Law Commons^™

The Consequences Today Of The United States' Brutal Post-9/11 Interrogation Techniques, Peter J. Honigsberg

Peter J Honigsberg

"I Still Live In Guantanamo!" Human Rights Abuses Continue After Detainees Leave Guantanamo, Peter Honigsberg

Peter J Honigsberg

In November 2014, the U.S. government transferred Yemeni national Hussein Al-marfadi, from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention center to the nation of Slovakia. He had never been charged with a crime, and had been cleared for release nearly five years before his transfer to Slovakia. Three months later, in February 2015, the Witness to Guantanamo project (W2G) interviewed Al-marfadi in Zvolen, a town in central Slovakia. Although physically and psychologically scarred from his 12 years of detention, Al-marfadi was an engaging, even-tempered and thoughtful man.

However, when W2G asked Al-marfadi about his life today, his composure and even-tempered tone transformed …

Linguistic Isolation: A New Human Rights Violation Constituting Torture, And Cruel, Inhuman And Degrading Treatment, Peter Honigsberg

Peter J Honigsberg

Sunnat was placed in a cell among other detainees in the general prison population. He spoke neither Arabic nor English, the linguae francae of the prison and the only languages spoken by the detainees in neighboring cells. Consequently, for much of his time in Guantanamo, Sunnat talked to no one. He awoke each morning and cried. Sunnat could, of course, reach out and communicate through eye contact, hand signs and facial expressions. However, Sunnat never had meaningful conversations with his neighbors.

Absence of meaningful human contact is a characteristic of isolation and a source of suffering caused by isolation. Sunnat …

Women As Perpetrators: Agency And Authority In Genocidal Rwanda, Mark Drumbl, Nicole Hogg

Mark A. Drumbl

No abstract provided.

Exchange As A Cornerstone Of Families, Martha Ertman

Martha M. Ertman

This essay up-ends critical theorist Ivan Illich’s critique of economic thinking as replacing households defined by vernacular gender with married pairs in “inhumane” sex-neutral economic partnerships. It challenges Illich’s view of exchange as a destroyer that has meddled in families for only a few hundred years, citing sociobiological literature to counter his case against exchange with one valorizing two exchanges that I call “primal deals” that played crucial roles in the evolution of humans, families, and day-to-day life. These primal deals—especially the primal pair-bonding deal between men and women—continue to play a central role in families and family law today. …

From Politics To Law, To Tedium, And Back, Mark Drumbl

Mark A. Drumbl

No abstract provided.

In Search Of A Forum For The Families Of The Guantanamo Disappeared, Peter Honigsberg

Peter J Honigsberg

The United States government has committed grave human rights violations by disappearing people during the past decade into the detention camps in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And for nearly thirty years, beginning with a 1983 decision from a case arising in Uruguay, there has been a well-developed body of international law establishing that parents, wives and children of the disappeared suffer torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (CID).

This paper argues that the rights of family members were severely violated when their loved ones were disappeared into Guantanamo. Family members of men disappeared by the United States have legitimate claims …

Loving Humanity While Accepting Real People: A Critique And A Cautious Affirmation, Daniel Kanstroom, David Hollenbach

Daniel Kanstroom

No abstract provided.

Reparations: A Remedies Law Perspective, Darren Hutchinson

Darren L Hutchinson

This article provides a general overview of reparations discourse in the United States and offers suggestions concerning how advocates of reparations might frame their claims. The author discusses how remedies law might be a useful means of redress for litigants and examines some of the political and legal barriers to reparations in the United States. The barriers include the failure of opponents to treat remedies for gross human rights or civil rights deprivations as a public good, rather than as a series of private transactions that benefit or burden individuals. The author ultimately sets the litigation model aside as providing …

Chasing 'Enemy Combatants' And Circumventing International Law: A License For Sanctioned Abuse, Peter J. Honigsberg

Peter J Honigsberg

In 1944, in Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court made a major error in judgment. It ruled that the executive may forcibly remove over 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and relocate them in American detention camps. In two recent Supreme Court cases, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the court made similar errors in judgment by accepting the administration's term "enemy combatant." The Supreme Court's errors were compounded when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 in October, 2006, statutorily defining the term enemy combatant for the first time. By acknowledging the term enemy combatant, the …