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Full-Text Articles in Law

Is Social Media A Human Right? Exploring The Scope Of Internet Rights, Brian Christopher Jones Nov 2014

Is Social Media A Human Right? Exploring The Scope Of Internet Rights, Brian Christopher Jones

Brian Christopher Jones

This article explores the basis for social media being recognised as a human right, how such services have come to be seen as both democracy-enabing and rights-infringing, and further examines social media's contentious relationship with authoritarian regimes.


The Legal And Policy Implications Of The Possibility Of Palestinian Statehood, Winston P. Nagan, Aitza M. Haddad Nov 2014

The Legal And Policy Implications Of The Possibility Of Palestinian Statehood, Winston P. Nagan, Aitza M. Haddad

Winston P Nagan

This paper reviews the history of the claims to statehood and sovereignty of the Palestinian people, from the period of the League of Nations mandate to the current move to secure UN approval of a Palestinian State. The article examines the claims to statehood in international law and examines the problem in the broader context of claims about human rights and humanitarian violations, the Israeli claims to security and legitimacy and the US claims for its mediation goal to ensure that the problem does not descend into a legal vacuum in which the fundamental interests of all parties in security …


Interpreting Force Authorization, Scott Sullivan Sep 2014

Interpreting Force Authorization, Scott Sullivan

Scott Sullivan

This Article presents a theory of authorizations for the use of military force (AUMFs) that reconcilesseparation of power failures in the current interpretive model. Existing doctrine applies the same text-driven models of statutory interpretation to AUMFs that are utilized with all other legal instruments. However, the conditions at birth, objectives and expected impacts underlying military force authorizations differ dramatically from typical legislation. AUMFs are focused but temporary corrective interventions intended to change the underlying facts that prompted their passage. This Article examines historical practice and utilizes institutionalist principles to develop a theory of AUMF decay that eschews text in favor …


Section 2: Congress & The Obama White House, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School Sep 2014

Section 2: Congress & The Obama White House, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.


The Road Most Travel: Is The Executive’S Growing Preeminence Making America More Like The Authoritarian Regimes It Fights So Hard Against?, Ryan T. Williams Aug 2014

The Road Most Travel: Is The Executive’S Growing Preeminence Making America More Like The Authoritarian Regimes It Fights So Hard Against?, Ryan T. Williams

Ryan T. Williams

Since September 11, 2001, the Executive branch of the Unites States government continues to accumulate power beyond which is granted to it under the U.S. Constitution. This Article examines how the Executive wields this additional power through a secret surveillance program, the indefinite detention of terror suspects, and the implementation of a kill list, where Americans and non-Americans alike are targeted and killed without any judicial determination of guilt or innocence. Moreover, Congress and the Judiciary have condoned the Executive’s unconstitutional power accumulation by not only remaining idle and refusing to challenge this taking, but by preventing other American citizens …


Balancing The Scales: Adhuc Sub Judice Li Est Or Trial By Media, Casey J. Cooper Jul 2014

Balancing The Scales: Adhuc Sub Judice Li Est Or Trial By Media, Casey J. Cooper

Casey J Cooper

The right to freedom of expression and free press is recognized under almost all major human rights instruments and domestic legal systems—common and civil—in the world. However, what do you do when a fundamental right conflicts with another equally fundamental right, like the right to a fair trial? In the United States, the freedom of speech, encompassing the freedom of the press, goes nearly unfettered: the case is not the same for other common law countries. In light of cultural and historic facts, institutional factors, modern realities, and case-law, this Article contends that current American jurisprudence does not take into …


“A Pointless Legal Revolution? Constitutional Supremacy And Eu Membership In Spain, 1978-2014”, Antonio-Carlos Pereira-Menaut Apr 2014

“A Pointless Legal Revolution? Constitutional Supremacy And Eu Membership In Spain, 1978-2014”, Antonio-Carlos Pereira-Menaut

antonio-carlos pereira-menaut

This topic belongs to history. After Franco’s death (1975) Spain embarked on a ‘legal revolution’ that, if pressed to its extremes, could be hardly compatible with European integration. Understandably, the Spaniards throve to create not just a new constitution but also a whole new legal order, with the following traits:

First, legal monism, and pyramid-like shape. Second, every legally relevant thing should be traceable back to the Constitution, that would legitimate and pervade all laws, by-laws, decrees, orders, administrative acts and judicial rulings. Ideally, every law, act or verdict would be but a development of the Constitution. Third, the border …


Taming The "Feral Beast": Cautionary Lessons From British Press Reform, Lili Levi Mar 2014

Taming The "Feral Beast": Cautionary Lessons From British Press Reform, Lili Levi

Lili Levi

Abstract: As technology undermines the economic model supporting traditional newspapers, power shifts from the watchdog press to those it watches. Worldwide calls for increased press “responsibility” are one result. Pending British press reform provides a troubling example with far-ranging implications for freedom of the press. Under the guise of modest press self-regulation, the U.K. is currently poised to upend 300 years of press freedom via the recently-approved Royal Charter for Self-Regulation of the Press. The Royal Charter was adopted in response to the moral panic engendered by Britain’s tabloid phone-hacking scandal. An example of 20th Century regulation poorly fitted …


The Evolution Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Changing Interpretations Of The Dmca And Future Implications For Copyright Holders, Hillary A. Henderson Jan 2014

The Evolution Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Changing Interpretations Of The Dmca And Future Implications For Copyright Holders, Hillary A. Henderson

Hillary A Henderson

Copyright law rewards an artificial monopoly to individual authors for their creations. This reward is based on the belief that, by granting authors the exclusive right to reproduce their works, they receive an incentive and means to create, which in turn advances the welfare of the general public by “promoting the progress of science and useful arts.” Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or …


Beyond Paroline: Ensuring Meaningful Remedies For Child Pornography Victims At Home And Abroad, W. Warren H. Binford Jan 2014

Beyond Paroline: Ensuring Meaningful Remedies For Child Pornography Victims At Home And Abroad, W. Warren H. Binford

W. Warren H. Binford

This article considers how the United States could fulfill its international treaty obligations to support the full restoration of child pornography victims in the aftermath of the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in Paroline v. United States. The article details how the United States provided leadership historically in creating a skeletal legal framework domestically and internationally to help combat child pornography and restore victims, and highlights how that framework is failing victims on a near-universal basis in an age dominated by technological innovation and globalization. The article proposes the adoption and implementation of effective domestic and international …


Surveillance, Speech Suppression And Degradation Of The Rule Of Law In The “Post-Democracy Electronic State”, David Barnhizer Jan 2014

Surveillance, Speech Suppression And Degradation Of The Rule Of Law In The “Post-Democracy Electronic State”, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

None of us can claim the quality of original insight achieved by Alexis de Tocqueville in his early 19th Century classic Democracy in America in his observation that the “soft” repression of democracy was unlike that in any other political form. It is impossible to deny that we in the US, the United Kingdom and Western Europe are experiencing just such a “gentle” drift of the kind that Tocqueville describes, losing our democratic integrity amid an increasingly “pretend” democracy. He explained: “[T]he supreme power [of government] then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society …


Diplomacy And Its Others: The Case Of Comfort Women, Monica E. Eppinger, Karen Knop, Annelise Riles Jan 2014

Diplomacy And Its Others: The Case Of Comfort Women, Monica E. Eppinger, Karen Knop, Annelise Riles

All Faculty Scholarship

The “Comfort Women incident,” now at least several decades old, troubles the familiar view of law as a funnel for politics. Viewed as a funnel, the wide range of legal, political, cultural, and diplomatic efforts to seek or resist redress for the system of sexual slavery institutionalized by the Japanese military during the Second World War would be assessed as ultimately pushing in the same direction: toward vindicating human rights. We see in the Comfort Women incident a far more chaotic interaction of law and politics. As critical legal feminist, we are concerned with finding a truthful and ethical way …