Law Commons^™

Outcome Report On The Climate Crisis, Global Land Use And Human Rights Conference, Mateusz Kasprowicz, Sam Szoke-Burke, Kaitlin Y. Cordes

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

On September 27^th, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Landesa, the New York City Bar Association International Environmental Law Committee, and Wake Forest Law School hosted a day-long conference on the intersection between land use, the climate crisis and clean energy transition, and human rights.

Held at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, the conference brought together individuals from civil society organizations, governments, and academia, as well as lawyers, climate scientists, land-rights experts, indigenous representatives and other stakeholder groups. The panelists analyzed the critical role that land plays in …

Securing Adequate Legal Defense In Proceedings Under International Investment Agreements: A Scoping Study, Lise Johnson, Brooke Guven

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

CCSI prepared a Scoping Study for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Also available are:

• A summary version of the study (33 pages)
• A webinar (March 24, 2020), hosted by CCSI and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, discussed the Scoping Study and its findings (see also accompanying slides with speaking notes).
• A webinar organized by UNCITRAL (April 21, 2020). CCSI presented the Scoping Study. A video link of the webinar along with CCSI’s slides are available in English (with speaking notes) and French at that link. CCSI Senior Fellow Karl Sauvant also presented his UNCITRAL …

Environmental Injustice: How Treaties Undermine The Right To A Healthy Environment, Lisa E. Sachs, Lise Johnson, Ella Merrill

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Our planet faces unprecedented threats, including irreversible global warming, loss in biodiversity, and water pollution and water scarcity. The impacts of these environmental crises also threaten human rights and exacerbate inequality. Slowing these worsening environmental trends – and addressing the impacts of environmental change on populations – will require cumulative policy responses at the national and international level.

Briefing For Civil Society Organizations – Understanding Commercial Eucalyptus Plantations: How Do They Work And What Are Their Environmental Impacts?, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

If a company wants to use a community’s land for eucalyptus plantations, the community should think carefully about whether this is a good idea. Civil society organizations that support communities can use this briefing to help communities understand the potential environmental impacts the community should be aware of. The briefing explains plantation forestry and the life-cycle of eucalyptus tree plantations. It also notes the different possible negative environmental impacts of eucalyptus plantations before exploring how this information can be factored into community decision-making about a proposed eucalyptus plantation. While the briefing focuses on eucalyptus plantations, a lot of it will …

It's Complicated: The Challenge Of Prosecuting Tncs For Criminal Activity Under International Law, Jena Martin

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This essay aims to tackle an increasingly thorny and relevant issue: what do you do if a Transnational Corporation (TNC) commits a crime? The question raises a number of challenges, both philosophically and practically. First, what does it mean to prosecute an organization? Although there are some limited examples (the United States’ prosecution of accounting firm Arthur Andersen being among the most note-worthy), we have relatively little precedence regarding what this would entail; how exactly do you put a corporation on trial? Second, practically speaking, where do you hold the trial? This challenge is magnified by the fact that, by …

Human Rights Law And The Investment Treaty Regime, Jesse Coleman, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Lise Johnson

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In its current form, the international investment treaty regime may stymie the business and human rights agenda in various ways. The regime may incentivize governments to favour the protection of investors over the protection of human rights. Investment treaty standards enforced through investor-state arbitration risk adversely affecting access to justice for project-affected rights holders. More broadly, the regime contributes to a system of global economic governance that elevates and rewards investors’ actions and expectations, irrespective of whether they have adhered to their responsibilities to respect human rights. Without comprehensive reform, investment treaties and investor-state arbitration will continue to interfere with …

In The Right Direction, Family Diversity In The Inter-American System Of Human Rights, Macarena Sáez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Article argues that the Inter-American System of Human Rights has contributed to a family system that embraces gender equality and non-heterosexual and gender non-conforming families. It argues that the system had, from its inception, an expansive idea of the family that included associations outside marriage. This was the basis for a robust development of the concepts of equality and non-discrimination by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Although the IACtHR has only decided a handful of cases related to the non-heterosexual family, its rich case law on equality and the right to …

Alternatives To Investor-State Dispute Settlement, Lise Johnson, Jesse Coleman, Brooke Güven, Lisa E. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Proponents often explain support for international investment agreements (IIAs) for their ability to: (1) promote investment flows; (2) depoliticize disputes between investors and states; (3) promote the rule of law; and (4) provide compensation for certain harms to investors – objectives of varying degrees of importance to multinational enterprises, home states, host states, and other stakeholders.

While each of these objectives may seem desirable, it is important to consider what exactly they mean and whether IIAs are optimally tailored to achieve them.

This two-part series aims to consider just that. In the first blog installment, we asked of investor-state dispute …

Innovative Financing Solutions For Community Support In The Context Of Land Investments, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Communities affected by agricultural, forestry, and other resource investments urgently need increased funding for legal and technical support. Without support, communities risk losing access to critical land and resources, suffering human rights violations, or missing opportunities to benefit from investments. A lack of community support can also lead to conflict and challenges that are damaging for companies and host governments.

Donors and support providers have found ways to finance support for communities, but such efforts can only extend so far. Promising new opportunities exist for filling the financing gap, yet they will require sustained efforts by a range of actors. …

Bridging The Information Gap: How Access To Land Contracts Can Serve Community Rights, Lara Wallis, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Land contracts (also known as investor-state contracts, or concession agreements) show what commitments a forestry, farming or renewable energy company has made and what the government has said the company can do on the land. These promises define the positive and harmful effects the company’s project could have on community members’ livelihoods and human rights, and on the environment.

Accessing land contracts is a crucial strategy for local organizations. This briefing note explains how local organizations can use land contracts and the Open Land Contracts repository (OpenLandContracts.org) to help communities to:

• Understand company and government obligations related to a company …

Rethinking The Individual In International Law, Chiara Giorgetti

Law Faculty Publications

The acceptance of the individual as a subject of international law has been gradual and asymmetrical. Individuals have become international law subjects in their own rights in some international legal areas, including human rights and international criminal law. This affords individuals substantive rights and obligations, as well as procedural rights. In most legal areas, however, individuals acquired substantive rights, but not direct procedural rights. In those instances, individuals need the filter of a nationality to enforce their claim and remedy in international proceedings. This Article criticizes the nationality-based approach and argues that there are better and alternative ways to provide …

Defending Refugees: A Case For Protective Procedural Safeguards In The Persecutor Bar Analysis, Charles Shane Ellison

Faculty Scholarship

For refugees and asylum seekers, application of the so-called persecutor bar is tantamount to a death sentence. However, the Board of Immigration Appeals -- without any real deliberation--has arrived at an interpretation of a generic-relief, burdenshifting regulation to allow for application of the persecutor bar based upon very little evidence. Even mere membership in a group with a poor human rights record has been held sufficient to switch the burden of proof and apply the bar. While the recent holding of Matter of Negusie, 27 I&N Dec. 347 (June 28, 2018) can be read and understood largely as a victory …

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 …

Academy On Human Rights And Humanitarian Law Articles And Essays On Gender Violence And International Human Rights: Introduction, Claudia Martin, Diego Rodriguez-Pinzon

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

We are delighted to present this year's publication of the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, which includes the three best essays in English and in Spanish recognized in the 2018 Human Rights Essay Award competition. It is satisfying to think that this competition allowed a number of participants an opportunity to expound their thoughts on so many important topics and areas of the world. We hope these participants are able to use their articles as mechanisms for change.

Extradition And Trial Delays: Recent Developments (And Lessons?) From Canada, Robert Currie, Laura Ellyson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Extradition – the formal rendition of criminal fugitives between states – is well-known to be a time-consuming process that often has impacts, minor or major, on the ability of states to complete prosecution in a timely manner. Thus, the extradition process can sometimes be at odds with the right to trial within a reasonable time, which is part of the overall package of fair trial rights enshrined in international human rights law. In Canada, this right is implemented by paragraph 11(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In recent years Canadian courts have developed a series of principles …

Book Review: Not Enough: Human Rights In An Unequal World, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

Review of the book Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. By Samuel Moyn. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press 2018. Pp. ix, 220. Index.

...And Trade, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

This short essay, part of a symposium on Gregory Shaffer’s Retooling Trade Agreements for Social Inclusion, argues that the normal science of trade law lacks the tools to confront trade law’s greatest current challenges. Instead, breaking out of trade law’s two-step politics, with its division of “growing the pie” and distributing its slices, and responding to new challenges of climate change, the digital economy, and artificial intelligence will require a new politics built on and designed to build new shared narratives embodying new policy paradigms.

What Is International Trade Law For?, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

Events of the past few years, including the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and election of Donald Trump as President in the United States, have reignited debates about the global trade regime. In particular, many have begun to question whether the trade regime has done enough for those who feel left behind by globalization. While some have held fast to the view that redistribution of trade’s gains is primarily a matter of domestic policy, others have suggested tweaks to the international trade agreements aimed at better spreading the wealth.

But what if …

Corporations And Sustainability, Beate Sjåfjell, Christopher Bruner

Scholarly Works

This chapter introduces the Handbook, providing an overview of its aims and structure, as well as the core research questions that the contributions to it collectively address. It discusses sustainability-related problems associated with the legal form of the corporation, and provides background on state-of-the-art research in natural sciences and other relevant fields that inform our understanding of sustainability. It concludes with specific research questions and a presentation of the Handbook’s structure.

Business And Human Rights As A Galaxy Of Norms, Elise Groulx Diggs, Milton C. Regan, Beatrice Parance

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the last several years, there has been an increasing tendency to view the impacts of transnational business operations through the lens of human rights law. A major obstacle to holding companies accountable for the harms that they impose, however, has been the separate legal identity of corporate subsidiaries and of contractors in a company's supply chain. France's recently enacted duty of vigilance statute seeks to overcome this obstacle by imposing a duty on companies to identify potential serious human rights violations by their subsidiaries and by companies with which they have an “established commercial relationship.” Failure to engage in …

Borders Rules, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

International political borders have historically performed one overriding function: the delimitation of a state’s territorial jurisdiction, but today they are sites of intense security scrutiny and law enforcement. Traditionally they were created to secure peace through territorial independence of political units. Today borders face new pressures from heightened human mobility, economic interdependence (legal and illicit), and perceived challenges from a host of nonstate threats. Research has only begun to reveal what some of these changes mean for the governance of interstate borders. The problems surrounding international borders today go well-beyond traditional delineation and delimitation. These problems call for active forms …

Human Rights Racism, Anna Spain Bradley

Publications

International human rights law seeks to eliminate racial discrimination in the world through treaties that bind and norms that transform. Yet law’s impact on eradicating racism has not matched its intent. Racism, in all of its forms, remains a massive cause of discrimination, indignity, and lack of equality for millions of people in the world today. This Article investigates why. Applying a critical race theory analysis of the legal history and doctrinal development of race and racism in international law, Professor Spain Bradley identifies law’s historical preference for framing legal protections around the concept of racial discrimination. She further exposes …