Law Commons^™

Biometrics And An Ai Bill Of Rights, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

This Article contends that an informed discussion on an AI Bill of Rights requires grappling with biometric data collection and its integration into emerging AI systems. Biometric AI systems serve a wide range of governmental purposes, including policing, border security and immigration enforcement, and biometric cyberintelligence and biometric-enabled warfare. These systems are increasingly categorized as "high-risk" when deployed in ways that may impact fundamental constitutional rights and human rights. There is growing recognition that high-risk biometric AI systems, such as facial recognition identification, can pose unprecedented challenges to criminal procedure rights. This Article concludes that a failure to recognize these …

Mobilizing Universalism: The Origins Of Human Rights, Catherine Baylin Duryea

Faculty Publications

Human rights law claims to be universal, setting rights apart from paradigms based on shared religion, culture, or nationality. This claim of universality was a significant factor in the proliferation of human rights NGOs in the 1970s and remains an important source of legitimacy. The universality of human rights has been challenged and contested since they were first discussed at the United Nations (UN). Today, much of the debate centers around the origins of human rights-particularly whether they arose out of Western traditions or whether they have more global roots. For too long, discussions about universality have ignored the practice …

Human Rights Reporting As Human Rights Governance, Margaret E. Mcguiness

Faculty Publications

Contrary to the view that the rejection of human rights treaty membership has left the United States outside the formal international human rights system, the United States has played a key role in international human rights governance through congressionally mandated human rights monitoring and reporting. Since the mid-1970s, congressional oversight of human rights diplomacy, which requires reporting on global human rights practices, has integrated international human rights law and norms into the execution of U.S. foreign policy. While the congressional human rights mandates have drifted from their original purpose to condition allocation of foreign aid, they have effectively embedded international …

Coming To Terms: Using Contract Theory To Understand The Detroit Water Shutoffs, Marissa Jackson Sow

Faculty Publications

After the City of Detroit underwent financial takeover and filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history in 2013, the city’s emergency manager encouraged mass water shutoffs as a way of making the city’s water utility a more attractive asset for sale— and for privatization—by ridding the water department of its association with bad debt. The sale never took place, but the water shutoff, too, became the largest ever in American history, with over 141,000 homes subjected to water disconnections over a period of over six years. The governor of the State of Michigan ordered that the shutoffs be temporarily …

Human Rights Movements In The Middle East: Global Norms And Regional Particularities, Catherine Baylin Duryea

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The Middle East is often portrayed as an outlier when it comes to human rights, but rights are an important part of the political, diplomatic, and social fabric of the region. This chapter summarises regional trends in human rights advocacy at both the international and domestic levels. Popular movements for independence, equality for women, and protections for workers have deep roots in the region. When the United Nations began to enshrine these values into law after World War II, representatives from the Middle East were at the centre of the debates. In the following two decades, human rights largely …

Review Of John Whalen-Bridge, Tibet On Fire: Buddhism, Protest, And The Rhetoric Of Self-Immolation, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Review of John Whalen-Bridge, Tibet on Fire: Buddhism, Protest, and the Rhetoric of Self-Immolation, in Journal of Contemporary Religion

Socially Responsible Corporate Ip, J. Janewa Osei-Tutu

Faculty Publications

Many companies practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) as part of their branding and public relations efforts. For example, as part of their CSR strategies, some companies adopt voluntary codes of conduct in an effort to respect human rights. This Article contemplates the application of CSR principles to trade-related intellectual property (IP). In theory, patent and copyright laws promote progress and innovation, which is why IP rights are beneficial for both IP owners and for the public. Trademark rights encourage businesses to maintain certain standards and allow consumers to make more efficient choices. Though IP rights are often discussed in relation …

Humanizing Intellectual Property: Moving Beyond The Natural Rights Property Focus, J. Janewa Oseitutu

Faculty Publications

This Article compares the natural rights property framework with the human rights framework for intellectual property. These two frameworks share a common theoretical basis in the natural rights tradition, but they appear to lead to conflicting outcomes. Proponents of natural rights to intellectual property tend to support more expansive intellectual property protections. Advocates of a human rights approach to intellectual property contend, however, that human rights will have a moderating influence on intellectual property law. This Article is among the first scholarly works to explore the apparent conflict between these two important frameworks for intellectual property. It concludes that a …

Who Belongs: Citizenship And Statelessness In The Dominican Republic, Ediberto Román, Ernesto Sagás

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Birthright Citizenship Under Attack: How Dominican Nationality Laws May Be The Future Of U.S. Exclusion, Ediberto Román, Ernesto Sagas

Faculty Publications

Attacks on birthright citizenship periodically emerge in the United States, particularly during presidential election cycles. Indeed, blaming immigrants for the country’s woes is a common strategy for conservative politicians, and the campaign leading up to the 2016 presidential election was not an exception. Several of the Republican presidential candidates raised the issue, with President Donald Trump making it the hallmark of his immigration reform platform. Trump promised that, if elected, his administration would “end birthright citizenship.” In the Dominican Republic, ending birthright citizenship and curbing immigration are now enshrined into law, resulting from a significant constitutional redefinition of Dominican citizenship …

Beyond Culture: Human Rights Universalisms Versus Religious And Cultural Relativism In The Activism For Gender Justice, Cyra Akila Choudhury

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Corporate "Human Rights" To Intellectual Property Protection?, J. Janewa Oseitutu

Faculty Publications

The global intellectual property system protects the interests of intellectual property owners, sometimes to the detriment of competing interests like public health or access to knowledge. Some scholars have proposed a human rights framework for intellectual property as a way to inject balance into the current system. However, the assertion that human rights will bring balance is often coupled with the assumption that corporations are, by definition, excluded from human rights-based intellectual property claims. Yet, corporations have used, and are likely to continue to use, human rights law to ground their intellectual property claims. Since multinational corporations were a major …

Agricultural Biotechnology: Drawing On International Law To Promote Progress, J. Janewa Oseitutu

Faculty Publications

In Bowman v. Monsanto, the Supreme Court declined to apply the principle of exhaustion to limit the patentee’s ability to control the reproduction of self-replicating inventions. This decision was justified from a patent law perspective on the basis that patent holder has a right to prevent others from making the invention. But what happens when we take other perspectives into account? For instance, a farmer might have human rights or other rights that may need to be balanced against the patentee’s right. Since globalized intellectual property standards were established through international agreements and much of the resistance to intellectual property …

Your View: The Stateless State Of Caribbean Residents, Irene Scharf

Faculty Publications

On the Caribbean island of Hispanola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, grave human rights concerns affecting those of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic have recently erupted. Over the years, thousands of Haitians have come to the Dominican Republic to work the farms there and provide cheap construction and other manual labor. Recently, with the economic and natural disasters that have befallen Haiti, more Haitians have been arriving in the Dominican Republic. Many have put down roots and are raising families. Today, an estimated 200,000 people born in the Dominican Republic have parents who were born in …

China’S Human Rights Footprint In Africa, Timothy Webster

Faculty Publications

A significant amount of recent scholarship and commentary accuses China of plundering the African continent, coddling its dictators, and flouting labor and environmental standards. This paper makes the counterintuitive claim that, despite irrefutable cases of abuse, China’s engagement with Africa has actually improved the human rights conditions of millions of Africans. First, it places China’s abuses in context, showing that they differ little from the abuses and patronage politics of the major Western powers. Second, it examines the evolution of international relations between China and various African countries, from the exportation of political revolution in the 1950s and 1960s, to …

Note: Aimed At Protecting Ethnic Groups Or Women? A Look At Forced Pregnancy Under The Rome Statute, Alyson M. Drake

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

International Human Rights Law In Japan: The View At Thirty, Timothy Webster

Faculty Publications

Japanese courts have become increasingly open to the use of international human rights law in the past two decades. This paper examines several of the key decisions that reflect the judiciary's embrace of international law, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure and minority rights. I argue that the judiciary has eclipsed the other branches of government as the primary disseminator of human rights norms in Japan.

Foreword: Security Detention, Michael P. Scharf, Gwen Gillespie

Faculty Publications

Foreword to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University organized a two-day experts meeting on security detention, Cleveland, OH, 2009

Using "Norms" To Change International Law: Un Human Rights Laws Sneaking In Through The Back Door, Troy A. Rule

Faculty Publications

For decades, multinational businesses have self-regulated their operations with respect to human rights, largely unfettered by international law. In recent years, however, human rights groups have advocated that the United Nations (“UN”) create clear legal obligations for multinationals respecting their human rights-related conduct. At least partly due to the substantial burden such obligations could place on international businesses, these efforts by human rights proponents have proven largely fruitless--until now.On August 13, 2003, the UN Sub-commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights adopted the Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human …

Surprised By Sin: Human Rights And Universality, Tawia Baidoe Ansah

Faculty Publications

International human rights law's claim to universality, at the level of normative formation, has been shaped by conceptions of the self over time. The metaphysical reconfigurations of the self, from the Enlightenment to the present, have marked the human rights narrative in particular ways. This essay will suggest that since World War II, a conception of the self within a narrative of rights has been replaced, or at least countermanded, by a conception of sacral evil, with profound implications for the normative claim to universality of the human rights discourse. The essay begins with a synoptic analysis of the rise …

Book Review: Women Under The Law: The False Promise Of Human Rights, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Though McColgan's book promises much, it fails to persuade the reader for several reasons. First, a number of the examples used to demonstrate the inferiority of entrenched rights actually suggest the opposite. The second reason why McColgan fails to persuade results from her forcing constitutional arguments where there are none. The third problem with this book is its failure to extrapolate its arguments about women to other disadvantaged groups.

Despite these shortcomings, there is much in McColgan's book to recommend it. Her prose is fluid, her presentation of US and Canadian law, particularly regarding abortion, is extensive, and her arguments …