Law Commons^™

Elections And Economic Turbulence In Brazil: Candidates, Voters, And Investors, Tony Petros Spanakos, Lucio R. Renno

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The relation between elections and the economy in Latin America might be understood by considering the agency of candidates and the issue of policy preference congruence between investors and voters. The preference congruence model proposed in this article highlights political risk in emerging markets. Certain risk features increase the role of candidate campaign rhetoric and investor preferences in elections. When politicians propose policies that can appease voters and investors, elections may have a limited effect on economic indicators, such as inflation. But when voter and investor priorities differ significantly, deterioration of economic indicators is more likely. Moreover, voter and investor …

Généticisation Et Responsabilité: Les Habits Neufs De La Gouvernance Néolibérale (Uncorrected Proofs), Antoinette Rouvroy

Antoinette Rouvroy

Loin du phantasme spectaculaire d’une “maléabilité” génétique de l’être humain, et nonobstant les discours grandiloquants qui ont accompagné la très coûteuse exploration du génome humain, la “nouvelle génétique humaine” ne révèle ni ne porte atteinte à l’essence de l’être humain (encore faudrait-il qu’une telle essence puisse jamais être définie), mais révolutionne notre perception des causes des smilitudes et variations au sein de l’espèce humaine. Le néologisme ‘généticisation’ désigne la contamination progressive des discours sociétaux (médicaux, juridiques, politiques, sociologiques,...) par une logique réductionniste et essentialiste faisant des gènes la cause privilégiée sinon exclusive des variations inter-personnelles et inter-communautaires au sein de …

The Judicial Behavior Of Justice Souter In Criminal Cases And The Denial Of A Conservative Counterrevolution, Scott P. Johnson

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The following article documents the judicial career of Justice David Souter from his time served as an attorney general and state judge in New Hampshire until his recent tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court. Based upon his written opinions and individual votes, Justice Souter clearly has evolved into a more liberal jurist than ideological conservatives would have preferred in the area of criminal justice. Over the course of his judicial career, Justice Souter has gained respect as an intellectual scholar by attempting to completely understand both sides of a dispute and applying precedent and legal rules in a flexible—albeit …

Peace Without Justice, Or Justice Without Peace?, Clair Apodaca

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Peace without justice is an illusion. The use of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute human rights violations not only provides restorative justice for those harmed by the wrongdoing but also retributive justice towards the perpetrators. Restorative justice seeks to help heal the wounds of the victims and community by acknowledging and witnessing the pain and suffering of the victim. Retributive justice seeks to punish the offenders. The hope is that retribution will deter or prevent future acts of violence by holding perpetrators accountable for the violations of human rights, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. …

Challenging The International Criminal Court Over Al-Bashir, Emma Gilligan

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As of late November 2008, we are still awaiting the decision of the U.N. Security Council with regard to the request for the arrest of Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide put forward by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in July. With former Presidents Charles Taylor of Liberia and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia as the only two heads of state formally indicted by the ICC since its inception in 2002, the question remains whether the U.N. Security Council will allow this controversial indictment of al-Bashir by Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo or invoke Article 16 …

Alex De Waal's Shuttle Diplomacy, Sarah Stanlick

Human Rights & Human Welfare

This month’s discussion piece, “The Activist,” is a critical look at one of the most renowned scholars of the turmoil in Sudan. Alex de Waal, a man with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the different factions, aspects, and issues surrounding the conflicts in Sudan, is profiled under a careful eye. De Waal, a competent critic—as McDonell notes who “takes pride in his competence, and he does not hesitate to criticize activists he deems inexpert”— has built a career on a meticulously researched understanding of the conflict. He honed that reputation through careful action, critical thinking, and a critical voice for …

December Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Activist.” Harper's Magazine. November 2008.

Human Rights Or Inhuman Wrongs, Edward Friedman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The project of promoting universally recognized human rights, that is, the commitments of the U.N. General Assembly-ratified Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), is in danger. Military and political intervention, including economic sanctions, to stop genocide and ethnic and other political mass murder is under attack. Apparently the lessons of Hitler’s holocaust, the Turkish genocide of Armenians, Pol Pot’s slaughter of innocents, and the loss of life in Rwanda are being rethought and un-taught. So-called peace is now preferred over prevention. The dead may have died in vain.

Global Ethics And The Role Of Academics, Christien Van Den Anker

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Academics have a social and professional responsibility that stems from their individual duties as global citizens. With their privileged position as lifelong learners they need to assess carefully where they direct their attention for research, their teaching and their exchange of knowledge with the wider public. This means that academic freedom does not only bring a range of rights, it also involves duties to develop and advocate ethical positions on real-life dilemmas and to engage in self-reflection on being in the role of contributing to oppression.

Liberdade, Ética E Direito, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Further than Ethics concieved as mere obedience, Republican Ethics expresses the idea of duty for freedom and Liberty. After Law concieved as only duty and imperative norms from power to the subjects, there is the possibility of a fraternal law, in new patterns. This article explores several ways in a new ethics and a new law paradigms, after the objective Roman Law and the subjective modern Law.

Jogelmélet Jog Nélkül? [Legal Theory Without Law?], Péter Cserne

Péter Cserne

No abstract provided.

Plus On Est Observé, Moins On Est Sensible Aux Atteintes À La Vie Privée, Antoinette Rouvroy

Antoinette Rouvroy

Voir ce qui se passe dans sa rue, sur une plage aux Maldives ou au Nord-Kivu, au mètre près et en teps réel, ou presque. C'est le pari de e-Corce, un concept d'observation de la terre imaginé par l'agence spatiale française. Super Google Earth ou Big Brother?

November Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Foreign Policy Myths Debunked." The Nation. October 6, 2008.

Now He Belong To The Ages: Memorializing Abraham Lincoln, Jonathan Jeffrey

SCL Faculty and Staff Publications

Reviled by many of his fellow Kentuckians while he was president, Abraham Lincoln became Kentucky’s, and America’s, idol during the 20th century. The Commonwealth is home to a growing list of notable Lincoln memorials. This article examines the history and folklore surrounding a number of these monuments.

Speak Softly...With Everyone You Can, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From the Monroe Doctrine to the Bush Doctrine, United States foreign policy has been predicated on the assumption that somehow it knows what is best for the rest of the world. Monroe feared a potential encroachment from Russia and meddling in the "American" Hemisphere by the European powers and issued what originally appeared as a modest statement about resistance to intervention by any other country than the United States . Ironically enforced by the British Navy at that time, the Monroe Doctrine went far beyond its modest beginnings to set a precedent for the development of U.S. foreign policy. The …

Human Rights And The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, Brent J. Steele

Human Rights & Human Welfare

There has been a vivid tendency this year by the conventional keepers of Washington wisdom to explicate the two presidential candidates' foreign policy views using old frameworks of "hawk" and "dove." Not only is this binary wrong, it fundamentally obscures some rather ironic potentials for how each candidate, if elected president, will focus upon human rights in their foreign policy. McCain's neoconservative view of the world is founded upon the Wilsonian call for democratization-culminating in what he terms a "League of Democracies." To use a concept that Arnold Wolfers first coined, and one which Joshua Muravchik has proffered as well, …

America As An Ordinary Nation, William F. Felice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

For decades, scholars of international relations have called attention to the limits of American power. For example, in 1976 Cornel University Press published America as an Ordinary Country: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Future , edited by Richard Rosecrance. As the title indicates, Rosecrance's book analyzed the impact of the economic, military, and foreign policy setbacks of the 1970s on U.S. power. Suddenly the U.S. seemed less the powerful, "indispensible" leader and more the vulnerable, "ordinary" country unable to control external forces lashing the society's economy and foreign policy. These insights led many scholars to call for a reassessment of …

Myths, Reasonable Disagreement, And A League Of Democracies, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The United States ' election in 2004 was based on a number of foreign policy myths. Three of the most obvious were:

• The war in Iraq was necessary as a response to the threat of international terrorism. As a result, the world is now a safer place;
• The institutions of the UN are corrupt and do nothing but restrict American power;
• Al Qaeda and international terrorism more generally are extremely significant threats to American national security

Eloquence And Reason: Creating A First Amendment Culture, Robert L. Tsai

Robert L Tsai

This book presents a general theory to explain how the words in the Constitution become culturally salient ideas, inscribed in the habits and outlooks of ordinary Americans. "Eloquence and Reason" employs the First Amendment as a case study to illustrate that liberty is achieved through the formation of a common language and a set of organizing beliefs. The book explicates the structure of First Amendment language as a distinctive discourse and illustrates how activists, lawyers, and even presidents help to sustain our First Amendment belief system. When significant changes to constitutional law occur, they are best understood as the results …

Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845 (Sc 1768), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1768. Letter, 26 April 1825, from Andrew Jackson, Nashville, Tennessee to A. P. Maury, also of Nashville, in which he declines to act as guardian for the children of the late Major John Reid owing to ill health and increased responsibilities.

No. 6 - 30th Anniversary Issue, Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Lee Hamilton, Daniel R. Fung, Diana Wallis

Occasional Papers Series

With this issue of the Occasional Papers, we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dean Rusk Center, which bears the name of the late School of Law faculty member who served as secretary of state under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 until 1969.

Our purpose in hosting the conference and lectures published in this volume was to provide a forum for developing the comprehensive new focus necessary to met the American foreign policy demands of the 21st century. In so doing, it is our intent that the advice and counsel of the …

Reforming Humanitarian Rescue, Brent J. Steele

Human Rights & Human Welfare

There is much to commend in Morton Abramowitz and Thomas Pickering’s article “Making Intervention Work.” They propose to reform the United Nations’ capacity for intervention with the creation of an autonomous U.N. force largely constituted with forces contributed by the Security Council’s member-states. If such a force were kept to a minimal operational mission, “a small rapid-deployment force with special engineering, logistical, medical, and police skills,” as the authors suggest, then I think this is a good idea. If such a force would, however, become more than this—an autonomous army of military personnel meant to intervene with force into any …

Negotiating Democracy In Brazil: The Politics Of Exclusion, Bernd Reiter

Government and International Affairs Faculty Publications

Do societal inequalities limit the effectiveness of democratic regimes? And if so, why? And how? Addressing this question, Bernd Reiter focuses on the role of societal dynamics in undermining democracy in Brazil. Reiter explores the ways in which race, class, and gender in Brazil structure a society that is deeply divided between the included and the excluded—and where much of the population falls into the latter category. Tracing the mechanisms of the profound cultural resistance to genuine democratization that he finds dominant among the elite, his theoretically and empirically rich analysis offers an alternative way of understanding both the nature …

October Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Making Intervention Work.” by Morton Abramowitz and Thomas Pickering. Foreign Affairs. September/October 2008.

Has The Iraq War Torpedoed The “Responsibility To Protect”?, William F. Felice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

At a U.N. World Summit in 2005, the nations of the world approved the “responsibility to protect.” This emerging principle of international law, charges each individual state with the responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. If a nation fails to protect its populations from these barbarities, the nations of the world declared that they would act, through the Security Council, in accordance with the U.N. Charter, to stop the violence against innocents everywhere and protect imperiled peoples. In theory, Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter gives the member states the military …

The Responsibility To Protect And The Failure To Respond, Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Commentators on global politics frequently observe the abject failure of states and global institutions to respond to local, regional, and global crises ranging from dramatic climatic events, humanitarian crises, warfare and violence, to the continuation of unsavoury rights-abusive regimes. In my own work in the field of the comparative politics of human rights, the types of observations that Abramowitz and Pickering make in this piece are all too common, and have led many in the past to make similar such observations that powerful states constantly engage in a grand human rights “double standard.”

Improving The Agents And Mechanisms Of Humanitarian Intervention, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

I agree with the broad thrust of Abramowitz and Pickering’s article. They rightly highlight the failings of the current agents and mechanisms of humanitarian intervention. The problem, however, is twofold. First, all the currently-existing interveners possess notable, and well-known, flaws. The U.N. and regional organizations suffer from serious shortfalls in funding and equipment. States frequently lack the commitment and willingness to act. And, although NATO’s operations in Bosnia and Kosovo raised hopes that it would be a willing and powerful humanitarian intervener, the reluctance of many of its members to commit troops in Afghanistan (where member states have clear interests) …

Poder Presidencial De Nominación Y Equilibrio Institucional, Javier Revelo-Rebolledo, Mauricio García-Villegas

Javier E Revelo-Rebolledo

No abstract provided.

In Search Of Vanished Blood, Ashok Agrwaal

Ashok Agrwaal

Deaths in custody/ disappearance from custody are endemic in India and, have been so throughout its independent history. The reasons for this state of affairs are complex and, it would not be correct to assign the entire responsibility for it to any one factor, or pillar of the nation-state. However, there can be no gainsaying that the defects in the approach of the judiciary have played a pivotal role in the failure of the guarantee of the right to life. The report examines some of these shortcomings, using the aperture provided by one of the world’s best known legal remedies, …

Vote For Charity's Sake, Aaron S. Edlin, Andrew Gelman, Noah Kaplan

Aaron Edlin

In a battleground state like Colorado or New Mexico, voting in the presidential election may be equivalent to giving $30,000 - $50,000 to others in expected value, and as such is an extremely efficient form of charity.