Law Commons^™

Ecthr Halts Forced Deportation Of Uyghur Couple Seeking Asylum In Malta: Latest In A Series Of Breaches Of European Convention On Human Rights, Tesa Hargis

Human Rights Brief

On January 16, 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ordered Malta to halt the process of forcibly removing a Uyghur couple, A.B. and Y.M., seeking asylum. The couple, who are Chinese nationals of Uyghur ethnicity and Muslim faith, arrived in Malta in 2016; the rejection of their initial application in 2017 forced them to live in hiding for years. Prior to bringing their case to the ECtHR, the Uyghur couple had been detained at the Safi Barracks and were facing immediate deportation to China.

Religious Discrimination And Violation Of Property Rights In Turkey, Andre Taylor

Human Rights Brief

In 2022, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) provided a ruling in an application against Turkey by the Foundation of the Taksiarhis Greek Orthodox Church. The Turkish government was held to have committed religious discrimination against its Greek Orthodox community by rejecting an application to register a historic church without a valid explanation. The Turkish High Court decided to register the disputed property in the name of the Public Treasury rather than grant ownership of the property outright to the Church. The Istanbul Administrative Court had repeatedly dismissed the Church’s appeals on the basis that the conditions listed in …

Movement Lawyering: Rebuilding Community Power & Decentering Law, Sami Schramm, Naima Muminiy, Madison Sharp, Angela Altieri, Thea Cabrera Montejo

Human Rights Brief

On Thursday, February 16, 2023, the Human Rights Brief held its annual symposium entitled Movement Lawyering: Rebuilding Community Power and Decentering Law. It was organized by Angela Altieri, Madison Sharp, Naima Muminiy, Sami Schramm, Destiny Staten, Angel Gardner, Leila Hamouie, Fabian Kopp, Marnie Leonard, and Thea Cabrera Montejo. Together, the team curated a day full of empowering keynotes, inspiring panels, and an insightful workshop. The team also created a resource to document the event.

Lessons In Movement Lawyering From The Ferguson Uprising, Maggie Ellinger-Locke

Human Rights Brief

Michael Brown was killed by Officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014. That day, I was on vacation in Michigan with my family, hanging on the beach and playing in the water. My father passed away from liver cancer exactly four months before, and I made the decision to close down his law practice in the St. Louis, Missouri area, and move to Washington, DC, where my longterm partner had taken a job. The trip to Michigan was supposed to be a stopover on my way to DC; my car was packed to the brim.

Movement Lawyering For Georgia Worker Cooperatives, Julian M. Hill

Human Rights Brief

Capitalism’s Contradictions in Atlanta. The Park Place and Auburn Avenue intersection in downtown Atlanta juxtaposes capitalism’s shiny veneer and putrid underbelly. Among Georgia State University’s multi-story buildings, Woodruff Park’s lush trees, and the vibrant Sweet Auburn neighborhood once home to Martin Luther King, Jr., diverse youth vying for class ascension and minority-owned businesses exemplifying Atlanta’s claim as an entrepreneurship hub populate the sidewalks. A deeper look, however, reveals cracks within the “Real Wakanda” facade. Wooden boards cover commercial space doors along Auburn Avenue, houseless folks support each other and request help from others around Woodruff Park, and students born into …

Principles On Effective Investigative Interviews: A New Instrument Of International Law, Juan E. Mendez, Matthew Ilsley

Human Rights Brief

International law absolutely prohibits torture and ill-treatment, yet such abuses remain prevalent and widespread. It most frequently occurs in the questioning of individuals by law enforcement, intelligence officials, and military personnel in the context of “fighting crime,” obtaining confessions, controlling detainees, and “counterterrorism.” The “Torture Memorandums,” exemplifying the deeply misguided practices used in the global fight against terror following the attacks of September 11, 2001, illuminated the pervasiveness of these practices.

Violating The Protections Of International Law: Examining Methods To Combat The Practice Of Female, Angel R. Gardner

Human Rights Brief

In 2021, the women’s rights non-governmental organization (“NGO”), Equality Now, filed a lawsuit alongside other organizations1 challenging Mali’s failure to outlaw the practice of female genital mutilation (“FGM”). FGM involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to female genital organs for non-medical purposes. The practice of FGM traces back to an ancient ritual, however, current research reveals that it causes serious health problems. The case brought by these NGOs has the potential to create binding precedent against the practice of FGM across all the African States.

Impact Of Extreme Hindutva Ideology On Freedom Of Speech In India, Meher Shah

Human Rights Brief

In the last decade, India has seen a rise of extreme far-right nationalism often referred to as the “Hindutva movement.” While the movement existed even before India obtained its independence in 1947, it recently gained unprecedented popularity and support among Indian citizens and non-resident Indians. Among the factors responsible for the Hindutva movement’s current popularity is blatant support and affiliation from the ruling political party, the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). The BJP has been a leading endorser of the Hindutva ideology, bringing it back to the center stage of Indian politics.1 The rise and spread of the ideology and its …

China's Violation Of Refugee Rights: Repatriation Of North Korean Refugees, Ellery Saluck

Human Rights Brief

The concept of the North Korean defector is so pervasive that it tends to eclipse the legal reality: she is also a refugee. While the urgent economic prerogative for defecting has waned since the widespread North Korean famine of the 1990s, North Koreans continue to escape for various reasons, such as seeking a better standard of living, enjoying freedom of movement, and pursuing freedom of political and religious affiliation. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) legislates serious, and even fatal, retribution for the crime of defecting. Yet, Chinese authorities refuse to acknowledge the refugee sur place status of the …

Access To Education: Protecting Students With Disabilities By Decriminalizing Behavior, Maria Jardeleza

Human Rights Brief

Contrary to international human rights standards, laws that criminalize disorderly and disruptive behavior in schools neglect the needs of students with disabilities. These laws lead to the exclusion of students with disabilities from educational settings and are applied unfairly against them. This Article will first look at state statutes and school policies that grant broad discretion in determining when and how to exclude students from learning opportunities through suspensions, expulsions, and referrals to law enforcement1. Understanding the use of these statutes against students within the context of the data on school discipline rates for students with disabilities shows the disproportionate …

The Failure Of The Italian Government To Honor The Human Rights Of Migrants, John Kerins

Human Rights Brief

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Parliament, feckless in the harsh waters of European politics, looks to be breaking on the very beaches where Allied forces once landed almost 80 years ago. The small island of Lampedusa remains a pricking thorn in the Italian government’s side, further complicating the testy waters with migrants coming in from the Mediterranean. To solve this, the Italian government has begun to violate the human rights of migrants and workers alike. Giorgia Meloni’s government has called for an ‘EU Naval Blockade’ of the Mediterranean, prompting outcry from human rights groups who correctly see what the rest …

Facial Recognition System Is A Violation Of Human Rights In The Context Of The Echr, Aykhan Dadashov

Human Rights Brief

On January 31, 2020, Nikolay Sergeyevich Glukhin lodged a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) arguing that the Russian government violated his right to respect for private life (Article 8) and freedom of expression (Article 10) under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Glukhin held a banner in metro station of Moscow to protest the detention and criminal proceedings against a political activist. Using CCTV cameras and videos taken by a passersby on an app called Telegram, the police managed to identify and arrest Glukhin. It investigated CCTV cameras installed in other stations for further inquiry …

Youth Voices For Human Rights Litigation In The Face Of Climate Change, Mckenzie Gallagher

Human Rights Brief

In the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), six young activists, age eleven to twentyfour, filed a case against thirty-two countries claiming violations of their human rights related to climate change. The Grand Chambers of the ECtHR heard the case, Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and Others, on September 27, 2023, but the court has yet to issue an opinion on the admissibility and merits of the claim. The case was granted priority status and deferred directly to the Grand Chambers due to the importance of the issue, climate change.

Former Peruvian President Fujimori's Forced Sterilization Program Faces Prosecution 26 Years Later, Taylor Potenziano

Human Rights Brief

In 1996, the Peruvian government under President Alberto Fujimori launched the National Reproductive Health and Family Planning Program (PNSRPF). While the government pitched the program as a way to promote access to family planning for low-income families and a way for women to be “masters of their own destiny,” the PNSRPF functioned as a forced sterilization program. From 1996 to 2001, 272,028 people were forcibly sterilized, the majority of them impoverished indigenous women from rural areas.

Legal Literacies For Text Data Mining – Cross-Border (“Lltdm-X”): White Paper, Rachael G. Samberg, Timothy Vollmer, Thomas Padilla

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Combating Ransomware: One Year On, V. Gerard Comizio, Gary Corn, William Deckelman, Karl Hopkins, Mark Hughes, Patrick Mccarty, Sujit Raman, Kurt Sanger, Ari Schwartz, Melanie Teplinsky, Jackson Colling

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Reconceptualizing Open Access To Theses And Dissertations, Orit Fischman Afori, Dalit Ken-Dror Feldman

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

Theses and dissertations (TD) are academic research projects that are conducted by graduate students to acquire a high academic degree, such as a PhD. The perception of the written TD has evolved over the years, following changes concerning the purpose of advanced academic studies. Today, these academic fruits should meet a high standard of academic innovation, which is understood broadly as encompassing not only knowledge concerning basic science but also the knowledge that generates social and economic value for society.

The modern perception of TD has generated a call for their greater accessibility, as part of the Open Science movement. …

Content Governance In The Shadows: How Telcos & Other Internet Infrastructure Companies "Moderate" Online Content, Prem M. Trivedi

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Not So Juris-Prudent: The Misguided Movement To Abandon Chevron Deference Through The Lens Of Mifepristone And The Attacks On Fda Autonomy, Ella Seltzer

Upper Level Writing Requirement Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Affirmatively Resisting, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Article argues that administrative processes, in particular rulemaking’s notice-and-comment requirement, enable local institutions to fight back against federal deregulatory efforts. Federalism all the way down means that state and local officials can dissent from within when challenging federal action. Drawing upon the ways in which localities, states, public housing authorities, and fair housing nonprofits resisted the Trump Administration’s efforts to roll back federal fair housing enforcement, this Article shows how uncooperative federalism works in practice.

Despite the fact that the 1968 Fair Housing Act requires that the federal government affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH), the requirement was largely ignored …

Corporate Consolidation Of Rental Housing & The Case For National Rent Stabilization, Brandon Weiss

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Rental housing in the United States is increasingly owned by corporate landlords that operate under a different set of incentives, behind a level of anonymity previously unavailable, and pursuant to practices that often exacerbate an already precarious housing landscape for tenants. Marketsensitive and nuanced rent stabilization laws have reemerged at the state and local level as a viable policy option to help regulate escalating rents and prevent tenant displacement. These laws, when well drafted, can address outdated critiques of strict rent caps and can complement alternative approaches, like those of the politically popular Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) movement, which …

Legal Literacies For Text Data Mining – Cross-Border (“Lltdm-X”): Case Study, Rachael Samberg, Timothy Vollmer, Thomas Padilla

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Fleeing The Land Of The Free, Jayesh Rathod

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Essay is the first scholarly intervention, from any discipline, to examine the number and nature of asylum claims made by U.S. citizens, and to explore the broader implications of this phenomenon. While the United States continues to be a preeminent destination for persons seeking humanitarian protection, U.S. citizens have fled the country in significant numbers, filing approximately 14,000 asylum claims since 2000. By formally seeking refuge elsewhere, these applicants have calculated that the risks of remaining in the United States outweigh the bundle of rights that accompany U.S. citizenship. Given the United States’ recent flirtation with authoritarianism, and the …

Reevaluating Regional Law Reform Strategies After Dobbs, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article studies the triad of 2016 social media campaigns known as “#AskDr.Kasich,” “#askbevinaboutmyvag,” and “#PeriodsforPence.” While these campaigns, each located in the regional mid-South, were motivated by restrictive state abortion bills, they uniquely positioned menstruation and women’s bodies at the center of their activism—not abortion alone. They leveraged, as a political fault line, the contradiction of these states’ governors’ perceived disgust relating to basic women’s reproductive health, relative to their patriarchal assuredness in regulating and controlling women’s bodies.

In so doing, they tapped into meaningful disruptions in the geographies, religiosities, and masculinities of abortion politics. These campaigns achieved regional …

Reforming World Bank Dispute Resolution: Icsid In Context, Susan Franck

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

During a tumultuous moment in history with shifts in power and politics, international dispute settlement stands at a crossroads. In theory, international dispute settlement should not institutionalize abuses of power, rely upon a monolithic one-size-fits-all model, or be a waste of resources, which will inevitably generate stakeholder dissatisfaction. Rather, dispute resolution should reflect both a commitment to the rule of law and equal treatment that sustains nuanced, fair, and just procedures most likely to provide results of substantive quality. Against this backdrop and with the major reforms concluded in July 2022, this article explores the reality of dispute resolution at …

A Critical Jeffersonian Mind For A Community Reinvestment Bind, Chaz Brooks

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 ("CRA") primarily sought to remedy decades of government sanctioned disinvestment in so-called “redlined communities.” Through the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and later the Federal Housing Administration, the United States of America created from whole cloth a structure that encouraged and subsidized the explosion of homeownership in white American households. Following decades of racialized wealth generation, the United States had a change of heart. Congress determined that financiers needed a gentle push to invest fairly. Additionally, Congress wanted one thing clear in the drafting of this remedy—it must not allocate credit.

This essay considers how …

The Values-Based Trade Agenda, Fernanda Giorgia Nicola Dr., Michelle Egan

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

With the increasing trade tensions between the United States and China, pressures created by Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic, most trade scholars have focused on rising protectionism exhibited through defensive strategies such as tariffs and export controls. However, this focus ignores the fundamental shift in international trade goals of the United States and the European Union towards a values-based trade agenda.

Instead of merely focusing on free trade based on efficiency and market access, trade regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have independently pursued measures designed to address environmental sustainability and social equity. These policies resonate with their domestic …

The Failed Idea Of Judicial Restraint: A Brief Intellectual History, Susan D. Carle

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay examines the intellectual history of the idea of judicial restraint, starting with the early debates among the US Constitution’s founding generation. In the late nineteenth century, law professor James Bradley Thayer championed the concept and passed it on to his students and others, including Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, and Felix Frankfurter, who modified and applied it based on the jurisprudential preoccupations of a different era. In a masterful account, Brad Snyder examines Justice Frankfurter’s attempt to put the idea into practice. Although Frankfurter arguably made a mess of it, he passed the idea of …

The Ripple Effects Of Dobbs On Health Care Beyond Wanted Abortion, Maya Manian

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Supreme Court’s momentous decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn fifty years of precedent on the constitutional right to abortion represents a sea of change, not only in constitutional law, but also in the public health landscape. Although state laws on abortion are still evolving after Dobbs, the decision almost immediately wreaked havoc on the delivery of medical care for both patients seeking abortion care and those not actively seeking to terminate a pregnancy.

This Article also argues that focusing the public’s attention on the deleterious consequences of abortion bans for health care beyond wanted abortion …

Securing Patent Law, Charles Duan

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

A vigorous conversation about intellectual property rights and national security has largely focused on the defense role of those rights, as tools for responding to acts of foreign infringement. But intellectual property, and patents in particular, also play an arguably more important offense role. Foreign competitor nations can obtain and assert U.S. patents against U.S. firms and creators. Use of patents as an offense strategy can be strategically coordinated to stymie domestic innovation and technological progress. This Essay considers current and possible future practices of patent exploitation in this offense setting, with a particular focus on China given the nature …