Law Commons^™

Global Ethics And The Role Of Academics, Christien Van Den Anker

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Academics have a social and professional responsibility that stems from their individual duties as global citizens. With their privileged position as lifelong learners they need to assess carefully where they direct their attention for research, their teaching and their exchange of knowledge with the wider public. This means that academic freedom does not only bring a range of rights, it also involves duties to develop and advocate ethical positions on real-life dilemmas and to engage in self-reflection on being in the role of contributing to oppression.

Challenging The International Criminal Court Over Al-Bashir, Emma Gilligan

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As of late November 2008, we are still awaiting the decision of the U.N. Security Council with regard to the request for the arrest of Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide put forward by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in July. With former Presidents Charles Taylor of Liberia and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia as the only two heads of state formally indicted by the ICC since its inception in 2002, the question remains whether the U.N. Security Council will allow this controversial indictment of al-Bashir by Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo or invoke Article 16 …

December Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Activist.” Harper's Magazine. November 2008.

Peace Without Justice, Or Justice Without Peace?, Clair Apodaca

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Peace without justice is an illusion. The use of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute human rights violations not only provides restorative justice for those harmed by the wrongdoing but also retributive justice towards the perpetrators. Restorative justice seeks to help heal the wounds of the victims and community by acknowledging and witnessing the pain and suffering of the victim. Retributive justice seeks to punish the offenders. The hope is that retribution will deter or prevent future acts of violence by holding perpetrators accountable for the violations of human rights, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. …

Human Rights Or Inhuman Wrongs, Edward Friedman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The project of promoting universally recognized human rights, that is, the commitments of the U.N. General Assembly-ratified Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), is in danger. Military and political intervention, including economic sanctions, to stop genocide and ethnic and other political mass murder is under attack. Apparently the lessons of Hitler’s holocaust, the Turkish genocide of Armenians, Pol Pot’s slaughter of innocents, and the loss of life in Rwanda are being rethought and un-taught. So-called peace is now preferred over prevention. The dead may have died in vain.

Alex De Waal's Shuttle Diplomacy, Sarah Stanlick

Human Rights & Human Welfare

This month’s discussion piece, “The Activist,” is a critical look at one of the most renowned scholars of the turmoil in Sudan. Alex de Waal, a man with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the different factions, aspects, and issues surrounding the conflicts in Sudan, is profiled under a careful eye. De Waal, a competent critic—as McDonell notes who “takes pride in his competence, and he does not hesitate to criticize activists he deems inexpert”— has built a career on a meticulously researched understanding of the conflict. He honed that reputation through careful action, critical thinking, and a critical voice for …

Human Rights And The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, Brent J. Steele

Human Rights & Human Welfare

There has been a vivid tendency this year by the conventional keepers of Washington wisdom to explicate the two presidential candidates' foreign policy views using old frameworks of "hawk" and "dove." Not only is this binary wrong, it fundamentally obscures some rather ironic potentials for how each candidate, if elected president, will focus upon human rights in their foreign policy. McCain's neoconservative view of the world is founded upon the Wilsonian call for democratization-culminating in what he terms a "League of Democracies." To use a concept that Arnold Wolfers first coined, and one which Joshua Muravchik has proffered as well, …

America As An Ordinary Nation, William F. Felice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

For decades, scholars of international relations have called attention to the limits of American power. For example, in 1976 Cornel University Press published America as an Ordinary Country: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Future , edited by Richard Rosecrance. As the title indicates, Rosecrance's book analyzed the impact of the economic, military, and foreign policy setbacks of the 1970s on U.S. power. Suddenly the U.S. seemed less the powerful, "indispensible" leader and more the vulnerable, "ordinary" country unable to control external forces lashing the society's economy and foreign policy. These insights led many scholars to call for a reassessment of …

November Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Foreign Policy Myths Debunked." The Nation. October 6, 2008.

Speak Softly...With Everyone You Can, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From the Monroe Doctrine to the Bush Doctrine, United States foreign policy has been predicated on the assumption that somehow it knows what is best for the rest of the world. Monroe feared a potential encroachment from Russia and meddling in the "American" Hemisphere by the European powers and issued what originally appeared as a modest statement about resistance to intervention by any other country than the United States . Ironically enforced by the British Navy at that time, the Monroe Doctrine went far beyond its modest beginnings to set a precedent for the development of U.S. foreign policy. The …

Myths, Reasonable Disagreement, And A League Of Democracies, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The United States ' election in 2004 was based on a number of foreign policy myths. Three of the most obvious were:

• The war in Iraq was necessary as a response to the threat of international terrorism. As a result, the world is now a safer place;
• The institutions of the UN are corrupt and do nothing but restrict American power;
• Al Qaeda and international terrorism more generally are extremely significant threats to American national security

The Responsibility To Protect And The Failure To Respond, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Commentators on global politics frequently observe the abject failure of states and global institutions to respond to local, regional, and global crises ranging from dramatic climatic events, humanitarian crises, warfare and violence, to the continuation of unsavoury rights-abusive regimes. In my own work in the field of the comparative politics of human rights, the types of observations that Abramowitz and Pickering make in this piece are all too common, and have led many in the past to make similar such observations that powerful states constantly engage in a grand human rights “double standard.”

Has The Iraq War Torpedoed The “Responsibility To Protect”?, William F. Felice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

At a U.N. World Summit in 2005, the nations of the world approved the “responsibility to protect.” This emerging principle of international law, charges each individual state with the responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. If a nation fails to protect its populations from these barbarities, the nations of the world declared that they would act, through the Security Council, in accordance with the U.N. Charter, to stop the violence against innocents everywhere and protect imperiled peoples. In theory, Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter gives the member states the military …

October Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Making Intervention Work.” by Morton Abramowitz and Thomas Pickering. Foreign Affairs. September/October 2008.

Improving The Agents And Mechanisms Of Humanitarian Intervention, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

I agree with the broad thrust of Abramowitz and Pickering’s article. They rightly highlight the failings of the current agents and mechanisms of humanitarian intervention. The problem, however, is twofold. First, all the currently-existing interveners possess notable, and well-known, flaws. The U.N. and regional organizations suffer from serious shortfalls in funding and equipment. States frequently lack the commitment and willingness to act. And, although NATO’s operations in Bosnia and Kosovo raised hopes that it would be a willing and powerful humanitarian intervener, the reluctance of many of its members to commit troops in Afghanistan (where member states have clear interests) …

Reforming Humanitarian Rescue, Brent J. Steele

Human Rights & Human Welfare

There is much to commend in Morton Abramowitz and Thomas Pickering’s article “Making Intervention Work.” They propose to reform the United Nations’ capacity for intervention with the creation of an autonomous U.N. force largely constituted with forces contributed by the Security Council’s member-states. If such a force were kept to a minimal operational mission, “a small rapid-deployment force with special engineering, logistical, medical, and police skills,” as the authors suggest, then I think this is a good idea. If such a force would, however, become more than this—an autonomous army of military personnel meant to intervene with force into any …

In With The Old, Out With The New, Brent J. Steele

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Michael Cohen, Maria Figueroa Küpçü and Parag Khanna make some compelling arguments about the inherent drawbacks regarding the role diverse networks of NGOs play in keeping at-risk populations alive throughout the world. We are informed that these groups are “the new colonialists,” agencies much like the old European empires. These new colonialists are apparently enforcing a cycle of dependency which prevents the development of state structures, structures that apparently sustain these populations more effectively. The problem with this thesis is that the authors do not seem to entertain the possibility that the nation-state is itself an (old) colonial construct, and …

September Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

"The New Colonialists" by Michael A. Cohen, Maria Figueroa Küpçü, and Parag Khanna. Foreign Policy. July/August 2008.

Saving Lives: A First Step Toward Freedom Not Dependence, William F. Felice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

During the nineteenth century, European powers extended and deepened their brutal domination of the so-called “uncivilized” (sic) nations and peoples around the world. These efforts were named “colonialist” and were based on the uprooting of indigenous peoples, the export and pillage of natural resources, cultural displacement, direct political control, and economic exploitation and the creation of dependency by the Europeans. While the European states gained colossal economic benefits from these arrangements, the colonized peoples were left with failed states and bad governments. Advocates of these colonialist policies often justified these actions on the basis of a deep-felt ideological belief in …

Nothing "Colonial" About It: Service Delivery And Accountability, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

At one level, there is little in “The New Colonialists” with which I disagree. The necessary state capacity in developing societies for basic service delivery is in many cases absent, significantly weak, or has been corrupted in ways that produce tremendous inequality of access and disproportionate social outcomes that are related to race, ethnicity, poverty, gender, and other categories of social identity. It is true that in the presence of weak state institutions, widespread corruption, and underdeveloped infrastructure, a large number of national and international non-governmental agencies and organizations have sought to redress such imbalances through their work in providing …

Cosmopolitanism And Rationalizing Tendencies, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

When phone-in talk shows, the press, and undergraduates debate the case for cosmopolitan accounts of global distributive justice, there are a number of standard rationalizations given for why we don’t have a duty to help. These include: “we have duties only to our fellow countrymen”; “poverty is caused by corrupt leaders, so not our fault, and therefore not our responsibility“; and “humanitarian aid is counter-productive.” Unlike the other two sorts of rationalization, the latter claim does not necessarily deny the moral cosmopolitanism premise that we have extensive duties to relieve the suffering of those beyond our borders. Rather, it follows …

August Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

"Still knocking, as the doors close." The Economist. June 19, 2008.

Who Counts? Refugees And The Politics Of Indifference, Sonia Cardenas

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The contemporary plight of refugees, asylum seekers, and other marginalized groups reveals the limits of international human rights norms. Numerous internationally recognized standards and laws exist for the humane treatment of people. Yet despite enormous progress, the reality is that some people are simply deemed to be less fully human than others. Nationalism and racism underlie popular indifference to today’s unwanted refugees. This is the unspoken truth that lies at the heart of the global refugee problem.

Social Contract In A Borderless World, Daniel J. Graeber

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Addressing the American Political Science Association in 2000, the international relations theorist Robert Keohane of Princeton University noted that effective governance in a globalized world depends more on interstate cooperation and transnational networks than any type of world body. Keohane made the claim that the people and players in a globalized world stand to gain from the system through cooperation across borders and boundaries. Nevertheless, Keohane also observed that the actors may exploit interdependence in that system by transferring blame to others and that, although institutions may be essential, they can also be dangerous. So it is when confronting the …

Appealing To The Realist Nature Of The Problem: An Attempt To Find Common Ground, Eric K. Leonard

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Whenever I teach my undergraduate course on human rights, I inevitably have one student who argues that state sovereignty trumps all and that states should act in their “national interest” in regards to issues where human rights and sovereignty clash. They usually continue the argument by stipulating that “human rights” are not defensible unless they are universally accepted, meaning contained in a universally ratified document (and they use the term “universal” literally), because all authority resides in the state. Thus, it is always an interesting discussion when we turn to the issue of migration, and more specifically, refugees.

July Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

"Armed and Humanitarian" by Bruce Falconer. Mother Jones. May 19, 2008.

Mission Creep: De-Militarizing Humanitarian Protection, Sonia Cardenas

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Over a decade ago, the U.S. military was warning liberal internationalists about the dangers of "mission creep." Today it is doing the opposite, incorporating relief and development work into its operations. In the devastating aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in Burma , the U.S. military's newfound mission may seem compelling. Unfortunately, expanding the military's role into humanitarian work reflects a flawed logic that should be resisted. There are more promising ways to protect victims of humanitarian disaster.

When Steel And Guns Meets Bread And Butter, Daniel J. Graeber

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Speaking before the 191-member United Nations in 2005, then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that "For the first time . we are agreed that states do not have the right to do what they will within their own borders but that we in the name of humanity have a common duty to protect people where their own governments will not." This notion, that of responsible sovereignty , says that nation states forfeit the right to uninterrupted internal freedoms when they no longer uphold the responsibilities associated with sovereignty.

Reconstructing Sovereignty: From Control To Responsibility, Eric K. Leonard

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As I stood with a standing-room only crowd last fall at a United Nations University of New York (UNU-ONY) event entitled, "Prevention of Mass Atrocities: From Mandate to Realization," I began to wonder how far the responsibility to protect (R2P) could be stretched. As defined by the UNU-ONY organizers, the purpose of the event was " to explore the work of mass atrocity prevention across the UN system, with a focus on the role of the new Office of the Special Representative for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (SRPGMA)." As I currently look at the international community's response …

June Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

"A Screaming Start: The UN and Human Rights." The Economist. April 24, 2008.