Law Commons^™

Exploring Human Rights Implications Of Microfinance Initiatives, Rebecca Farrar

Rebecca Farrar

Abstract for Article: Exploring the Human Rights Implications of Microfinance Initiatives by Rebecca Farrar

Microfinance and microcredit (“MFI”) programs have been advanced as a way to make the world a better place. These programs involve making small loans to people who would otherwise be unable to borrow money to facilitate them starting their own businesses: frequently, the programs focus on women borrowers in developing countries. Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank says microfinance and microcredit programs can literally end world poverty.

This Article explores MFI from several perspectives, with particular emphasis on human rights issues. The emphasis of MFI programs …

The Yahoo Case And Free Speech, Privacy And Corporate Responsibilty In The People's Republic Of China, Nikola A. Koritz

Nikola A Koritz

It’s like opening Pandora’s Box. You can’t put the content back. When China made the Internet commercially available in 1995 it opened the floodgate to information and free communication. But the free exchange of ideas and information over the Internet threatens China’s ability to control information exchange. The People’s Republic of China enacted restrictive regulations controlling Internet usage and is adjusting these regulations in the pace of the technical development. This paper addresses the question how international companies who want to do business in China can comply with these circumstances without compromising substantial human rights and getting themselves in conflict …

The Palestinian Refugee Problem, Maged Bader

Maged Bader

No abstract provided.

The Israeli Policy: Targeted Killing For Preventive Self-Defense Or Extra-Judicial Executions?, Maged Bader

Maged Bader

No abstract provided.

The Right Of Property In Situations Of Armed Conflict: The Application Of Ihl Principles By The European Court Of Human Rights, Maheta Matteo Molango

Maheta Matteo Molango

The proliferation of non-international armed conflicts over the last three decades have contributed to draw the attention of scholars and commentators on the complex interrelationship between international humanitarian law (IHL) and human rights law. In Europe, contrary to the encouraging steps taken in other regional systems of human rights’ protection such as the Inter-American system, the activity of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has been characterized by its reluctance to apply IHL provisions to situations were arguably it should or even shall have use the laws of war as authoritative guidance.

This paper focuses on the analysis of …

Turkish Cross-Border Operations Into Northern Iraq: International Law And Use Of Force Analysis, Charles Bowers

Charles Bowers

No abstract provided.

People As Crops, Evelyn L. Wilson

Evelyn L. Wilson

In 1807, Congress passed a law prohibiting the importation of slaves. The South began to feel the effect of labor shortages and prices escalated. To meet this demand, farmers in the upper south states, especially Virginia, began the systematic breeding of slaves for sale to the southwest. Through the use of statements from Virginia statesmen and from some of Virginia’s former slaves, my paper discusses slave breeding, first as a consequence of slavery, as an added benefit to the labor obtained from the slave.

My father was born in Virginia, as was his father, as was his father, as was …

From “Blood Diamond” To “Blood Coltan”: Should International Corporations Pay The Price For The Rape Of The Dr Congo?, Maheta Matteo Molango

Maheta Matteo Molango

This paper discusses the role of multinational corporations, and in particular US companies, in fueling two devastating civil wars and contributing to the climate of tension currently existing in Africa’s Great Lakes’ region. The discussion focuses on the exploitation of a relatively unknown mineral called “coltan,” indispensable for the production of cell phones, laptops and many other electronic devices. My analysis offers readers several elements that are essential to understanding the close relationship between the exploitation of Congolese minerals, international companies and rebel groups operating in the region. From a legal point of view, I have attempted to explore some …

Hanging In A Balance: Freedom Of Expression And Religion, Puja Kapai, Anne Sy Cheung

Puja Kapai

When the liberty to freely express oneself is at odds with another’s right to freedom of religion, we are confronted with the classic dilemma of choosing between two equally fundamental, constitutionally and internationally protected rights. The contours of the said two rights however, are far from clear. Whilst freedom of expression is not an absolute right, its limits are controversial. Equally, while it is undisputed that freedom of religion is an internationally protected human right enshrined in various international instruments, there is no comprehensive international treaty which addresses as its subject the content and extent of the right of freedom …

Happy To Be Equal, Shay Gurion

Shay Gurion

The public discourses regarding happiness are burgeoning in current times, especially in the fields of positive psychology and philosophy. However, policy oriented disciplines, such as economics and law, seem to almost suspiciously, avoid this discussion, leaving one of life's most important aspects, academically and politically, unexplored. This paper tries to fill this void by offering an explanation to why humans beings are equally happy and how does this provide us with a rational basis for human equality and a corresponding perception of human rights. The explanation offered in this paper of why people are equally happy lies greatly on the …

Rights Of Disabled Persons In Egypt, Mohamed Sami Abdel Sadek

mohamed sami Abdel sadek Dr.

Existing disability-related laws in Egypt need to be reviewed in order to achieve equalization of opportunities for persons with disabilities. There is an urgent need for a unified law that covers comprehensive guidelines to ensure that all forms of discrimination against disabled people are eliminated. Improving legislation and implementation strategies has been identified as one of the main issues to be tackled in the African Decade of Disabled Persons 1999-2009.

The Dangers Of Character Tests, Susan Harris Rimmer

Susan Harris Rimmer

This Discussion Paper describes the rise of character provisions in Commonwealth laws over

the last 10 years. The use of character testing has increased

in traditional areas, such as

migration and citizenship, and has moved into new areas of law, such as the employment of

persons in critical industries and criminal law. The first time character testing has been

examined in a thematic way across several legal and policy subject areas, the paper finds that

character tests are often framed in subjective terms and are part of executive decision-making,

raising issues of transparency and accountability. This phenomenon has been incremental, …

Much Ado About Non-State Actors: The Vanishing Relevance Of State Affiliation In International Criminal Law, John P. Cerone

John P Cerone

Much has been made recently of the deficiencies of international law in grappling with violence perpetrated by non-state actors. From transnational terrorist networks to private security contractors (PSCs), organizations that are not officially part of the apparatus of any state are increasingly engaged in protracted episodes of intense violence, giving rise to questions of accountability under international law. Does international law provide rules applicable to such conduct? Once the individual has been deemed a subject of positive international law, the requirement of state affiliation is no longer essential to analytical coherence. The issue becomes simply whether international law should directly …

Exploring Long-Term Impact Of Mass Trauma On Physical Health, Coping, And Meaning: An Examination Of The Ottoman Turkish Genocide Of The Armenians, Ani Kalayjian, Nicole Moore, Chris Aberson

Ani Kalayjian

Throughout the 20th century, genocide has claimed many lives across the world. Government genocidal policies alone have resulted in over 210 million deaths. Approximately nine decades ago, under the cover of World War I, Turkish armed forces moved to exterminate Turkey’s Armenian population. The present study focuses on how Armenian survivors dealt with the Genocide, what gave them the strength to cope, their level of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the extent of physical symptomatology, and meanings associated with the trauma, as manifested in selected aspects of survival accounts from 16 Armenian Americans (born before 1917) who had witnessed the Ottoman …

Pro Bono Publico As A Conscience Good, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Deborah Schmedemann

Pro bono work performed by American lawyers serves a critical role in the American civil justice system. This paper seeks to explain pro bono through the lens of social science research into volunteering, in particular the economic concept of a conscience good. The paper presents the results of an empirical study involving over 1,100 law students and lawyers. The results include data on lawyers’ motivations to perform pro bono, the impact of various pro bono rules and invitations to perform pro bono, the satisfactions of pro bono work, emotions triggered by pro bono work and pro bono clients, and the …

The Community Referendum: Participatory Democracyand The Right To Free, Prior And Informed Consent To Development, Brant Mcgee

brant mcgee

No abstract provided.

The Search For June Cleaver: International Marriage Brokerages And Mail-Order Brides, Itta C. Englander

Itta C. Englander

This paper chronicles a journey through the modern mail-order bride industry. It examines the mail-order bride industry from its early roots in the Western Hemisphere to its current permutations. It discusses the risks that mail-order brides face and explores possible solutions offered through domestic and international instrumentalities.

Resisting Guantanamo: Rights At The Brink Of Dehumanization, Muneer I. Ahmad

Muneer I Ahmad

The Supreme Court’s June 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush, granting constitutional habeas corpus rights to terrorist suspects at Guantánamo Bay, appeared to usher in a rights moment in which legal advocacy achieved transformative results. But the history of rights-based litigation at Guantánamo suggests that such victories often are fleeting, with court pronouncements failing to produce the meaningful change—freedom of prisoners, closure of Guantánamo—expected of such landmark decisions. This reflects not simply a failure of the courts, but a limitation of rights in the face of extreme state violence. This Article argues that the work of rights—and of lawyers—at Guantánamo …

The Challenges Of Democratic Consolidation In Africa, Okechukwu Oko

Okechukwu Oko

This paper, using Nigeria as a case study, examines the challenges of democratic consolidation in Africa. It will critically and objectively identify the problems and challenges of democratic consolidation in Africa and offer suggestions that will move Africa further along the path of constitutional democracy. It proceeds from the basic proposition that Africans’ thirst for genuine democracy is at present unslaked and perhaps unslakeable under the current circumstances in Africa. Democracy is off kilter in Nigeria, and indeed, most parts of Africa and appears to be spiraling over the edge into dictatorship, and perhaps even social disorder, fatally assaulted by …

Non-Refoulement And Jus Cogens: Limiting Anti-Terror Measures That Threaten Refugee Protection, Alice Farmer

Alice H Farmer

This article argues that we must insist on strict limits to the exceptions to non-refoulement articulated in the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, given current state obligations under international law. There is great potential for refugee-receiving states to rely heavily on the exceptions to non-refoulement in enacting anti-terrorism policies, to the detriment of refugee protection. And yet, non-refoulement – the doctrine central to refugee protection that prohibits return of an individual to a country in which he or she may be persecuted – is emerging as a new jus cogens norm. Non-refoulement as articulated in the 1951 Convention …

The Role Of Private Sector Investment In International Microfinance And The Implications Of Domestic Regulatory Environments, William A. Langer

William A Langer

The Role of Private Sector Investment in International Microfinance and the Implications of Domestic Regulatory Environments

By William Langer

Microfinance – the practice of providing small, working capital loans and other financial services to poor individuals unable to obtain access to commercial sources of credit – has been able to transform the lives of over 100 million microentrepreneurs and their families in various regions throughout the world. Despite this impressive achievement, microfinance currently reaches only 10% of the estimated demand for microfinance services, comprised of approximately 1 to 1.5 billion self-employed poor persons worldwide. Practitioners agree that in order to …

The New Boys: Women With Disabilities And The Legal Profession, Carrie G. Basas

Carrie G Basas

This essay fuses the fields of law, feminist theory, and cultural studies to examine the status of women attorneys with disabilities. It is the first study of its kind in the United States. The author conducted an empirical, qualitative, and ethnographic study of women attorneys with disabilities in the United States. Thirty-eight attorneys participated and their narratives form the basis for critical analysis of disability animus and discrimination in the legal profession. The results show an alarming trend toward disabled women attorneys self-accommodating in the workplace, rather than enforcing their employment rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Relying on …

Public Awareness Of Human Rights: Distortions In The Mass Media, Eric Heinze, Rosa Freedman

Prof. Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London

This article examines distortions of human rights reporting in the mass media. We examine human rights coverage in four of the most influential newspapers, two from the US and two from the UK. The US papers are The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The British papers are The Financial Times and The Guardian.

Most current scholarship on international human rights draws its information from specialized sources, such as the published reports of intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations. Wholly absent has been any systematic study of the mass media. To date, no one has examined the dominant media agencies, …

Corruption In China’S Death Penalty System — The Deceptive Use Of Mobile Death Vans And Falun Gong Prisoners For Organ Harvesting In The Black Market, Sin-Ting Mary Liu

Sin-Ting M Liu

Introduction - The death van silently rolls into town collecting and executing condemned inmates. Falun Gong practitioners suddenly disappear or die unexplained deaths. Both actions derive from the Chinese government’s corruption and greed. Substantial evidence demonstrates that China is grossly profiting from the black-market organ trade by using condemned prisoners and Falun Gong captives to supply much needed organs to high-paying customers. Seeking to avoid backlash from the international community, especially in this highly publicized time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China has deceptively utilized the more inconspicuous death vans and Falun Gong captives to continue its illegal organ extraction …

An African Marshall Plan: Changing U.S. Policy To Promote The Rule Of Law And Prevent Mass Atrocity In The Democratic Republic Of Congo, Gregory S. Gordon

Gregory S. Gordon

Since 1998, 5.4 million citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been killed in what many refer to as "Africa's First World War" -- the deadliest armed conflict since World War II. Despite a 2003 peace deal and the country's first elections in 2006, a staggering 45,000 people continue to die each month and as many as 4,000 women per year are being raped. As Western Europe needed a massive infusion of American assistance to lift itself from misery after World War II, this article contends that the DRC needs such an infusion now. It posits that ending …

State Actors Beating Children: A Call For Judicial Relief, Deana Ann Pollard Sacks

Deana A Pollard

Controversy over public school corporal punishment is at an all-time high. On August 20, 2008, the Human Rights Watch/ACLU brought public attention to the issue by releasing its report on corporal punishment of children in American public schools. Lawsuits challenging this state action on constitutional grounds continue to be filed, as advocates seeking to ban school paddling refuse to accept that beating students is constitutionally permissible, despite their repeated losses in the federal courts, and the Supreme Court’s refusal to consider the issue again on June 23, 2008. Ignoring the uproar, nearly half of the United States continue to employ …

Gendercide And The Cultural Context Of Sex Trafficking In China, Susan W. Tiefenbrun, Susan W. Tiefenbrun

Susan W Tiefenbrun

Abstract:Gendercide and the Cultural Context of Sex Trafficking in China

By Susan Tiefenbrun and Christie Edwards

Women in China are bought and sold, murdered and made to disappear in order to comply with a strict government One Child Policy that coincides with the cultural tradition of male-child preference and discrimination against women. Everyday “500 female suicides” occur in China because of “violence against women and girls, discrimination [against women] in education and employment, the traditional preference for male children, the country’s birth limitation policies, and other societal factors…” As a result of a widespread and arguably systematic disappearance and death …

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

Jacqueline D Lipton

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 …

Some Penetrating Observations On The Fifth Anniversary Of Lawrence V. Texas: Privacy, Dominance, And Substantive Equality Theory, Shannon Gilreath

Shannon Gilreath

This article, “Some Penetrating Observations on the Fifth Anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas: Privacy, Dominance, and Substantive Equality Theory,” asks the reader to look at the equality claims of minority groups at a new conceptual level. With the Lawrence decision as its critical paradigm, the essay proceeds through several observations on the failure of privacy/substantive due process grounded opinions to deliver rights to minorities. This discussion feeds an ultimate criticism of the equality analysis (or lack thereof) of many of the Court’s principal minority rights opinions. Particularly, I am critical of the longstanding notion that equal protection of the laws …

Voices On The Run: What The Slave Narratives Can Tell Us About The Immigration Debate, Hadley Ajana

Hadley Ajana

This paper compares three accounts of runaway slaves from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with three twentieth and twenty-first century accounts of Spanish speaking immigrants to the United States. The works examined are Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Barbara Kingsolver's Bean Trees; Victor Villasenor's Rain of Gold; and Sonia Nozaria's Enrique's Journey. Examining the rhetorical strategies used in the earlier works by the abolitions and the devices used in the modern writing, …