Law Commons^™

#Metoo And The Pursuit Of Women's International Human Rights, Benedetta Faedi Duramy

Publications

IN THE PAST YEAR, high profile cases and the ensuing #MeToo movement have raised much attention on issues surrounding gender discrimination, violence against women, and sexual harassment in the workplace. In the United States, allegations of sexual assault and harassment spawned the deposition or resignation of prominent figures in the entertainment, media, dining, and business industries following the onset of the #MeToo social media movement.' In the rest of the world, many people also embraced the online crusade by sharing the hashtag millions of times or creating their own versions of it. Feminists and scholars have since attempted to keep …

What Italian Sexual Violence Law Can Teach Us Law In The #Metoo Era, Rachel A. Van Cleave

Publications

On International Women’s Day, with women facing challenges on equal pay, reproductive rights, sexual harassment and violent sexual assault, the topic of sudden, forced and unwanted kisses initially seems trivial, unworthy of consideration. However, Alva Johnson’s recent civil complaint against Donald Trump for kissing her on the side of her mouth, raises the question of whether such conduct should be criminal in the United States.

Reinforcing Demands For Gender Justice: The War Crimes Tribunal Of Bangladesh, Zakia Afrin

Publications

Ferdousi was one of the first women who came forward to acknowledge being a victim of rape and sexual slavery during the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971. Today she has become part of the youth movement in Bangladesh, known as the Shahbag movement, supporting the International Crimes Tribunal and demanding the maximum penalty for those who are found guilty. In 2010, the Bangladesh Government, led by Sheikh Hasina, set up the International Crimes Tribunal and charged as many as 12 individuals for participating and assisting in war crimes and crimes against humanity during Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan. …

Engaging The Legal Academy In Disaster Response, Rachel A. Van Cleave, Davida Finger, Laila Hlass, Anne S. Hornsby, Susan S. Kuo

Publications

More than six years ago, volunteer lawyers, law students, and law faculty from the Gulf Coast and around the country provided assistance to communities devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the systemic failures of their own government. The volunteers provided much-needed support at a time when existing legal institutions were completely overwhelmed. Through their participation, the law students learned important firsthand lessons about the lack of equality in society, the possibility of redress through law, and the limitations of law.

Disasters present challenges and opportunities for law schools and other academic institutions with social justice missions because they expose …

Nothing But A Northern Lynching: The Death Of Fred Hampton Revisited, Susan Rutberg

Publications

No abstract provided.

Adjudicating Non-Justiciable Rights: Socio-Economic Rights And The South African Constitutional Court, Eric C. Christiansen

Publications

This paper begins with an examination of social rights in the South African constitutional drafting process. Following a review of the traditional arguments against the justiciability of socio-economic rights, it then examines the South African Constitutional Court cases addressing social rights, focusing on four primary cases: the antecedent case Ex parte Chairperson of the Constitutional Assembly: In re Certification of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 and three substantive social rights cases, Thiagraj Soobramoney v Minister of Health, KwaZulu-Natal, Government of Republic of South Africa v Irene Grootboom and Others, and Minister of Health v Treatment Action …

Exporting South Africa's Social Rights Jurisprudence, Eric C. Christiansen

Publications

One of the most distinctive elements of South Africa’s jurisprudence has been its willingness to adjudicate socio-economic rights in addition to traditional civil and political rights. While the advancement of social welfare as a whole has clearly proceeded at a far slower pace than political equality, the Constitutional protection of social rights and its enforcement by the Court continues to inspire social justice advocates in their work within South Africa and abroad. Indeed, despite the as-yet inadequate advancement of substantive socio-economic equality, much can be praised about the South African Constitutional project—and much can be learned from it. Particularly, much …

Sosa V. Alvarez-Machain - Restricting Access To Us Courts Under The Federal Tort Claims Act And The Alien Tort Statute: Reversing The Trend, Laura A. Cisneros

Publications

To function with adequate predictability and efficiency, the international community must maintain orderly relations among its members. This necessarily requires that members develop international norms of behavior and accept a certain loss of their otherwise exclusive sovereignty. Nowhere has the enforcement of international norms been more pronounced than in the area of human rights. International human rights norms directly challenge conventional notions of exclusive state sovereignty and unilateral action. The United States has long been a motive force behind the international human rights movement, opening its federal courts to redress human rights violations committed domestically or abroad. Specifically, federal courts …

My Father Is A Woman, Oh No!: The Failure Of The Courts To Uphold Individual Substantive Due Process Rights For Transgender Parents Under The Guise Of The Best Interests Of The Child, Helen Chang

Publications

Under the guise of the "best interest of the child," courts have denied biological and legal parents both custody and visitation rights over their children because these parents were either in the process of changing, or had completed a change, in their sexual and/or gender identity. One court has even terminated the parent-child relationship because of a parent's transgender status. This article proposes that a parent's transgender status does not render that parent per se unfit for custody and/or visitation. Rather, a parent's gender change should be used as merely one factor within the nexus test used by the court …

Ending The Apartheid Of The Closet: Sexual Orientation In The South African Constitutional Process, Eric C. Christiansen

Publications

This paper will briefly examine the process of creating a new South African Constitution in the 1990s. Nearly a decade of talks preceded the adoption of South Africa's first multi-racial democratic constitution in 1994. These talks and the subsequent drafting conventions created an astonishing document, stunning in its novelty in South African history, in its expressed values, and in its fundamental compromises. Part Three draws on a wide variety of primary documents from disparate sources to offer an original historical reconstruction of the inclusion of sexual orientation protections in the policy documents, Bill of Rights drafts, and constitutional proposals of …

Asian Law Journal Symposium On Labor And Immigration, Hina Shah

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No abstract provided.

The First Five-Year Span (1989-1994): Law And Religion In Post-Communist Hungary, Helen E. Hartnell

Publications

The goals of this article are to examine the most significant developments in Hungary during the 1989-1994 period and to situate them in the larger context of international human-rights law. After briefly setting forth an analytical framework for religious liberty and the separation of church and state, this article describes and analyzes the pertinent Hungarian laws and court decisions, and concludes that despite significant improvement in religion's legal status, its actual situation is precarious.

The Right To Food And Freedom From Hunger In The Past Sixth Of A Century, Sompong Sucharitkul

Publications

It is proposed in the present paper to examine the process of practical implementation of the "right to food" as a human right and "the right to be free from hunger" or in a more fashionable parlance "freedom from hunger". Both aspects of this fundamental freedom or basic right can be found enshrined in paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 11 (Basic Needs) of the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966 (hereinafter "the Covenant"). Our enquiry will cover the period following the Hague Lectures of President Eduardo Jimenez de Arichaga so as to complete the half …

Pro Bono Publico Meets Droits De L'Homme: Speaking A New Legal Language, Stephen A. Rosenbaum

Publications

In this Article, the author examines ways that legal aid advocacy organizations in the U.S. can utilize international human rights doctrine and procedures to advance the interests of poor and marginalized Americans in domestic and foreign venues. This is a sympathetic account of some of the efforts undertaken by legal services lawyers in this burgeoning field of law. The first section briefly describes the history and structure of the quasi-public legal aid programs funded by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). Section two details practical reasons why attorneys may want to look to international instruments or forums to achieve their clients' …

Application Of International Human Rights Law In State And Federal Courts, Stephen A. Rosenbaum, Kathryn Burke, Sandra Coliver, Connie De La Vega

Publications

This article provides a substantive discussion of international human rights law and how it can be used in federal and state courts to protect human rights within and outside the United States. It provides a comprehensive analysis of cases and examples of possible areas in which international human rights standards may be used to interpret United States laws. Specifically, the article seeks to promote more extensive use of international human rights laws by United States lawyers.

State and federal courts have traditionally used international law for the application and enforcement of treaties to which the United States has been a …