in America in his observation that the “soft” repression of democracy was unlike that in any other political form. It is impossible to deny that we in the US, the United Kingdom and Western Europe are experiencing just such a “gentle” drift of the kind that Tocqueville describes, losing our democratic integrity amid an increasingly “pretend” democracy. He explained: “[T]he supreme power [of government] then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society …