Law Commons^™

Human Trafficking In The People’S Republic Of China, Annie Dullum

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As China rises to become a superpower and is placed in the national spotlight as the host for the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympics, China is struggling to represent its ability to be powerful and stable within its own borders resulting from a staggering human rights record. Among the policies contributing to human rights violation, population controls are in place that create barriers to residence and immigration, which means that desperate individuals cannot legally move to other countries. As well, Chinese citizens are vulnerable to the practices of traffickers who move individuals illegally around the world.

Revisiting Human Rights In Latin America: Introduction, Christina Cerna

Human Rights & Human Welfare

This Topical Research Digest on revisiting human rights in Latin America covers a wide range of subjects, both country specific and thematic, but has as its underlying theme the necessary protection of the human rights of vulnerable groups, whether they are women, children, lesbians, gay men, indigenous peoples, landless peasants, etc. This survey of literature on revisiting human rights in Latin America includes a rich selection of documents from international organizations, international human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and a plethora of American and foreign journals.

Child Labor In Latin America: Poverty As Cause And Effect, Michaelle Tauson

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Throughout much of the developing world, children make up an alarming portion of the workforce. These children are robbed of their childhood in order to provide economic supplementation to their families. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), 5.7 million children in Latin America participate in the regional workforce (2006). It is a common misconception that children, who do not participate in the formal workforce, are not child laborers. However, the ILO defines child labor as any work that is detrimental to a child’s well-being or interferes with a child’s education. Due to the many categories and classifications of child …

Lanse Minkler On Human Rights And Structural Adjustment By Rodwan Abouharb & David Cingranelli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 276pp., Lanse Minkler

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Human Rights and Structural Adjustment by Rodwan Abouharb & David Cingranelli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 276pp.

The Development Of Sex Trafficking In Central America, Kate Zdrojewski

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Human trafficking in Central America has taken center stage since the late 1990s. This increase in public attention has been driven by U.S. initiatives, such as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), as well as the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, commonly known as the Trafficking Protocol. The United States has the reputation of being the leader in the fight against trafficking in Central America, using the TVPA and the Trafficking Protocol as primary mechanisms for anti-trafficking efforts.

International Law And Human Trafficking, Lindsey King

Human Rights & Human Welfare

International law is a powerful conduit for combating human trafficking. The most reputable and recent instruments of international law that have set the course for how to define, prevent, and prosecute human trafficking are the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its two related protocols: the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, and the United Nations Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea, and Air, which entered into force in 2003-2004. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) created these conventions, which have supported international …

Uighurs In Xinjiang: A General Assessment Of The Roots Of Unrest, Vladislav Shchukin

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Chinese governmental repression in Xinjiang against the Uighur minzu, or ethnic group, constitutes a significant infringement on human rights. The atmosphere of repression in Xinjiang is perhaps unmatched even by that of Tibet, and it is virtually the only region in China where execution of political prisoners is still common. Uighurs are subject to severe censorship, arbitrary arrest and the denial of due process, torture and inhumane treatment, and punishment disproportionate to their crimes.

Violated: Women’S Human Rights In Sub-Saharan Africa, Kathryn Birdwell Wester

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In contemporary sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), women are facing human rights abuses unparalleled elsewhere in the world. Despite the region’s diversity, its female inhabitants largely share experiences of sexual discrimination and abuse, intimate violence, political marginalization, and economic deprivation.

Food Insecurity In Sub-Saharan Africa, Amy Rademacher

Human Rights & Human Welfare

For almost half a century, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been struggling, in one form or another, with food insecurity. This ongoing condition has been caused by a number of factors including distribution obstacles, global climate change, a lack of successful local agriculture, and an inability or disinterest to act by local officials. The situation has been further complicated by an inefficient and disorganized international response to the crisis. Although most would agree that each of these factors carries at least some validity, there is far less international consensus on the best remedy to the crisis.

Confronting The Past: Democratic Rhetoric Or Socially Necessary?, Rachel Oster

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the current globalized international system, politics, economics, and societal issues are the concern of not only the state but of the world as a whole. It is increasingly apparent that participation in the global community requires states to implement, at minimum, conventional democracy within which individual rights are recognized and protected. Yet for much of the developing world, democratic regimes are partially contested given that many states were historically controlled by non-democratic, often militant regimes that offered security to citizens during times of economic crises.

Can Human Rights Survive Secularization, Nicholas Wolterstorff

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Ignorance Is Not Necessarily Bliss: The Third Circuit Expands The Requirements For A Knowing And Voluntary Plea In Jamison V. Klem, Kristen M. Hall

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Josiah Marineau On Housing, Land, And Property Restitution Rights Of Refugees And Displaced Persons: Laws, Cases, And Materials . Edited By Scott Leckie (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 592pp., Josiah Marineau

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Housing, Land, and Property Restitution Rights of Refugees and Displaced Persons: Laws, Cases, and Materials . Edited by Scott Leckie (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 592pp.

Cognition And Consensus In The Natural Law Tradition And In Neuroscience: Jacques Maritain And The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, C.M.A. Mccauliff

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Translating Unocal: The Expanding Web Of Liability For Business Entities Implicated In International Crimes, Anita Ramasastry, Robert C. Thompson, Mark B. Taylor

Articles

The Ninth Circuit ruled that a corporation could be held liable under the federal Alien Tort Claims Act for its complicity in a violation of international criminal law occurring outside the U.S. (Doe I v. Unocal Corp., 395 F.3d 932 (9th Cir. 2002)). Since then, litigants have filed increasing numbers of such cases. These cases raise two questions: (1) Is the United States the only country that provides judicial accountability for business entities involved in international crimes abroad? and (2) How are other countries "translating" the basic kinds of accountability that Unocal recognized into their own legal systems? This Article …

Participation And The Right To Health: Lessons From Indonesia, Sam F. Halabi

Faculty Publications

The right to participation is the “the right of rights” — the basic right of people to have a say in how decisions that affect their lives are made. All legally binding international human rights treaties explicitly recognize the essential role of participation in realizing fundamental human rights. While the substance of the human right to health has been extensively developed, the right to participation as one of its components has remained largely unexplored. Should rights-based health advocacy focus on participation because there is a relationship between an individual’s or a community’s active involvement in health care decision-making and the …

Human Rights In Health Equity: Cervical Cancer And Hpv Vaccines, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article seeks to demonstrate that health equity, as an empirical and normative concept, is reflected in the human rights to health and equality under international law. The obligations on government that flow from health equity as a human right are then examined. These include the obligation to act in pursuit of health equity as a policy objective, and the obligation to enact measures to ensure health equity as a policy outcome. These obligations are considered in relation to a promising remedial measure for social disparities in cervical cancer: HPV vaccines.

Moral Authority In English And American Abortion Law, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In R. (on the application of Axon) v. Secretary of State for Health & Another, the English High Court affirmed that young women are entitled to seek and receive sexual health care, including abortion care, without parental notification. This chapter examines the Court’s use of comparative constitutional authorities in its reasoning, focusing on the rejection of American authorities. Contrast and rejection, it is argued, can be an exercise in self-reflection, revealing how a court understands its own constitutional approach. Aversive constitutionalism presents opportunities to deconstruct claimed similarities and differences in constitutional approaches, to uncover and contest characteristics and assumptions otherwise …

Social And Economic Rights In Canada: What Are They And Who Can Best Protect Them?, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article examines the development and current status of positive social and economic rights in Canada. Exploring the comparative competence of legislatures, courts and human rights tribunals, Wayne MacKay suggests that courts should depart, with caution, from their traditional deferential role to legislators. Due to their flexibility and accessibility, HR Tribunals should supplement the role of the courts and legislatures in giving effect to social and economic rights, which should form part of a holistic package of human rights in Canada.

Climate Change And The Right To Food: A Comprehensive Study, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

Climate change and the policies instituted to combat it are affecting the realiza- tion of the right to food in myriad, often unnoticed ways. This report highlights how – despite the common objective to preserve human welfare for present and future generations – the climate change regime and the human rights regime addressing the right to food have failed to coordinate their agendas and to collab- orate to each other’s mutual benefit. The current climate change regime fails to accurately address the human harms resulting from climate change itself, and is not operating with the necessary safeguards and preventive measures …

The Spirit Of Law Librarianship: Legal Education Reform In Iraq, Kimberli Morris Kelmor

Law Library Faculty Works

Morris talks about her changing perspectives on her experiences while working in Iraq with the International Human Rights Law Institute from February 2004 to Jan 1, 2006. The contract was initially proposed as a three-year plan to help Iraqi law schools overcome the effects of more than twenty years of economic, physical, and intellectual isolation. The complete project included a program for clinical legal education, curriculum reform, rule of law, and library and educational technology. Accomplishing this in three geographically dispersed schools was a logical plan, but a very ambitious one. As the security situation and travel restrictions worsened, and …

Embargo Or Blockade? The Legal And Moral Dimensions Of The U.S. Economic Sanctions On Cuba, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

The almost fifty-year old U.S. economic policy towards Cuba—the embargo that is the topic of this essay. Indeed, not even on the naming of the economic policy can the camps agree. To those antagonistic to the revolution the policy is an embargo - an economic sanction constituting a legitimate government action that legally restricts the flow of goods, services and capital to the island in order to try to influence the Castro regime into changing its undemocratic ways. Such lawful restrictions simply signal justifiable disapproval of another country's policy with the goal of changing the state's behavior that is perceived …

Foreword: Security Detention, Michael P. Scharf, Gwen Gillespie

Faculty Publications

Foreword to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University organized a two-day experts meeting on security detention, Cleveland, OH, 2009

United States Detention Operations In Afghanistan And The Law Of Armed Conflict, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

Looking back on US and coalition detention operations in Afghanistan to date, three key issues stand out: one substantive, one procedural and one policy. The substantive matter – what are the minimum baseline treatment standards required as a matter of international law? – has clarified significantly during the course of operations there, largely as a result of the US Supreme Court’s holding in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The procedural matter – what adjudicative processes does international law require for determining who may be detained? – eludes consensus and has become more controversial the longer the Afghan conflict continues. And the …

Secondary Human Rights Law, Monica Hakimi

Articles

In recent years, the United States has appeared before four different treaty bodies to defend its human rights record. The process is part of the human rights enforcement structure: each of the major universal treaties has an expert body that reviews and comments on compliance reports that states must periodically submit. What's striking about the treaty bodies' dialogues with the United States is not that they criticized it or disagreed with it on the content of certain substantive rules. (That was all expected.) It's the extent to which the two sides talked past each other. Each presumed a different set …

Third-Party Liability For Violations Of The Law Of Nations: Apply International Law, The Law Of The Situs, Or Domestic Standards, Erin Stapp

Santa Clara Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ross, Women's Human Rights: The International And Comparative Law Casebook, Mary Pat Treuthart

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cracking Open The Golden Door: Revisiting U.S. Asylum Law's Response To China's One-Child Policy, Sean T. Masson

Hofstra Law Review

No abstract provided.

Answering The Millennium Call For The Right To Maternal Health: The Need To Eliminate User Fees, Margaux J. Hall, Aziza Ahmed, Stephanie E. Swanson

Faculty Scholarship

Complications during childbirth and pregnancy are a main source of death and disability among women of reproductive age. Approximately 536,000 women die from pregnancy-related complications each year. Developing countries suffer most profoundly, accounting for 99% of deaths. The world's nations, by endorsing U.N. Millennium Development Goals, recognized that most deaths are preventable; they have pledged to reduce maternal mortality by 75% by 2015. This Article assesses the barriers presented by user fees - formal charges for health services still charged by many countries - to the attainment of MDGs. It shows that user fees hamper healthcare access, particularly in emergency …

Rethinking The Legal Reform Agenda: Will Raising The Standards For Bar Admission Promote Or Undermine Democracy, Human Rights, And Rule Of Law?, Samuel J. Levine, Russell G. Pearce

Scholarly Works

This Article offers a critique of, and alternative to, the American Bar Association's efforts, supported by the United States government, to promote the requirement of a college education in law as prerequisite for becoming a lawyer in developing countries. Using the examples of China, which currently has a far more open system for becoming a legal services provider, and South Africa, which already has a system consistent with the goals of the ABA, the Article argues that more stringent education requirements actually undermine democracy, human rights, and rule of law. In China, where the most significant advocates for human rights …