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Full-Text Articles in Law

All My Rights, Carl E. Schneider Jul 2002

All My Rights, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Diane Pretty was an Englishwoman in her early 40s who had been married nearly a quarter of a century. In November 1999, she learned she had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-in Britain, motor neurone disease. Her condition deteriorated rapidly, and soon she was "essentially paralysed from the neck downwards." She had "virtually no decipherable speech" and was fed by a tube. She was expected to live only a few months or even weeks. AB a court later explained, however, "her intellect and capacity to make decisions are unimpaired. The final stages of the disease are exceedingly distressing and undignified. AB she is …


A Little Rebellion Now And Then Is A Good Thing, James Forman Jr. May 2002

A Little Rebellion Now And Then Is A Good Thing, James Forman Jr.

Michigan Law Review

What do George Washington and Eldridge Cleaver have in common? Or John Brown and Mahatma Gandhi? The Stern Gang and the Palestine Liberation Organization? Jefferson Davis and Eugene Debs? In Rebels with a Cause: The Minds and Morality of Political Offenders, Nicholas Kittrie says they are all political offenders - men and women who, "professing loyalty to a divine or higher law, to the call of individual conscience, or to the imperatives of some perceived public good, have challenged the legitimacy and authority of the institutions of their governments" (p. 6). Kittrie sets out to study the whole lot: "Civil …


(Dis)Embedded Women, Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann Jan 2002

(Dis)Embedded Women, Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann

Michigan Journal of International Law

The position argued in this Article is that women's rights are individual rights. To explain this position, the Article will progress along the following arguments: 1) The dichotomy between Western individualism and non-Western collectivism is false. 2) Much of the debate regarding the role of women and women's rights confuses interest and identity. 3) Women do not necessarily constitute a social group. 4) "Women's" rights are actually universal human rights: they pertain mostly to women, but also to men. 5) The debate about whether women are a social group is rooted in part in differing conceptions of women's embeddedness in …


Multicultural Jurisdictions At The National And International Levels, Christina L. Brandt-Young Jan 2002

Multicultural Jurisdictions At The National And International Levels, Christina L. Brandt-Young

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women's Rights by Ayelet Shachar


A Community Of Courts: Toward A System Of International Criminal Law Enforcement, William W. Burke-White Jan 2002

A Community Of Courts: Toward A System Of International Criminal Law Enforcement, William W. Burke-White

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article argues that, for political reasons, the future of international criminal law enforcement will largely be at the domestic level. It anticipates the emergence of a community of courts-domestic, semi-internationalized, and supranational. A decentralized system of international criminal law enforcement may give pause for concern: How can such a system be regulated? How can uniformity and effectiveness be assured? It is the claim of this Article that, in a world in which information is power, the relationships between these courts-the exchange of information, ideas, and personnel-brings order and regularity to the system. These interdependent relationships are defined by the …


The Principle Of Complementarity: A New Machinery To Implement International Criminal Law, Mohamed M. El Zeidy Jan 2002

The Principle Of Complementarity: A New Machinery To Implement International Criminal Law, Mohamed M. El Zeidy

Michigan Journal of International Law

According to the doctrine of State sovereignty each State has the right to exercise its jurisdiction over crimes committed in its territory-known as the territoriality principle. Even if the crimes committed are of a type that affects the international community as a whole, States are often hesitant to have their own nationals tried by an international judicial organ. History demonstrates that States rarely waived this right, which is inherent to their sovereignties, and did not rely exclusively on international justice. Rather they always preferred to exercise their jurisdiction exclusively, and only occasionally, when coerced by special circumstances, have they accepted …


Repairing The Legacy Of Ins V. Elias-Zacarias, Shayna S. Cook Jan 2002

Repairing The Legacy Of Ins V. Elias-Zacarias, Shayna S. Cook

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article examines the evolution of the nexus requirement in United States refugee law since the Elias-Zacarias decision. Part I discusses the Supreme Court's decision in Elias-Zacarias, identifying the choices the Court made among the arguments presented before it that resulted in the motive-oriented approach to nexus. This Part also delves into the Court's statement about the evidence required to demonstrate motive, concluding that the Court's treatment of the evidence before it foreshadows the confusion lower courts have demonstrated in evaluating evidence of motive. Part II looks at appellate decisions on the nexus issue since 1992, highlighting cases that …


Causation In Context: Interpreting The Nexus Clause In The Refugee Convention, Michelle Foster Jan 2002

Causation In Context: Interpreting The Nexus Clause In The Refugee Convention, Michelle Foster

Michigan Journal of International Law

The aim of this Article is to explore current approaches to identifying and applying the causation test inherent in the "for reasons of" clause and to attempt to devise a sui generis test appropriate to the unique aims and objects of the Convention. Part I begins by reviewing both the principles governing the causation analysis and their methods of application in different jurisdictions. Part II then proceeds to review the considerations that might inform the development of a causation standard in refugee law, including guidance that might be obtained from other areas of law, against the background of the need …


Who Should Watch Over Refugee Law?, James C. Hathaway Jan 2002

Who Should Watch Over Refugee Law?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

We simply cannot afford to sell out the future of refugee protection in a hasty bid to establish something that looks, more or less, like an oversight mechanism for the Refugee Convention.


Sex, Gender, And September 11, Hilary Charlesworth, Christine M. Chinkin Jan 2002

Sex, Gender, And September 11, Hilary Charlesworth, Christine M. Chinkin

Articles

The October 2001 issue of the American Journal ofInternational Law contained several editorials on the international law implications of the hijackings of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath.' In one respect these editorials resemble other writings on these events in academic and popular media: questions of sex and gender are largely overlooked.' In our view, however, concepts of sex and gender provide a valuable perspective on these devastating actions.' We use the term "sex" here to refer to issues about women as distinct biological beings from men, and the term "gender" to encompass social understandings of femininity and masculinity. Although …


Persecution In The Fog Of War: The House Of Lords' Decision In Adan, Michael Kagan, William P. Johnson Jan 2002

Persecution In The Fog Of War: The House Of Lords' Decision In Adan, Michael Kagan, William P. Johnson

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this Article, we argue that the House of Lords' reasoning in Adan was seriously flawed. The House of Lords correctly recognized that evidence that minorities face a heightened risk of being persecuted can be sufficient to show a nexus to a Convention ground. Yet it erred when it went on to hold that only differentially at-risk individuals or groups can benefit from refugee status. If a person's risk of being persecuted is causally linked to his or her race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, the nexus requirement is satisfied irrespective of whether the …


Fit And Functional In Legal Ethics: Developing A Code Of Conduct For International Arbitration, Catherine A. Rogers Jan 2002

Fit And Functional In Legal Ethics: Developing A Code Of Conduct For International Arbitration, Catherine A. Rogers

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this Article, the author develops a methodology for prescribing the normative content of a code of ethics for international arbitration, and in a forthcoming companion article, integrated mechanisms for making those norms both binding and enforceable are proposed. In making these proposals, the author rejects the classical conception of legal ethics as a purely deontological product derived from first principles. This Article argues, instead, that ethics derive from the inter-relational functional role of advocates in an adjudicatory system, and that ethical regulation must correlate with the structural operations of the system. The fit between ethics and function, the author …


The Promise Of Truth Commissions In Times Of Transition, Mariah Jackson Christensen Jan 2002

The Promise Of Truth Commissions In Times Of Transition, Mariah Jackson Christensen

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity by Priscilla B. Hayner


African Courts, International Law, And Comparative Case Law: Chimera Or Emerging Human Rights Jurisprudence?, Mirna E. Adjami Jan 2002

African Courts, International Law, And Comparative Case Law: Chimera Or Emerging Human Rights Jurisprudence?, Mirna E. Adjami

Michigan Journal of International Law

Though the potential creation of a supranational human rights court has brought international attention to the African human rights system, international law and human rights scholars rarely turn to African examples when studying the domestic application of international human rights norms. This Article seeks to fill that gap by analyzing cases from several Anglophone common law countries in sub-Saharan Africa that invoke international law and comparative case law as interpretive support in their national fundamental rights jurisprudence.


The Cedaw As A Collective Approach To Women's Rights, Brad R. Roth Jan 2002

The Cedaw As A Collective Approach To Women's Rights, Brad R. Roth

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article will identify the individualist paradigm with the main current of contemporary liberal-individualist political thought, and more specifically with the approach to women's rights reflected in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which can be read most straightforwardly as reflecting a liberal-individualist conception of how the individual, society, and the State interrelate. This approach, dominant in the international human rights system as well as in the legal systems of some of the most influential States, can usefully be identified as that of the political Center.


Dueling Fates: Should The International Legal Regine Accept A Collective Or Individual Pradigm To Protect Women's Rights?, Michigan Journal Of International Law Jan 2002

Dueling Fates: Should The International Legal Regine Accept A Collective Or Individual Pradigm To Protect Women's Rights?, Michigan Journal Of International Law

Michigan Journal of International Law

Transcript for Symposium held at the University of Michigan Law School on Saturday, April 6, 2002.


The Causal Nexus In International Refugee Law, James C. Hathaway Jan 2002

The Causal Nexus In International Refugee Law, James C. Hathaway

Articles

For all of its value as a critical mechanism of human rights protection, international refugee law is not an all-encompassing remedy. In at least two ways, the category of persons of concern to refugee law is significantly more narrow than the universe of victims of human rights abuse. First, only persons able somehow to leave their own country can be refugees. Alienage is a requirement for refugee status because of concerns about the limits of international resources and the potential for responsibility-shifting, as well as in recognition of the fundamental constraints which sovereignty still places on meaningful intervention by the …


Those Who Remember The Past May Not Be Condemned To Repeat It, Stephan Landsman Jan 2002

Those Who Remember The Past May Not Be Condemned To Repeat It, Stephan Landsman

Michigan Law Review

In The Hague, Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for crimes committed in Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia; in Arusha, Tanzania, Jean Paul Akayasu, a Rwandan bourgmestre, was convicted of genocide; in London, Augusto Pinochet was detained and adjudged amenable to an arrest warrant issued by a Spanish magistrate for acts of torture carried out in Chile; in Belgium, a Hutu Roman Catholic former mother superior was convicted of complicity in the Rwandan genocide; and in Rome a treaty was signed commencing the process that will result in the creation of the International Criminal Court ("ICC"). All these events underscore the startling …


Alternatives To Economic Sanctions, Christine M. Chinkin Jan 2002

Alternatives To Economic Sanctions, Christine M. Chinkin

Book Chapters

Considering the merits of non-coercive alternatives to economic sanctions inevitably risks the charges of idealism and naIvete. However a number of speakers in this conference have raised considerable doubts about the efficacy of sanctions: even on their own terms sanctions rarely work and the material costs to non-targeted states and the implications for human rights make their justification problematic, even when they can in some sense be said to have worked. It therefore makes sense at least to give consideration to some non- coercive alternatives, either in conjunction with sanctioning policies or separate from them. The other alternative is the …


Refugee Law Is Not Immigration Law, James C. Hathaway Jan 2002

Refugee Law Is Not Immigration Law, James C. Hathaway

Articles

The spectacle of the governments of Australia, Indonesia, and Norway playing pass the parcel with 400 refugees, most of them Afghans, is not an edifying one... Yet the issues of responsibility, over which the three governments are arguing, are important ones which, left unsettled in this and other cases, could only worsen the prospects for all refugees in the longer run. For the truth is that when what agreement has been painfully achieved between nations on how to deal with refugees breaks down, the natural reaction is to erect even higher barriers than already exist.


Who Should Watch Over Refugee Law?, James C. Hathaway Jan 2002

Who Should Watch Over Refugee Law?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

We simply cannot afford to sell out the future of refugee protection in a hasty bid to establish something that looks, more or less, like an oversight mechanism for the Refugee Convention.