Law Commons^™

Jeremy I. Levitt's Africa: Mapping New Boundaries In International Law (Book Review), Makau Mutua

Makau Mutua

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 …

African Human Rights Organizations: Questions Of Context And Legitimacy, Makau Mutua

Makau Mutua

Published as Chapter 13 in Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Development in Africa, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza & Philip J. McConnaughay, eds. The human rights movement is largely the product of the horrors of World War II. The development of its normative content and structure is the direct result of the abominations committed by the Third Reich during that war. Drawing on the Western liberal tradition, the human rights movement arose primarily to control and contain state action against the individual. It is ironic that it was the victors of the war, most of whom held colonies in Africa, …

A Critique Of Rights In Transitional Justice: The African Experience, Makau W. Mutua

Makau Mutua

Published in Rethinking Transitions: Equality and Social Justice in Societies Emerging from Conflict, Gaby Oré Aguilar & Felipe Gómez Isa, eds.

This chapter interrogates the concept and application of transitional justice as a medium for the reclamation of post-conflict states in Africa. While it argues that transitional justice is an important – often indispensable – process in reconstructing post-despotic and battered societies, it nevertheless casts a jaundiced eye at traditionalist human rights approaches. It contends that individualist, non-collective, or non-community, approaches to transitional justice have serious limitations. It posits that the Nuremberg model, on which the ICTR and ICTY were …

African Wetlands Of International Importance: Assessment Of Benefits Associated With Designations Under The Ramsar Convention, Royal C. Gardner, Kim Diana Connolly, Abou Bamba

Kim Diana Connolly

A party to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands must designate at least one site within its territory as a Wetland of International Importance. To assess the benefits associated with these international designations, the authors conducted a survey of 26 Ramsar sites in 18 countries in Africa. After a brief introduction to the Ramsar Convention, the article describes the sites that were surveyed, focusing on the ecosystem services they provide and the challenges they face. The article then examines how the sites are identified with the Ramsar Convention and found that designation provided benefits such as: increased support for protection and …

African Lawyers Harness Human Rights To Face Down Global Poverty, Lucie E. White

Maine Law Review

This is an exciting time in Africa. Yes, of course it is true that the rise of fundamentalist political movements, armed conflict, epidemic diseases, and extreme poverty will challenge the continent for decades to come. I don’t need to tell you that. Yet at the same time, we are witness to what many call an “African Renaissance.” In many domains, including the arts, civil society, social provision, and democratic governance, African nations are beginning to take their place in a newly configured globe. One of these domains of energy, innovation, and hope is a new human rights movement. This movement …

Gender And Nation-Building: Family Law As Legal Architecture, Tracy E. Higgins, Rachel P. Fink

Maine Law Review

In considering the legal architecture of nation-building, we might most readily think of public law as our subject insofar as it governs the relationship between the individual and the state, and establishes the institutions of governance and the sources and limits of their power. The essays in this volume, in large part, track this instinct in that they concern themselves with fields such as constitutional law, criminal law, and public international law. Closer to the margin of public and private law are essays dealing with various dimensions of the modern regulatory state, including banking and commercial transactions. In each of …

Africa And An Economy Of Universal Human Solidarity: In The Footsteps Of Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium, Laurenti Magesa

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

In his recent Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium or The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis indicated the shortcomings of capitalism, the economic order dominant in the world today. The inhuman social conditions Francis has attributed to global capitalism can be observed concretely in the lives of the peoples of the African continent. As a result, there exists within Africa itself, on the one hand, and between Africa and other regions of the world, on the other, a cavernous gap between the rich and the poor classes. The main problem is that poverty revolves around fundamental injustices in the creation, distribution, …

Final Cut: The West’S Opportunity To Accommodate Asylee Victims Of Female Genital Mutilation, Patricia N. Jjemba

University of Massachusetts Law Review

In an era where immigration and asylum is at the forefront of many western nationals’ minds, so too should be the reasons behind an individual’s intent to seek refuge in a new country. Statistics have shown that one of the pragmatic reasons women and girls, particularly from Middle Eastern and African nations, seek refuge through western asylum programs is to escape or recover from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). While the practice has been a longstanding tradition in various communities around the world, modern western governments and international entities have moved to abolish the tradition completely, given its alarming implications against …

The Ebola Virus Prevention And Human Rights Implications, Florence Shu-Acquaye

University of Massachusetts Law Review

The Ebola virus and its now infamous 2014 West African outbreak have constituted the deadliest and most terrifying epidemic of recent memory. Not only does the epidemic now carry an already ghastly backdrop in the public mind when discussions around it begin, but, like the AIDS epidemic, cultural practices have contributed to the entrenchment of Ebola in Africa, compounded by weak human rights laws and stigmatization, all of these factors having contributed to the multi-faceted and complex nature of addressing the problem of eliminating this disease in Africa. This article examines the African countries that have been plagued by the …

Creating An Anti-Corruption Norm In Africa: Critical Reflections On Legal Instrumentalization For Development, Paul D. Ocheje

Law Publications

Abstract

This article reflects critically on the instrumental value of law in the anti-corruption struggle in Africa. Three questions are central to this reflection: (a) Is the instrumental use of law to achieve a developmental purpose, such as anti-corruption, defensible in theory and practice? (b) Is law necessary to, and/or adequate for, the creation of an anti-corruption norm? (c) Why do the developing countries perform so poorly in the fight against corruption in comparison with their wealthier, industrialized counterparts? While the article defends the instrumentalization of law in this regard, it argues that the African normative context of corruption throws …

The Road To Yamoussoukro, Vivica Brown

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Air transportation plays an important role in any country’s evolution because it accelerates the convergence of goods and people. Creating a cooperative air transport system could unlock the potential for a long awaited, remarkable economic growth in Africa. “The African aviation market is perhaps one that has the most potential for growth out of the global regions, due to it being a comparatively young industry and servicing a large and rapidly developing population.” Africa is home to 15.96% of the world’s population, over 1.1 billion people, but it still accounts for less than 4% of the global air service market. …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

In this section: • United States Abstains on Security Council Resolution Criticizing Israeli Settlements • United States Sanctions Russian Individuals and Entities After Accusing Russian Government of Using Hacking to Interfere with U.S. Election Process; Congressional Committees and Intelligence and Law Enforcement Agencies Continue to Investigate President Trump’s Connections to Russian Officials • Second Circuit Overturns $655 Million Jury Verdict Against Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority • New Legislation Seeks to Confirm Immunity of Artwork and Facilitate Cultural Exchange • United States Confronts China over Seizure of Unmanned Drone in the South China Sea • International Criminal Court Prosecutor …

Transforming Societies After Violence: Conceptualizing And Contextualizing Transitional Justice In Africa, Jennifer Moore

Faculty Book Display Case

This chapter first analyses three facets of transitional justice -- the criminal-retributive, the historical-reconciliative, and the social-redistributive -- and identifies some of the synergies and tensions among them. The second section shines a spotlight on the post-independence, conflict, and post-conflict histories of Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Burundi, generally characterizing their distinct approaches to transitional justice, and the differing degrees of attention they devote to the various strands of justice. For each of the three countries, the text points to the work of a community-based civil society organization, and spotlights its approach to post-conflict transition in that country. The final section …

Alternation Denied: Africa's Presidential 30+ Club, Tom Syring

ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law

Africa is changing rapidly and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular represents the region with the fastest growing population in the world, abounding with young people yearning for opportunities and change.

The Continuum Of State Sovereignty: A Commentary On African Elections, K.C. O’Rourke

University of Baltimore Journal of International Law

Twenty-six African States hold elections between 2016 and 2017. More basic than campaign rhetoric and ethnocentric political jockeying, the state in Africa is ripe for a deeper engagement with notions of state sovereignty that are more relevant for this century as the African state seeks to exercise its core functions, protect its interests within its own geographic boundaries, and care for all of the people it seeks to govern. The intentional structuring of such a dialogue must be guided to secure the cornerstones of individual liberty and participatory democracy – two basic protective functions that uniquely belong to the nation-state. …

Opposing International Justice: Kenya’S Integrated Backlash Strategy Against The Icc, Laurence R. Helfer, Anne E. Showalter

Faculty Scholarship

The government of Kenya has employed a wide range of strategies to undermine the recently-dismissed prosecutions of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto before the International Criminal Court (ICC). This Article argues that these strategies are part of an integrated backlash campaign against the ICC, one that encompasses seemingly unrelated actions in multiple global, regional and national venues. We identify three overarching themes that connect these diverse measures— politicizing complementarity, regionalizing political opposition, and pairing instances of cooperation and condemnation to diffuse accusations of impunity. By linking its discrete acts of opposition to these three themes, the government …

Revisiting The Economic Community Of West African States: A Socio-Legal Analysis, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Recent years have seen a growing scholarly interest in the conditions of emergence of regional trade agreements in Africa. These analyses have advanced our knowledge on a range of technical issues, from specific institutional transformation of regional economic communities such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to broad legal issues relating to the provisions of the regional trade agreements. Most literature on ECOWAS is, however, informed by legal formalism that interprets the text of the treaties strictly and without context, leading to a dominant interpretation of failure.

By contrast, this thesis adopts a socio-legal approach and argues …

The Next Generation Of U.S.-Africa Trade Instruments, Kathleen Claussen

Articles

No abstract provided.

Enhancing Innovation In The Ugandan Agri-Food Sector: Progress, Constraints, And Possibilities, Travis Lybbert, Kritika Saxena, Julius Ecuru, Dick Kawooya, Sacha Wunsch-Vincent

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.