Law Commons^™

Independence And Immigration, Amanda Frost

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

State-Enabled Crimes, Rebecca Hamilton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

International crimes are committed by individuals, but many – from genocide in Rwanda to torture at Abu Ghraib – would not have occurred without the integral role played by the State. This dual contribution, of individual and State, is intrinsic to the commission of what I term “State-Enabled Crimes.” Viewing international adjudication through the rubric of State-Enabled Crimes highlights a feature of the international judicial architecture that is typically taken for granted: its bifurcated structure. Notwithstanding the deep interrelationship between individual and State in the commission of State-Enabled Crimes, the international legal system adjudicates the responsibility of each under two …

How International Law Can Eradicate Torture: A Response To Cynics, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Disparate Impact: An Opportunity To Realize The Promise Of The Fair Housing Act, Valerie Schneider

School of Law Faculty Publications

Abstract:

Twice in the past three years, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Fair Housing cases, and, each time, under pressure from civil rights leaders who feared that the Supreme Court might narrow current Fair Housing Act jurisprudence, the cases settled just weeks before oral argument. Settlements after the Supreme Court grants certiorari are extremely rare, and, in these cases, the settlements reflect a substantial fear among civil rights advocates that the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in cases such as Shelby County v. Holder and Fisher v. University of Texas are working to dismantle many of the protections of …

Rethinking Intangible Cultural Heritage And Expressions Of Folklore: A Lesson From The Fcc’S Localism Standards, Jon M. Garon

Faculty Scholarship

This article reviews the underlying societal imperatives reflected in a policy of intangible cultural heritage and the intellectual property-like regimes being developed to protect these interests. It contrasts UNESCO efforts with more narrowly tailored efforts of WIPO and juxtaposes those approaches with the localism model developed under the FCC. While aspects of the WIPO protection efforts focusing on trademark-like and trade secret-like protections benefit the people and cultures these policies hope to serve, additional copyright-like protections will likely do more harm than good. Instead, global public policy will be far better served through emphasis on the FCC's localism attributes of …

Localism As A Production Imperative: An Alternative Framework To Promoting Intangible Cultural Heritage And Expressions Of Folklore, Jon M. Garon

Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, the policy of localism – the legislative goal of fostering local community expression and competence to deliver local content – finds its home in the Telecommunications Act rather than either the Copyright Act or Trademark Act. Other nations have introduced values of localism into trade policy, content distribution rules, and international efforts to protect intangible cultural heritage and expressions of folklore.

Jurisdictions in every continent are struggling to address the pressures of globalism through efforts to protect indigenous peoples’ and minority communities’ languages and culture. These efforts take many forms. Nations have introduced efforts to protect …

Human Rights Hero: The Supreme Court In Griswold V. Connecticut, Stephen Wermiel

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

"Smile, You're On Cellphone Camera!": Regulating Online Video Privacy In The Myspace Generation, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In the latest Batman movie, Bruce Wayne’s corporate right hand man, Lucius Fox, copes stoically with the death and destruction dogging his boss. Interestingly, the last straw for him is Bruce’s request that he use digital video surveillance created through the city’s cellphone network to spy on the people of Gotham City in order to locate the Joker. Does this tell us something about the increasing social importance of privacy, particularly in an age where digital video technology is ubiquitous and largely unregulated?

While much digital privacy law and commentary has focused on text files containing personal data, little attention …

Through Our Glass Darkly: Does Comparative Law Counsel The Use Of Foreign Law In U.S. Constitutional Adjudication?, Kenneth Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This (35 pp.) essay appears as a contribution to a law review symposium on the work of Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon in comparative law. The essay begins by asking what comparative law as a scholarly discipline might suggest about the use of foreign (or unratified or nationally "unaccepted" international law) by US courts in US constitutional adjudication. The trend seemed to be gathering steam in US courts between the early-1990s and mid-2000s, but by the late-2000s, it appeared to be stalled as a practice, notwithstanding the intense scholarly interest throughout this period.

Practical politics within the US …

Forewarned Is Forearmed: Anticipating Big Changes For The Legal Profession, Laurel Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Crashing The Misdemeanor System, Jenny M. Roberts

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

With “minor crimes” making up more than 75% of state criminal caseloads, the United States faces a misdemeanor crisis. Although mass incarceration continues to plague the nation, the current criminal justice system is faltering under the weight of misdemeanor processing.

Operating under the “broken windows theory,” which claims that public order law enforcement prevents more serious crime, the police send many petty offenses to criminal court. This is so even though the original authors of the theory noted that “[o]rdinarily, no judge or jury ever sees the persons caught up in a dispute over the appropriate level of neighborhood order” …

Panel Iv: Challenges To Proving Cases Of Torture Before The Committee Against Torture, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Kafkaesque Experience Of Immigrants With Mental Disabilities: Navigating The Inexplicable Shoals Of Immigration Law, Jennifer L. Aronson

College of Law - Student Research & Writing Projects

Law and literature comes in two forms: law as literature and law in literature, the latter referring to the exploration of legal issues in great literary texts. Law in literature scholars place a high value on the "independent" view of the literary writers as he or she sees the law. They believe that these authors have something to teach legal scholars and lawyers about the human condition. “The Trial” by Franz Kafka, concerns human beings caught up in social and political dilemmas. Kafka offers readers an insight to the nature of totalitarianism and forces us to ask hard questions about …

Technical Standards For Admission To Medical Schools: Deaf Candidates Don't Get No Respect, Michael A. Schwartz

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

Medical schools utilize a set of technical standards used to screen applicants with disabilities, and one of the standards, which deals with communication, requires the applicant to be capable of speech and hearing. To the extent that medical schools exclude an applicant with a hearing impairment on the ground that the applicant cannot hear and speak, such exclusion would be (and should be) a violation of federal law. Schools must engage in an individualized assessment of how a Deaf medical candidate would satisfy the communication standard. The notion of an “undifferentiated graduate,” where all graduates qualify for practice in any …

Of Nazis, Americans, And Educating Against Catastrophe, Eric L. Muller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Death Penalty And The Absolute Prohibition Of Torture And Cruel, Inhuman, And Degrading Treatment Or Punishment, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

U.S. Foreign Policy And The Arab Spring: Ten Short-Term Lessons Learned, Paul Williams, Colleen Popken

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Session One: Using Forensic Medical Evidence In Court, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Victim Participation At The International Criminal Court And The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia: A Feminist Project?, Susana Sacouto

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

INTRODUCTION: Over the last couple of decades, and particularly since 1998, incredible advances have been made in the effort to end impunity for sexual and gender-based violence committed in the context of war, mass violence, or repression. Before this, crimes committed exclusively or disproportionately against women and girls during conflict or periods of mass violence were either largely ignored, or at most, treated as secondary to other crimes. However, evidence of the large-scale and systematic use of rape in conflicts over the last two decades helped create unprecedented levels of awareness of sexual violence as a method of war and …

Grounding Conversations On Sexuality And Asian Law, Holning S. Lau

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Women And Children Last: The Prosecution Of Sex Traffickers As Sex Offenders And The Need For A Sex Trafficker Registry, Geneva Brown

Law Faculty Publications

Sex trafficking is a moral and legal tragedy that affects thousands in the United States and abroad. The U.S. State Department estimates that human traffickers bring between 14,500 and 17,500 persons annually into the United States for various avenues of exploitation, including involuntary servitude and forced prostitution. Human traffickers are highly organized into criminal syndicates that reap exponential profits exploiting vulnerable women and children. Individual states struggle to prosecute traffickers and must rely on federal prosecution of trafficking enterprises. International cooperation with local law enforcement is essential in combating trafficking, especially in the sex trade. This Article proposes that an …

Inter-American System, Claudia Martin

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Islam In The Secular Nomos Of The European Court Of Human Rights, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

Since 2001 the European Court of Human Rights has decided a series of cases involving Islam and the claims of Muslim communities (both majorities and minorities) to freedom of religion and belief. This Article suggests that what is most interesting about these cases is how they are unsettling existing normative legal categories under the ECHR and catalyzing new forms of politics and rethinking of both the historical and theoretical premises of modern liberal political orders. These controversies raise anew two critical questions for ECHR jurisprudence: first, regarding the proper scope of the right to religious freedom; and second, regarding the …

Transitional Justice, Peace, And Prevention, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Human Element: The Impact Of Regional Trade Agreements On The Human Rights And The Rule Of Law, Claudio Grossman

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Unsigned United Nations Migrant Worker Rights Convention: An Overlooked Opportunity To Change The Brown Collar Migration Paradigm, Beth Lyon

Working Paper Series

The United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (Migrant Worker Convention or Convention) is one of the United Nations' nine core human rights treaties. The United States has neither signed nor ratified the treaty. Despite various reports and articles assessing potential ratification of the Convention by European and other countries, and an even more robust literature examining potential U.S. ratification of other UN core human rights treaties, there has been no examination of the potential for U.S. ratification of this Convention.

The Convention is the most comprehensive global attempt …

Behind The Red Curtain: Environmental Concerns And The End Of Communism, Joseph W. Dellapenna

Working Paper Series

Twenty years ago, the edifice of Communism collapsed constructed over the preceding three-quarters of a century from Berlin to Vladivostok and from Murmansk to Addis Ababa. Suddenly, between 1989 and 1991, all of the Communist states in Europe collapsed, as well as some Communist states in Asia and Africa, while most of the surviving Communist states largely abandoned Communist economic systems. While the crumbling edifice still hangs on, at least in vestigial forms, in some parts of the world, the collapse of the wall serves as an apt metaphor for the destruction of that edifice. The two years between 1989 …

The Relevance Of International Law To The Domestic Decision On Prosecutions For Past Torture, Bartram Brown

All Faculty Scholarship

The US, as a champion of human rights abroad, has often been skeptical and even critical when other states have granted de facto amnesty allowing impunity for gross violations of human rights. Nonetheless, some now argue that the US should turn a blind eye to the evidence indicating that under the Bush Administration US government officials formulated and implemented a policy of torture. Naturally, arguments about US national security have been central to the debate. The CIA’s own reports insist that enhanced interrogation techniques have been effective in yielding valuable information vital to the national security of the United States, …

Introductory Note To The Supreme Court Of The United States: Noriega V. Pastrana, Kenneth Anderson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Inter-American System, Diego Rodriguez-Pinzon

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.