Law Commons^™

Anti-Corruption’S Next Great Migration?: Strengthening U.S. Refugee And Asylum Law Under Existing U.S. Anti-Corruption Commitments, Bianka Ukleja

Refugee Law & Migration Studies Brief

First, this paper will describe the U.S.’s anticorruption commitments under international law. Next, it will present the general features of current U.S. refugee and asylum law, pertaining to particular social group (PSG) and political opinion claims. Last, this paper will discuss how the Biden Anti-Corruption Memo provides fertile ground for DHS to initiate an informal rulemaking process under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to engage civil society on how U.S. refugee and asylum laws can better support a pathway to citizenship for anti-corruption activists in pursuit of key U.S. foreign policy interests abroad and who find themselves unable to seek …

State Responsibility For Forced Migration, Pooja R. Dadhania

Faculty Scholarship

International refugee law does not hold states accountable for the forced migration they cause. Using the international law doctrine of state responsibility, this Article aims to shift the discourse on migration policy towards a state accountability approach that considers the role states play in causing forced migration. This Article uses state responsibility to explore the obligations of a state after it commits a violation of international law that results in forced migration. The general principle undergirding state responsibility is that a state should provide full reparation for harms caused by its violation of an international obligation. Applying state responsibility to …

Letter From The Editor, Isabella Zink

Refugee Law & Migration Studies Brief

No abstract provided.

Building A Lifeline: A Proposed Global Platform And Responsibility Sharing Model For The Global Compact On Refugees, Sarnata Reynolds, Juan Pablo Vacatello

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

In 2016, the leaders of 193 governments committed to more equitable and predictable sharing of responsibility for refugees as part of the New York Declaration, to be realized in the Global Compact on Refugees. To encourage debate, this paper presents the first global model to measure the capacity of governments to physically protect and financially support refugees and host communities. The model is based on a new database of indicators covering 193 countries, which assigns a fair share to each country and measures current government contributions to the protection of refugees. The model also proposes a new government-led global platform …

Assigning Protection: Can Refugee Rights And State Preferences Be Reconciled?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

The theoretically global responsibility to protect refugees is today heavily skewed, with just ten countries – predominantly very poor – hosting more than half of the world’s refugee population. Refugee protection has moreover become tantamount to warehousing for most refugees, with roughly half of the world’s refugees stuck in “protracted refugee situations” for decades with their lives on hold. Both concerns – the unprincipled allocation of responsibility based on accidents of geography and the desperate need for greater attention to resettlement as a core protection response – cry out for a global, managed system to protect refugees.

Doors To Safety: Exit West, Refugee Resettlement, And The Right To Asylum, Betsy L. Fisher

Michigan Law Review

Review of Mohsin Hamid's Exit West.

Justice In Syria: Individual Criminal Liability For Highest Officials In The Assad Regime, Seema Kassab

Michigan Journal of International Law

Seven years have passed since revolution broke out in Syria in March of 2011. During those six years, hundreds of thousands of Syrians lost their lives, millions of Syrians were internally displaced or left the country seeking refuge, and a beautiful and diverse country was hijacked and terrorized by civil war. Every day in Syria, people are detained, tortured, raped, and killed. Attacks on homes, hospitals, markets, and schools are common occurrences. At this stage of the conflict, there is little doubt that it is the most horrific and dire humanitarian crisis since World War II. The conflict began as …

Governing Xenophobia, E. Tendayi Achiume

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The problem of xenophobia has gained remarkable notoriety of late, and reports from around the world paint a chilling picture of its virulence, especially where refugees and other involuntary migrants are concerned. How should one understand this global picture of xenophobic contestation and its fallout, and specifically, how should one understand international law's relationship to both?

The first contribution of this Article is to introduce an emerging global framework intended by states and other international actors to improve global cooperation to combat the problem of xenophobia. This global anti-xenophobia framework (the Framework) is rooted in international human rights law and …

Amicus Curaie, Submitted Susan Akram, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

B Summary of Argument

7. Palestinian refugees fall under a legal regime that is distinct from all other refugees in the world.¹² As such, they are covered by a series of special provisions that apply only to them and no other refugees. Their special status resulted from the decisions of the drafters of key international treaties to exclude Palestinian refugees from the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, and to conditionally exclude them from the benefits of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. …

A Fine Line, Redefined: Moving Toward More Equitable Asylum Policies, Heather M. Kolinsky

Scholarly Articles

This article is an exploration of the inequities that still remain in asylum claims, with particular reference to the experience of Chinese citizens seeking asylum and Cuban refugees.

Refugee Protection In International Law: Unhcr's Global Consultations On International Protection, Taylor H. Garrett

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of Refugee Protection in International Law: UNHCR's Global Consultations on International Protection (Erika Feller, Volker Türk & Frances Nicholson eds.)

The State And The Post-Cold War Refugee Regime: New Models, New Questions, Julie Mertus

Michigan Journal of International Law

The thesis of this essay is that within the refugee regime the move away from states and adherence to states are two sides of the same coin. To some degree the new refugee regime reflects the trend away from both the state and strict notions of sovereignty. Nonetheless, the new regime also exposes the staying power of the statist paradigm. In many respects, the role of states has indeed been altered, but states have retained their role as important and often essential actors. While other observers have commented on specific geographic or thematic changes in the refugee regime, this essay …

Making International Refugee Law Relevant Again: A Proposal For Collectivized And Solution-Oriented Protection, James C. Hathaway, R. Alexander Neve

Articles

International refugee law is in crisis. Even as armed conflict and human rights abuse continue to force individuals and groups to flee their home countries, many governments are withdrawing from the legal duty to provide refugees with the protection they require. While governments proclaim a willingness to assist refugees as a matter of political discretion or humanitarian goodwill, they appear committed to a pattern of defensive strategies designed to avoid international legal responsibility toward involuntary migrants. Some see this shift away from a legal paradigm of refugee protection as a source for enhanced operational flexibility in the face of changed …

The Haitian Refugee Crisis: A Quest For Human Rights, Thomas David Jones

Michigan Journal of International Law

On June 14, 1993, the Vienna Conference on Human Rights, sponsored by the United Nations, commenced its opening session mired in controversy over the validity of a universal human rights doctrine. Many Third World or developing nations contended that Western norms of justice and fairness were not applicable to their societies. Thus, the developing nations articulated a culture-bound or relativistic concept of fundamental human rights. The developing nations' particularistic position was championed by such nations as China, Iran, Cuba, and Vietnam, signatories to the Bangkok Declaration of 1993. The Bangkok Declaration provides, inter alia, that though human rights are …

State-Centered Refugee Law: From Resettlement To Containment, T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Michigan Journal of International Law

This paper will explore the international regime of refugee law, seeking to show how legal "solutions" to the "refugee problem" are profoundly state-centered. I will argue that discussions of "solutions" in refugee law and policy have taken a dramatic turn in recent years, replacing an exilic bias with a source-control bias. This new orientation focuses attention on countries of origin, supporting repatriation and human rights monitoring before and after return. I suggest that the shift in emphasis, albeit grounded in part in humanitarian concerns, presents real risks when realized within a system committed to the protection of human rights …

A Commentary On American Legal Scholarship Concerning The Admission Of Migrants, James A.R. Nafziger

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The following essay will focus attention on American legal scholarship concerning the admission of migrants. This topic is instructive and practical because of its impact on both municipal and global law. An eminent international jurist observed that greater foresight by scholars twenty-five years ago could have averted many current problems of migration. Today, these problems arise from such sources as the population explosion, periodic droughts, the pull factor of opportunities in advanced economies, and massive political unrest in the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America, and elsewhere. Migrants are knocking at the gates of sovereignty, even crashing some …

Political Asylum Under The 1980 Refugee Act: An Unfulfilled Promise, Arthur C. Helton

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I of this Article reviews the history and development of asylum law in the United States which culminated in the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. It analyzes the failure of the responsible administrative authorities to follow the dictates of the law - a circumstance which prompted the passage of the Act and which now threatens to subvert the right to asylum in the United States. Part II considers the impact on asylum seekers of new alien interdiction and detention programs, and the legality of those programs under domestic and international law. Finally, Part III makes specific recommendations, …

Political Asylum In The Federal Republic Of Germany And The Republic Of France: Lessons For The United States, T. Alexander Aleinikoff

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The recent flood of asylum claims, and the concerns it engenders, are not peculiar to the United States. Western European nations have witnessed similar increases in asylum applications over the past decade, .and institutions charged with adjudicating claims have become severely overburdened. This Article will describe the experience of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of France in coping with the explosion of asylum claims. A comparative analysis may provide perspective on the American situation and perhaps suggest - or rule out - proposals for change currently under consideration in the United States. To appreciate the saliency of …