Law Commons^™

The Dark Sides Of Convergence: A Pro-Civilian Critique Of The Extraterritorial Application Of Human Rights Law In Armed Conflict, Naz K. Modirzadeh

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Junior Bar Law Review 1 (2010), 21-40 Judicial Activism Revisited: Reflecting On The Role Of Judges In Enforcing Economic, Social And Cultural Rights, Gehan D. Gunatilleke Mr.

Gehan D Gunatilleke Mr.

Following the conclusion of military operations in Sri Lanka in 2009, the issue of economic development and distributive justice appears to have remerged on the country’s agenda. Within this post-conflict context, the judiciary in Sri Lanka is confronted with a major challenge in terms of defining its proper role in the promotion of Economic Social and Cultural (“ESC”) rights. The precise extent to which judges should be ‘activist’ in promoting these rights should be contrasted with the level of activism required of judges in the sphere of civil and political rights. Advocating ESC rights in Sri Lanka simply cannot be …

The Trouble With Treaties: Immigration And Judicial Law, Angela M. Banks

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

China And Disability Rights, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Child, Family, State, And Gender Equality In Religious Stances And Human Rights Instruments: A Preliminary Comparison, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) recently began its third decade. Why has the United States still not ratified the CRC, celebrated as the most widely ratified international human rights treaty in history? Once again, this question is on the table: Congressional resolutions that President Obama should not transmit the CRC to the Senate for advice and consent rapidly followed intimations that the Obama Administration had some qualms about the U.S. keeping company only with Somalia in not ratifying it. Some scholars contend that enlisting the unique resources of religions would help to ground a culture …

Human Trafficking: Iraq - A Case Study, Ali Allawi

Ali Allawi

The accompanying Article explores the issue of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in postwar Iraq. It attempts, in three steps to firstly identify the issue of human trafficking and how it pertains to Iraq, secondly to examine Iraq’s international legal obligations to address the human rights violations and human trafficking issues, and lastly, recommend implementable solutions that the Iraqi government can take to meet its international obligations and remedy the problem at hand. The Article sheds new light on the growing humanitarian crisis in post war Iraq and brings awareness of the monumental challenges that face both the government and …

Monitoring The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities: Innovations, Lost Opportunities, And Future Potential, Michael Ashley Stein, Janet E. Lord

Faculty Publications

As the first human rights treaty of the twenty-first century, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) protects some 650 million persons with disabilities. The CRPD also has an opportunity to progressively reconfigure the structure and process of human rights oversight. While the overall framework for monitoring and implementing the CRPD resembles existing core human rights instruments, it has some notable features. The CPRD Committee is endowed with several innovations of significant potential, especially in the breadth of reporting and investigative procedures, thereby offering prospects for other treaty bodies and the human rights system more …

Legal Mechanization Of Corporate Social Responsibility Through Alien Tort Statute Litigation: A Response To Professor Branson With Some Supplemental Thoughts, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Response argues that as Alein Tort Statute jurisprudence “matures” or becomes more sophisticated, the legitimate limits of the law regress. The further expansion within the corporate defendant pool – attempting to pin liability on parent, great grandparent corporations and up to the top – raises the stakes and complexity of ATS litigation. The corporate social responsibility discussion raises three principal issues about how a moral corporation lives its life: how a corporation chooses its self-interest versus the interests of others, when and how it should help others if control decisions may harm the shareholder owners, and how far the …

Freedom Of Movement Under The Framework Of Regional Integration Processes In South America, Marco A. Velásquez-Ruiz

Marco A. Velásquez-Ruiz

This Study addresses the question on whether the migratory phenomenon –considering with special attention the admission of non-nationals– might be regulated under the framework of regional integration processes, using the case of South America as an instance proclive to show how international law can be complemented and adapted to a specific context. It firstly elaborates a theoretical argument on the need to re-lecture the sovereign paradigm –according to which States have exclusive and excluding capacity to regulate the issue– so as to utilize cooperative schemes to develop a comprehensive legal framework provided the identification of migration as a common interest. …

Jeremy I. Levitt's Africa: Mapping New Boundaries In International Law, Makau Wa Mutua

Book Reviews

This is a review of Jeremy Levitt’s edited collection of chapters in Africa: Mapping the Boundaries of International Law, which is an impressive work to the dearth of scholarship on Africa’s contribution to the normative substance and theory of international law. The book explicitly seeks to counter the racist mythology that Africans were tabula rasa in international law. In his own introduction to the book, Levitt makes it clear that “Africa is a legal marketplace, not a lawless basket case.” The eight contributors to the book are renowned scholars who make the case that Africa is not stuck in pre-history …

Never Say Never: Searching For Common Ground Between Muslim And Western Nations On The Issues Of Human Dignity And Human Rights, Travis Weber

Travis Weber

Travis Weber 3736 Silina Drive Virginia Beach, VA 23452 703-470-5411 tsweber@gmail.com May 4, 2010 To Whom It May Concern: Enclosed is an abstract for my article, entitled Never Say Never: Searching for Common Ground Between Muslim and Western Nations on the Issues of Human Dignity and Human Rights. My article examines the gap between Islamic and Western views of human rights, explores how this gap developed, and briefly reviews how different theories of jurisprudence would approach this gap. Due to the current world-wide increase in religious activity, including the prominence of Islam, and the version of morality that Islam brings …

Citizenship And Its Erosion: Transfer Of Populated Territory And Oath Of Allegiance In The Prism Of Israeli Constitutional Law, Ilan Saban

ilan saban

No abstract provided.

International Law & Politics: The Same Under Another Name?, Ana M. Nacvalovaite

Ana M Nacvalovaite

ABSTRACT: The Article examines the perceived dichotomy between international law and international politics from a legal perspective. It presents a brief over-view of the sources of international law and shows how and why the perceived legal/political dichotomy has been prevalent in the academic discourse surrounding the sources and nature of international law. Consequences of legal truth as to whether treaty bodies are analogous with political bodies will serve as a practical lens through which to ground the relevance and importance of this topic today. From this, one will be able to establish that such a distinction between a legal system …

Trips And Human Rights - The Case Of India, Subramanya Sirish Tamvada

Subramanya Sirish Tamvada

Intellectual Property Rights and Human Rights often come in conflict. There is a need to give heed to the voices of the developing countries. Human Rights have gained primacy in the world today. Developing countries through international treaties and conventions are obliged to protect human rights in their countries. At the same time trade and innovation is also of priority for a countries development. Hence, there is a need to understand and bring clarity to the debate between the two namely; trade especially, the intellectual property rights and human rights. Intellectual Property Interests mentioned in UDHR and ICESCR cannot be …

Plural Vision: International Law Seen Through The Varied Lenses Of Domestic Implementation, D. A. Jeremy Telman

Law Faculty Publications

This Essay introduces a collection of essays that have evolved from papers presented at a conference on “International Law in the Domestic Context.” The conference was a response to the questions raised by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Medellín v. Texas and also a product of our collective curiosity about how other states address tensions between international obligations and overlapping regimes of national law.

Our constitutional tradition speaks with many voices on the subject of the relationship between domestic and international law. In order to gain a broader perspective on that relationship, we invited experts on foreign law to …

Special 301 Of The Trade Act Of 1974 And Global Access To Medicine, Sean Flynn

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Since its inception in 1988, the United States Trade Representative’s “Special 301” adjudication of foreign intellectual property law standards has been used to promote policies restricting access to affordable medications around the world. President-elect Obama released a platform promising to “break the stranglehold that a few big drug and insurance companies have on these life-saving drugs” and pledged support for “the rights of sovereign nations to access quality-assured, low-cost generic medication to meet their pressing public health needs.” The 2009 and 2010 Special 301 reports, however, indicate that the Obama Administration has not yet implemented this pledge into administration trade …

42 U.S.C. § 1983: A Legal Vehicle With No International Human Rights Treaty Passengers, Matthew J. Jowanna

Matthew J. Jowanna

How do international human rights treaties interact with the domestic civil rights law of the United States, and particularly 42 U.S.C. § 1983? How should international human rights treaties interact with the domestic civil rights law of the United States? “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination.” Whether fully implemented in domestic law or not, the United States is obligated to respect the international treaties it ratifies. However, exactly how has …

A Name Of One's Own: Gender And Symbolic Legal Personhood In The European Court Of Human Rights, Yofi Tirosh

Yofi Tirosh

Legal regulation of surnames provides a fascinating venue for examining how women negotiate their interests of autonomy and of stable personhood vis a vis a patriarchal naming structure. This is a study of 25 years of adjudication of surnames and personal status at the European Court of Human Rights. It explores the intricate ways in which legal norms governing surnames (and their judicial interpretation) sustain, shape, and reify social institutions such as gender, family, and citizenship.

As a pan European court, the adjudication of the ECHR operates within the framework of human rights. The universal characteristics of human rights principles …

Bringing The Spies In From The Cold: Legal Cosmopolitanism, And Intelligence Under The Laws Of War, Peyton A. Cooke

Peyton A. Cooke

Recently, as never before, intelligence operations have come under international humanitarian law. The Supreme Court has handed down the Hamdan and Boumediene decisions; President Obama has required the CIA and other interrogators to abide by Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 standards for all interrogations; district courts have declared stringent law of war criteria for overseas detentions; the Executive has applied the laws of war to terrorist targeting; and the private groups which have initiated this litigation, and pressed for these changes, continue to work for even more reform. This paper addresses the roots and effects of such changes. It begins …

Plural Vision: International Law Seen Through The Varied Lenses Of Domestic Implementation, D. A. Jeremy Telman

D. A. Jeremy Telman

This essay introduces a collection of essays that have evolved from papers presented at a conference on “International Law in the Domestic Context.” The conference was a response to the questions raised by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Medellín v. Texas and also a product of our collective curiosity about how other states address tensions between international obligations and overlapping regimes of national law.

Our constitutional tradition speaks with many voices on the subject of the relationship between domestic and international law. In order to gain a broader perspective on that relationship, we invited experts on foreign law to …

Achieving Justice Through Rebellious Lawyering: Restructuring Systems Of Law And Power For Social Change, Ashly Hinmon

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Singapore And The Universal Periodic Review: An Unprecedented Human Rights Assessment, Mahdev Mohan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Singapore will soon submit a national report to and subsequently appear before the UN Human Rights Council for a universal periodic review of its human rights laws and practices. This review will elicit a rare and unprecedented expression of whether and how Singapore feels it has adhered to international human rights law, and ways in which it may further refine or calibrate its domestic practices. This article seeks to identify Singapore’s human rights achievements; highlight challenges it should be prepared to address; and recommend measures it should adopt to promote human rights.

Corporate Misbehavior & International Law: Are There Alternatives To Complicity, Miriam Mafessanti

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

The Right To Life Is The Right To Food: People’S Union For Civil Liberties V. Union Of India & Others, Lauren Birchfield, Jessica Corsi

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Opening Remarks: Remarks Of Dean Claudio Grossman, Claudio Grossman

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Opening Remarks: Remarks Of Widney Brown, Widney Brown

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Panel I: Building On The Committee Against Torture's Successes And Addressing Its Shortcomings - Stakeholders' Perspectives, Mark Thomson, Yuval Ginbar, Jens Færkel, Santiago Canton, Florence Simbiri-Jaoko, Felice Gaer, Joao Nataf

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Panel Iii: Interpretation And Implementation Of The Convention Against Torture Article 22 (Petitions), Luis Gallegos, Barbara Jackman, Francisco Quintana, Julia Hall, Ann Jordan

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Seeking Justice In Lago Agrio And Beyond: An Argument For Joint Responsibility Of Host States And Foreign Investors Before The Regional Human Rights Systems, Megan S. Chapman

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

All Human Rights Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others: The Extraordinary Rendition Of A Terror Suspect In Italy, The Nato Sofa, And Human Rights, Eric Talbot Jensen, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

On November 4, 2009, an Italian court found a group of Italian military intelligence agents, operatives from the Central Intelligence Agency and a U.S. Air Force (USAF) officer guilty of the 2003 kidnapping of terror suspect Abu Omar. Thrown in a van on the streets of Milan, the abduction took Abu Omar from Italy to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured and interrogated about his role in recruiting fighters for extremist Islamic causes, including the insurgency in Iraq.

This essay posits that lost amidst politically charged rhetoric about Bush administration impunity and the “war on terror” is that the Italian …