Law Commons^™

Foreword: Poverty Law Issue, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

This Poverty Law Issue provides testimony as to why and how the legal profession, the government, and society can better provide justice for people of small means. Overall, this Poverty Law Issue contributes to understanding how we may ensure that the difficulty of poverty borne by our fellow citizens does not become compounded by injustice. For when justice is compromised for one group, its integrity as a whole may rightly be questioned.

Fifty State Survey Of Vulnerable Persons Statutes, Brenda V. Smith

The Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Surveys

This document provides information regarding enacting state, statute number, statute title, coverage, definitions and notes, penalties, and applicability to youth for criminal laws prohibiting the abuse of individuals by their caregivers.

Counterinsurgency, The War On Terror, And The Laws Of War, Ganesh Sitaraman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military strategists, historians, soldiers, and policymakers have made counterinsurgency's principles and paradoxes second nature, and they now expect that counterinsurgency operations will be the likely wars of the future. Yet despite counterinsurgency's ubiquity in military and policy circles, legal scholars have almost completely ignored it. This Article evaluates the laws of war in light of modern counterinsurgency strategy. It shows that the laws of war are premised on a kill-capture strategic foundation that does not apply in counterinsurgency, which follows a win-the-population strategy. The result is that the laws of war are disconnected …

The European Court’S Political Power Across Time And Space, Karen Alter

Faculty Working Papers

This article extracts from Alter's larger body of work insights on how the political and social context shapes the ECJ's political power and influence. Part I considers how the political context facilitated the constitutionalization of the European legal system. Part II considers how the political context helps determine where and when the current ECJ influences European politics. Part III draws lessons from the ECJ's experience, speculating on how the European context in specific allowed the ECJ to become such an exceptional international court. Part IV lays out a research agenda to investigate the larger question of how social support shapes …

Ochrona Praw Czlowieka Z Perspektywy Ameriykanskiej Oceny Historycznego Legatu Rady Europy, Rett R. Ludwikowski

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Climate Change And The Right To Food: A Comprehensive Study, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

Climate change and the policies instituted to combat it are affecting the realiza- tion of the right to food in myriad, often unnoticed ways. This report highlights how – despite the common objective to preserve human welfare for present and future generations – the climate change regime and the human rights regime addressing the right to food have failed to coordinate their agendas and to collab- orate to each other’s mutual benefit. The current climate change regime fails to accurately address the human harms resulting from climate change itself, and is not operating with the necessary safeguards and preventive measures …

Human Rights And Military Decisions: Counterinsurgency And Trends In The Law Of International Armed Conflict, Dan E. Stigall, Christopher L. Blakesley, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The past several decades have seen a Copernican shift in the paradigm of armed conflict, which the traditional Law of International Armed Conflict (LOIAC) canon has not fully matched. Standing out in stark relief against the backdrop of relative inactivity in LOIAC, is the surfeit of activity in the field of international human rights law, which has become a dramatic new force in the ancient realm of international law. Human rights law, heretofore not formally part of the traditional juridico-military calculus, has gained ever increasing salience in that calculus. Indeed, human rights law has ramified in such a manner that …

Introduction: International Review Of Constitutionalism Special Issue On Law, Poverty And Economic Inequality, Penelope Andrews, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

Editors introduction: This collection of articles by noted scholars examines what law and legal institutions can do to alleviate poverty and economic inequality in the new economic and political environment. The articles explore the contours of many struggles for distributive justice. They describe contemporary constitutional strategies, such as the incorporation of economic, social and cultural rights in constitutions in relation to grassroots anti-poverty campaigns in many parts of the world, including campaigns for rights in South Africa, and poor people's economic and human rights campaigns in the United States. Such campaigns face well-known disadvantages in contending with entrenched, powerful, and …

Introduction [Comments], Andrew Scherer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Bioethics And Self-Governance: The Lessons Of The Universal Declaration On Bioethics And Human Rights, O. Carter Snead

Journal Articles

The following article analyzes the process of conception, elaboration, and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights, and reflects on the lessons it might hold for public bioethics on the international level. The author was involved in the process at a variety of levels: he provided advice to the IBC on behalf of the President's Council of Bioethics; he served as the U.S. representative to UNESCO's Intergovernmental Bioethics Committee; and led the U.S. Delegation in the multilateral negotiation of Government experts that culminated in the adoption of the declaration in its final form. The author is currently …

Book Review Of Freedom From Poverty As A Human Right: Who Owes What To The Very Poor?, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Human Rights Implications Of Climate Change, David Hunter

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

United Nations Collective Security And The United States Security Guarantee In An Age Of Rising Multipolarity: The Security Council As The Talking Shop Of The Nations, Kenneth Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This essay considers the respective roles of the United Nations and the United States in a world of rising multipolarity and rising new (or old) Great Powers. It asks why UN collective security as a concept persists, despite the well-known failures, both practical and theoretical, and why it remains anchored to the UN Security Council. The persistence is owed, according to the essay, to the fact of a parallel US security guarantee that offers much of the world (in descending degrees starting with NATO and close US allies such as Japan, but even extending to non-allies and even enemies who …

Inter-American System, Claudia Martin

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The 60th Anniversary Of The Udhr, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Human Rights Hero - President Barack Obama, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Where The Home In The Valley Meets The Damp Dirty Prison: A Human Rights Perspective On Therapeutic Jurisprudence And The Role Of Forensic Psychologists In Correctional Settings, Astrid Birgden, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The roles of forensic psychologists in coerced environments such as corrections include that of treatment provider (for the offender) and that of organizational consultant (for the community). This dual role raises ethical issues between offender rights and community rights; an imbalance results in the violation of human rights. A timely reminder of a slippery ethical slope that can arise is the failure of the American Psychological Association to manage this balance regarding interrogation and torture of detainees under the Bush administration. To establish a “bright-line position” regarding ethical practice, forensic psychologists need to be cognizant of international human rights law. …

A Change Is Gonna Come: The Implications Of The United Nations Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities For The Domestic Practice Of Constitutional Mental Disability Law, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

As recently as fifteen years ago, disability was not broadly acknowledged as a human rights issue. Although there were prior cases decided in the United States and in Europe that, retrospectively, had been litigated from a human rights perspective1 the characterization of "disability rights" (especially the rights of persons with mental disabilities) was not discussed in a global public, political or legal debate until the early 1990s. Instead, disability was seen only as a medical problem of the individual requiring a treatment or cure. By contrast, viewing disability as a human rights issue requires us to recognize the inherent equality …

Proportional Deportation, Angela M. Banks

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Exceptional Engagement: Protocol I And A World United Against Terrorism, Michael A. Newton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article challenges the prevailing view that U.S. "exceptionalism" provides the strongest narrative for the U.S. rejection of Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The United States chose not to adopt the Protocol in the face of intensive international criticism because of its policy conclusions that the text contained overly expansive provisions resulting from politicized pressure to accord protection to terrorists who elected to conduct hostile military operations outside the established legal framework. The United States concluded that the commingling of the regime criminalizing terrorist acts with the jus in bello rules of humanitarian law would be untenable …

Double Jeopardy And Multiple Sovereigns: A Jurisdictional Theory, Anthony J. Colangelo

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article offers a coherent way of thinking about double jeopardy rules among sovereigns. Its theory has strong explanatory power for current double jeopardy law and practice in both U.S. federal and international legal systems, recommends adjustments to double jeopardy doctrine in both systems, and sharpens normative assessment of that doctrine.

The Article develops a jurisdictional theory of double jeopardy under which sovereignty signifies independent jurisdiction to make and apply law. Using this theory, the Article recasts the history of the U.S. Supreme Court's dual sovereignty doctrine entirely in terms of jurisdiction, penetrating the opacity of the term sovereign as …

Foreword: Security Detention, Michael P. Scharf, Gwen Gillespie

Faculty Publications

Foreword to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University organized a two-day experts meeting on security detention, Cleveland, OH, 2009

Social And Economic Rights In Canada: What Are They And Who Can Best Protect Them?, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article examines the development and current status of positive social and economic rights in Canada. Exploring the comparative competence of legislatures, courts and human rights tribunals, Wayne MacKay suggests that courts should depart, with caution, from their traditional deferential role to legislators. Due to their flexibility and accessibility, HR Tribunals should supplement the role of the courts and legislatures in giving effect to social and economic rights, which should form part of a holistic package of human rights in Canada.

Global Funder, Grassroots Litigator—Judicialization Of The Environmental Movement In Thailand, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Foreword: After Guantanamo, Michael P. Scharf, Sonia Vohra

Faculty Publications

“Guantanamo Bay.” To many around the world those two words conjure up haunting images of orange jumpsuit-clad detainees imprisoned behind barbed-wire fences, subjected to the cruelest imaginable interrogation techniques, and held indefinitely without trial, or awaiting trial before military commissions whose procedures violate international law. It is no surprise, then, that the new U.S. administration perceived the Guantanamo Bay detention center and associated detainee policies as an indelible stain on America's moral authority and an impediment to the success of future U.S. foreign policy.

Domestic Violence And Gender-Based Persecution: How Refugee Adjudicators Judge Women Seeking Refuge From Spousal Violence – And Why Reform Is Needed, Constance Macintosh

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This report is an effort to address information gaps regarding how gendered claims are addressed by adjudicators at Canada’s Refugee Protection Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (the RPD). It looks at one specific type of gendered claim: persecution through domestic or intimate violence. The study considers all the RPD decisions from 2004 to 2009 and judicial reviews from 2005 to 2009 that were reported in the Quicklaw LexisNexis service. These decisions are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively.

This report finds adjudicators consistently identify domestic violence as a form of gendered persecution that can form a nexus …

Balancing Necessity And Individual Rights In The Fight Against Transnational Terrorism: 'Targeted Killings' And International Law, Karinne Lantz

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the restraints international human rights law and international humanitarian law place on a State’s use of lethal force against suspected terrorists. Although the law restricts the ability to target suspected terrorists, it is argued that these limits should be respected in order to protect innocent civilians from undue harm. Under IHRL, it is argued that the right to life as a peremptory norm restricts extra-territorial targeted attacks of suspected terrorists. Accordingly, such action should only be considered lawful when it is necessary to protect the State’s population from a known threat and lesser force would not suffice. …

History And Action: The Inter-American Human Rights System And The Role Of The Inter-American Commission On Human Rights, Robert K. Goldman

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article examines the historical origins of the Inter-American human rights system and key achievements of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights over the past fifty years. The article also focuses on various notable activities and achievements of the Commission during three discreet periods between 1960 and 2004. It explores the Commission’s use of on-site visits and country reports to expose human rights violations of military governments during the 1970s and its increased use of the case system since the restoration of democratic rule in the 1990s. The article notes how key themes and shifts in US foreign policy, from …

Notice Otherwise Given: Will In Absentia Trials At The Special Tribunal For Lebanon Violate Human Rights?, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

On March 1, 2009, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) commenced operations in the Netherlands. The mandate of the STL is to try those allegedly responsible for the 2005 bombing in Beirut which killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. A collaborative effort between Lebanon and the United Nations, the STL is to be of “international character based on the highest standards of justice.” However, the STL’s in absentia trial provisions are based on a far different, and lower, standard. This article posits that the STL’s in absentia trial provisions violate human rights norms, indeed the U.N. expressly rejected such …

Panel 1: Are Adequate Legal Frameworks In Place At The Domestic Level?: Domestic Incorporation Of Obligations Under The Convention Against Torture, Claudio Grossman

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.