Law Commons^™

Implementing Truth And Reconciliation: Comparative Lessons For The Republic Of Korea, Tara J. Melish

Tara Melish

This Article substantively introduces a special symposium issue on "Implementing Truth and Reconciliation: Comparative Lessons for Korea." Inspired by the Dec. 2010 release of the official report and recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea (TRCK), the special issue gathers comparative national and cross-national lessons from four nations -- South Korea, South Africa, Cambodia, and Peru -- on the factors that contribute to or hinder the effective implementation of truth commission recommendations and other efforts aimed at achieving national, community, and individual-level reconciliation. Such lessons are offered in the hope of assisting victim groups and other advocacy …

An Eye Toward Effective Enforcement: A Technical-Comparative Approach To The Drafting Negotiations, Tara J. Melish

Tara Melish

Published as Chapter 5 in Human Rights and Disability Advocacy, Maya Sabatello & Marianne Schulze, eds.

The unprecedented level of civil society participation that took place in the drafting of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) constitutes a major key to its success -- laying a solid foundation for the much longer and harder process of implementation ahead. This piece addresses how one civil society organization -- Disability Rights International (DRI) -- approached the negotiation process. Part I explains the strategic approach DRI adopted, highlighting its methodology, the guiding principles it embraced, and the resulting …

Importing Democracy: Promoting Participatory Decision Making In Russian Forest Communities, Maria Tysiachniouk, Errol E. Meidinger

Errol Meidinger

Published in Environmental Democracy Facing Uncertainty, Cécilia Claeys & Marie Jacqué, eds.

This paper describes how the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) jump-started democratic institutions in Russian rural communities to create a basis for social, environmental, and economic modernization within the Russian forestry sector. In Russia’s post-soviet markets and institutions, a host of multinational companies and large transnational environmental organizations sought to promote the restructuring of Russia’s legal and economic infrastructure and active subsidiaries in Russia. In order for modern forestry approaches to be imported, management practices that had developed in the West needed to be adapted to Russia’s …

A New International Human Rights Court For West Africa: The Ecowas Community Court Of Justice, Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, Jacqueline R. Mcallister

Jacqueline McAllister

The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (ECCJ) is an increasingly active and bold international adjudicator of human rights violations in West Africa. Since acquiring jurisdiction over human rights issues in 2005, the ECCJ has issued several path-breaking judgments, including against the Gambia for the torture of journalists, against Niger for condoning modern forms of slavery, and against Nigeria for failing to regulate the multinational oil companies that polluted the Niger Delta. This article explains why ECOWAS member states authorized the ECCJ to review human rights suits by individuals but did not allow private actors to complain about violations of regional …

Ferguson, The Rebellious Law Professor, And The Neoliberal University, Harold A. Mcdougall Iii

Harold A. McDougall III

Neoliberalism, a business-oriented ideology promoting corporatism, profit-seeking, and elite management, has found its way into the modern American university. As neoliberal ideology envelops university campuses, the idea of law professors as learned academicians and advisors to students as citizens in training, has given way to the concept of professors as brokers of marketable skills with students as consumers. In a legal setting, this concept pushes law students to view their education not as a means to contribute to society and the professional field, but rather as a means to make money. These developments are especially problematic for minority students and …

The Standard Model Introduced, Peter Aschenbrenner

Peter J. Aschenbrenner

The standard model offers civil society’s perspective on the creation, management and disposition of political society. There is a one-to-one relationship between a civil society and a political society. Each political society creates, manages and disposes of systems. Taken as a system-of-systems, a political society fulfills service missions on behalf of and at the behest of the civil society. Agreement on this point may be drawn from Aristotle to Burke: civil society views a political society as a contrivance to fulfill its needs. Our Constitutional Logic offers three purposes of political societies considered as constructs within civil or bourgeois society: …

The Standard Model And Its Service Missions, Peter Aschenbrenner

Peter J. Aschenbrenner

The standard model offers civil society’s perspective on the creation, management and disposition of political society. For purposes of this investigation, political societies are treated as chartered organizations. Taken as a system-of-systems, a political society fulfills service missions on behalf of and at the behest of the civil society. What are service missions? What are types of service missions? And how do they differ from systems? Our Constitutional Logic answers these questions.

The Standard Model’S Eight Modules And How They Advanced The Eighteenth Century's Agenda, Peter J. Aschenbrenner

Peter J. Aschenbrenner

‘Why do things have to come out that way?’ Sometime earlier than the fifth century B.C. this question was put to some public body or actor and the available solutions dissected. It turned out that since the systems of a political society were organized to distribute benefits to the members of civil society, many of the systems were designed to deliver product which could be assessed as to quality of output before the output was delivered. Our Constitutional Logic investigates.

An Essay On Christian Constitutionalism: Building In The Divine Style, For The Common Good(S), Patrick Mckinley Brennan

Patrick McKinley Brennan

Theocracy is a matter of growing global concern and therefore of renewed academic interest. This paper answers the following question: "What would a Christian constitution, in a predominantly Christian nation, look like?" The paper was prepared for presentation as the Clark Lecture at Rutgers School of Law (Camden), where papers answering the same question with respect to Jewish and Islamic constitutions and cultures, respectively, were also presented. A Christian constitution would not have as its aim the comparatively anodyne -- and ultimately futile -- business of introducing more "Judeo-Christian values" into the life of the typical nation state. The paper …

The Pace Of Change In Civil Polity 1688-1765 As Cataloged In Blackstone’S Commentaries On The Laws Of England, Peter J. Aschenbrenner

Peter J. Aschenbrenner

Wm. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (in its ultimate chapter, Book IV, Chapter 33) lists 35 changes in English civil society from 1688-1765. The list references sixteen Acts of Parliament, four instances of executive acquisition of power and fifteen instances of judicial reform. These 35 changes in political society over 77 years compute to one change every 2.2 years, making generous allowances for assumptions. OCL investigates.

Table Annexed To Article: The Pace Of Change In Civil Polity 1688-1765 As Cataloged In Blackstone’S Commentaries On The Laws Of England, Peter J. Aschenbrenner

Peter J. Aschenbrenner

Wm. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (in its ultimate chapter, Book IV, Chapter 33) lists 35 changes in English civil society from 1688-1765. The list references sixteen Acts of Parliament, four instances of executive acquisition of power and fifteen instances of judicial reform. These 35 changes in political society over 77 years compute to one change every 2.2 years, making generous allowances for assumptions. OCL investigates.

Social Change Requires Civic Infrastructure, Harold A. Mcdougall Iii

Harold A. McDougall III

Article explores how civil society might become sufficiently organized to hold business accountable beyond consumer choice, and government beyond merely voting.

Justice Stevens, Religion, And Civil Society, Gregory P. Magarian

Gregory P. Magarian

Did Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired from the Supreme Court last year, harbor a bias against religion? During his 35 years on the Court, Justice Stevens showed little favor for religious claimants. In Establishment Clause cases he advocated a strong doctrine of separation between church and state. In the most contentious Free Exercise Clause cases, he flatly opposed exempting religious believers from laws that interfered with their religious exercise. This combination of positions, unique among the Justices of the Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts Courts, has led commentators to charge Justice Stevens with disdain for religion. In this article, Professor …

Gender Budget Analysis In Morocco: Achieving Education Parity For Women And Girls, Christie J. Edwards

Christie J. Edwards Esq.

The Kingdom of Morocco has a long history of stability and democracy in the North African region, in large part due to the government’s commitment to improving the lives and status of women and girls. In the past few years, Morocco has set ambitious goals for increased access for women and girls to education as key strategies for the country’s economic development. However, although the government has committed to these gender-specific policies, implementation of education and literacy programs has been sporadic and inconsistent due to the enormity of the problem of female illiteracy and the complexity of the solutions proposed …

From Undemocratic To Democratic Civil Society: Japan's Volunteer Fire Departments, Mary Alice Haddad

Mary Alice Haddad

How do undemocratic civic organizations become compatible with democratic civil society? How do local organizations merge older patriarchal, hierarchical values and practices with newer more egalitarian, democratic ones? This article tells the story of how volunteer fire departments have done this in Japan. Their transformation from centralized war instrument of an authoritarian regime to local community safety organization of a full-fledged democracy did not happen overnight. A slow process of demographic and value changes helped the organization adjust to more democratic social values and practices. The way in which this organization made the transition offers important lessons for emerging democracies …

Collaborative Community-Based Natural Resource Management, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

This article analyzes the importance of increasing civil society actor access to and influence in international legal and policy negotiations, drawing from academic scholarship on governance, conservation and environmental sustainability, natural resource management, observations of civil society actors, and the authors’ experiences as participants in international environmental negotiations.

Emerging Law Addressing Climate Change And Water, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

The World Economic Forum recognizes that while restrictions on energy affect water systems and vice versa, energy and water policy are rarely coordinated. The International Panel on Climate Change predicts that wet places will become wetter and dry places will become dryer. Transboundary water, energy and climate coordination can occur through international consensus building.

An Agenda For Sustainable Communities, John Dernbach

John C. Dernbach

This article summarizes progress toward sustainable communities in the United States since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (or Earth Summit) in 1992. It shows the significant initiative that many communities have undertaken and identifies existing state and federal laws as impediments to achieving sustainability. This article also makes recommendations for further progress based on what we have already learned about how to achieve sustainable communities. They include not only more and strengthened sustainable community efforts, and broad state and federal legal support, but also deep engagement of all affected citizens. This article is based primarily on three …

Civil Society And Its Discontents: The Two Pillars Of Edmund Burke's Legal Philosophy, James A. Todd

James A. Todd

Author’s Abstract: This article will undertake a complete survey of the jurisprudential thought of Edmund Burke. In doing so, it will attempt to place civil society as the focus of all jurisprudential elements of Burke’s thought. Burke put forward the components of a legal order that tended toward the establishment of a fundamentally liberal society, with spontaneity as the engine of both law and social growth. The positive pillar of Burke’s thought refers to the maxims of jurisprudence that foster social harmony, allowing this growth to proceed apace. The complementing, negative pillar of Burke’s legal thought focuses on protecting these …