Law Commons^™

The Child Citizenship Act And The Family Reunification Act: Valuing The Citizen Child As Well As The Citizen Parent, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

Leading civil rights advocates today lament the degree to which current immigration law fails to maintain family unity. The recent passage of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 is a rare bipartisan step in the right direction because it grants automatic citizenship to foreign-born children of U.S. citizens upon receipt of their permanent resident status and finalization of their adoption. Congress now has before it the Family Reunification Act of 2001, which aims to restore certain procedural safeguards relaxed in 1996 to ensure that foreign-born parents are not summarily separated from their children, many of whom may be U.S. citizens. …

Proposals To Expel Palestinians From The Occupied Territories As Catalyst For A Civil Adjudication Campaign, Catherine A. Rogers

Journal Articles

I begin in Part II with a brief sketch of the history of stated policies to expel Palestinians from what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories, and then examine recent proposals that have been made and actions that have been taken to implement modern re-articulations of those historic policies. In Part III, I then review the grounds on which international law proscribes mass expulsions of indigenous and occupied peoples. While international law governing this issue is clear in its application and has been overwhelmingly endorsed by the larger international community, international law seems to have little influence on Israel's …

"My Friend Is A Stranger": The Death Penalty And The Global Ius Commune Of Human Rights, Paolo G. Carozza

Journal Articles

This article examines the judicial use of foreign jurisprudence in human rights adjudication, using as data a set of court decisions regarding the death penalty from over a dozen different tribunals in different parts of the world. The global human rights norms and judicial discourse on human rights in these cases can be understood and explained by comparing the contemporary practices to the medieval ius commune. The modern ius commune of human rights has three distinct characteristics which it shares with the historical example to which it is analogized: it is broadly transnational in scope and application; it is grounded …

Subsidiarity As A Structural Principle Of International Human Rights Law, Paolo G. Carozza

Journal Articles

This article argues that the principle of subsidiarity should be recognized as a structural principle of international human rights law primarily because of the way that it mediates between the universalizing aspirations of human rights and the fact of the diversity of human communities in the world. The idea of subsidiarity is deeply consonant with the substantive vision of human dignity and the universal common good that is expressed through human rights norms. Yet, at the same time it promotes respect for pluralism by emphasizing the freedom of more local communities to realize their own ends for themselves.

Looking at …

From Conquest To Constitutions: Retrieving A Latin American Tradition Of The Idea Of Human Rights, Paolo G. Carozza

Journal Articles

This article explores the historical roots of the Latin American region's strong commitment to the idea of universal human rights, focusing on four key intellectual moments: the ethical response to the Spanish conquest; the rights ideology of the continent's liberal republican revolutions; the articulation of social and economic rights in the Mexican Constitution of 1917; and the Latin American contributions to the genesis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Constructing a narrative from these examples, the article argues for the recognition of a distinct Latin American tradition within the global discourse of human rights.

"They Are Our Brothers, And Christ Gave His Life For Them": The Catholic Tradition And The Idea Of Human Rights In Latin America, Paolo G. Carozza

Journal Articles

Through the language of human rights, law can both reflect and constitute some of our most basic ideas about the requirements of human dignity and the human desire for freedom. It captures certain culturally embedded understandings about the nature of the human person in society and carries them forward in time through an institutionalized discourse and practice. This is especially so in those legal traditions that have inherited Western law’s historically consistent orientation toward the individual. Law never makes those sorts of claims in a systematically theoretical way, however. Instead, it is a form of praxis, combining theory and practice, …

Contraception As A Mask Of Personhood, Charles E. Rice

Journal Articles

Sometimes you can learn something by teaching Torts. In my case it happened with the Palsgraf case and John Noonan did it. When we reached Palsgraf, I always discussed with the class Professor Noonan's analysis in Persons and Masks of the Law.

Mrs. Palsgraf lost as a matter of law in the Court of Appeals, and Chief Judge Cardozo wrote the opinion. Professor Noonan thinks she lost because her humanity was covered by the abstract persona, the mask, of an "unforeseeable plaintiff." He did not accuse Cardozo of misapplying the rule of law he used, but of myopia in selecting …

Is There A New World Court?, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

I am pleased to introduce our conference on Human Rights and the Law of War: New Roles for the World Court? Why this conference? And why now? Our conference is prompted by two contrasting phenomena: The caseload of the ICJ seems to have been transformed in the post-Cold War period. The World Court is now busier than ever. It has more cases, increasingly involving questions of human rights or ongoing armed conflict. Yet these three inter-related phenomena—increased caseload, and more cases involving human rights or armed conflict—have been little analyzed or studied. Our purpose is to contribute to public and …

Symposium Introduction: Law, Religion, And Human Rights In Global Perspective, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

The essays and articles in this Symposium highlight the importance of religion for properly understanding the nature of law, feminism, globalization, human rights, international legal history, and judicial decision making. These essays and articles also challenge the academy to accept a more sophisticated understanding of religion and to understand its importance for all academic inquiry.