Law Commons^™

The Securities And Exchange Commission As Human Rights Enforcer?, Jena Martin, Rachel Chambers

Faculty Articles

On April 28, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it had charged Brazilian mining company Vale with misleading investors about safety issues prior to a deadly dam collapse that killed hundreds and led to significant environmental harm in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The action against Vale was largely seen as the agency's first significant move after it had created an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Task Force within the Division of Enforcement, the purpose of which is to identify and investigate ESG-related violations.

This action against Vale also emerged at a time when scholars, practitioners, …

Into The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death: War Crimes Committed In Service Of Russia's Crusade To Destroy Ukraine, Chris Galarza

American University National Security Law Brief

When Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine during the early morning of February 24, 2022, most in the American defense and diplomatic establishment were shocked and sure the war would be over in a few days. Credible open-source tactical and strategic analysis predicted that Ukraine’s regular military forces would be defeated in “days or weeks” as long as Russian military forces were determined to pursue their objectives. The United States Government was so sure that Kyiv was under imminent threat of capture that they offered to evacuate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy so that he could rule from exile, rather …

International Investment Agreements And Regulation Of Utilisation Of Water Resources In Africa, Dominic Npoanlari Dagbanja

Indian Journal of International Economic Law

African constitutions and domestic water legislation provide for the human right to clean and safe drinking water. This right is also sourced from international human rights treaties and declarations to which African states are parties or signatories. Both municipal law and public international law impose the duties of protection and fulfilment of the right to safe drinking water on states. Domestic water laws and regulations require African states to regulate and manage the utilisation of water resources including by approving the grant of rights, concessions, or contracts in respect of the exploitation of water resources. These laws also require the …

“The Glorious Liberty Of The Children Of God”: Toward A Christian Defense Of Human Rights, John Witte Jr.

Faculty Articles

It will come as a surprise to some human rights lawyers to learn that Christianity was a deep and enduring source of human rights and liberties in the Western legal tradition. Our elementary textbooks have long taught us that the history of human rights began in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Human rights, many of us were taught, were products of the Western Enlightenment—creations of Grotius and Pufendorf, Locke and Rousseau, Montesquieu and Voltaire, Hume and Smith, Jefferson and Madison. Rights were the mighty new weapons forged by American and French revolutionaries who fought in the name of political …

The Meta Oversight Board's Human Rights Future, Laurence R. Helfer, Molly K. Land

Faculty Scholarship

Responses to the new Oversight Board created by Facebook (now Meta) have run the gamut from enthusiastic to overtly suspicious. Many observers are highly skeptical of the Board’s ability to hold Meta accountable or to protect the company’s users. Much of this skepticism is based on a misplaced analogy between the Board and domestic courts. We argue, in contrast, that the core challenges and opportunities that the Oversight Board faces are similar to those confronted by international human rights tribunals. Analyzing the Oversight Board as a de facto human rights tribunal sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses of its …

The Right To A Healthy Environment And The Global South, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This essay explores the implications of the right to a healthy environment for the long-standing criticisms of international human rights law as a project and product of the Global North. It examines the Southern origins of the right to a healthy environment and its interpretations in regional human rights tribunals. The essay analyzes the responses offered by this evolving jurisprudence to various objections to human rights-based approaches to environmental protection. These include the human rights-based framework’s individualism, anthropocentrism, failure to address transboundary harm, and failure to challenge the economic law instruments that perpetuate environmental degradation.

Women, International Human Rights Law, And The Right To Adequate Housing In Africa, John Mukum Mbaku

Emory International Law Review

In many African countries, the rights of women and girls to adequate housing are under threat and remain vulnerable to violation by state- and non-state actors. This is so even though these rights are guaranteed by international human rights instruments and national constitutions. Of particular note is the existence of customary laws that discriminate against women and frustrate their ability to realize the right to adequate housing. To enhance the ability of women to realize their right to adequate housing, each African State must domesticate the various international and regional human rights instruments that guarantee this right in order to …

The United States’ Stringent Sovereignty: How Foreign Policy Framing Prioritizes Security Over Human Rights, Kathryn Parker

Scripps Senior Theses

American policymakers utilize valence framing, purposeful descriptions of outcomes as positive or negative, to influence the opinions of voters while maintaining the moral superiority felt by many citizens in the liberal Western hegemon. This study intended to combine the political theories of Constructivism and Realism to form Constructive Realism, a theory that emphasizes the significance of state power and norms as joint influences on constituents. Constructive realism was then applied to four case studies – the UN Security Council, International Criminal Court, Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. This study …

From The United States To Pakistan: Can Climate Change Pave Toe Way For An International Right To Animal Rescue In Disasters?, Altamush Saeed

Animal Law Review

Over 69% of the world’s wildlife has been lost between 1970 and 2018. Catastrophic events like the Australian bushfires, the Amazon rainforest fires, and the ongoing floods in the United States have led to the deaths of several billion animals. Ongoing apocalyptic floods have put one-third of Pakistan underwater and led to the deaths of over a million livestock animals. Climate change, human rights, and animal rights have become so intertwined that all life—including human, nonhuman, and plant life—is on the brink of extinction.

Forecasting Human Rights Legacies: On Practices And Principles, Andrew B. Spalding

Law Faculty Publications

Among the many human rights and corruption concerns surrounding the Qatar 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup, two ultimately rose to the fore: labor and LGBTQ rights. A careful look at Qatar’s response to these issues reveals a sharp and provocative contrast. Though the World Cup organizers and the Qatari Government generally resisted Western criticism of its LGBTQ laws and practices, both bodies adopted systemic labor reforms. To the extent these reforms remain in place several years after the event, they can be said to constitute a human rights legacy. This Article explores one angle from which to understand this contrast. …

2023 Winter - Clihhr Newsletter, Cardozo Law Institute In Holocaust And Human Rights (Clihhr)

CLIHHR Newsletters

This Winter 2023 issue of the CLIHHR Newsletter highlights the Institute’s work in solidarity with communities affected by identity-based violence and mass atrocities. It features updates from the Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic, student and fellowship spotlights, international collaborations in Argentina, major public events including the Lemkin Award Ceremony, and faculty engagement in global human rights and humanitarian law forums. The newsletter reflects CLIHHR’s commitment to survivor-centered justice, Indigenous rights, restorative justice, and international accountability.

Pathways To Justice: Positive Rights, State Constitutions, And Untapped Potential, Dustin Coffman

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

Positive rights, as a concept, are nothing new. Though they may not have always had such a deceptively unequivocal name, positive rights have existed in various forms and mediums throughout history. They've been utilized, underutilized, and, in some cases, outright ignored. At their core, positive rights are the imposition of an obligation upon the state to fulfill some declared right or benefit. One basis for this imposition is that because citizens give up certain rights by being parties to the "social contract," they should be entitled to certain positive protections guaranteed by the state created by way of said "contract." …

Are Threats To Impose Financial Sanctions An Effective Approach For The United States To Protect Lgbtq Rights In Africa?, Ryan J. Mcelhose

Emory International Law Review Recent Developments

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Donald R. Rothwell, Islands And International Law (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2022), Sean D. Murphy

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In recent years, international rules concerning islands have increasingly featured as a part of inter-State relations, whether with respect to Chinese activities in the South China Sea, the decolonization of the Chagos Archipelago in the India Ocean, the effects of tiny features on delimitation in the Black Sea or the Bay of Bengal, or the plight of low-lying Pacific nations in the face of sea-level rise. A single article (Article 121) amongst the 320 articles that comprise the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC) is dedicated to the “regime of islands,” providing some important guidance, …

Privatizing International Governance, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

The theme of this panel is “Privatizing International Governance.” As the opening vignettes should make clear, public-private partnerships of all kinds are increasingly common in the international system. Since United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's launch of the Global Compact in 2000, the United Nations has increasingly opened up to business entities. Now, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global Compact, and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights all encourage engaging with business entities as partners in developing and executing global governance agendas. These partnerships are seen by some as indispensable to sustainable development, international business regulation, climate change mitigation, …

A Guide To Mireille Delmas-Marty's “Compass”, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This essay appears as the Afterword (pp. 55-64) to a volume featuring an important work by the late Mireille Delmas-Marty (1941-2022) titled A Compass of Possibilities: Global Governance and Legal Humanism. A Collège de France de Paris law professor and one of the pre-eminent legal thinkers of her generation, Delmas-Marty and the essay’s author were longtime colleagues and collaborators. The volume contains an English translation of a 2011 lecture by Delmas-Marty, originally titled “Une boussole des possibles: Gouvernance mondiale et humanismes juridiques.” Amann’s essay surveys that writing, in a manner designed to acquaint non-francophone lawyers and academics with Delmas-Marty’s …

Unsettling Human Rights Clinical Pedagogy And Practice In Settler Colonial Contexts, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Caroline Bishop Laporte

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In settler colonial contexts, law and educational institutions operate as structures of oppression, extraction, erasure, disempowerment, and continuing violence against colonized peoples. Consequently, clinical legal advocacy often can reinforce coloniality—the logic that perpetuates structural violence against individuals and groups resisting colonization and struggling for survival as peoples. Critical legal theory, including Third World Approaches to International Law (“TWAIL”), has long exposed colonial laws and practices that entrench discriminatory, racialized power structures and prevent transformative international human rights advocacy. Understanding and responding to these critiques can assist in decolonizing international human rights clinical law teaching and practice but is insufficient in …

Restraining The Heartless: Erosion Of Corporate Liability Under The Alien Tort Statute And The Path Forward For Victims Seeking Redress, Alexa M. Duffy

American University Law Review

The Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) is a U.S. federal law dating back to 1789 that allows non-U.S. citizens to file civil lawsuits in federal courts against individuals or entities for alleged international law violations. While originally interpreted to address piracy and the safeguarding of foreign diplomats, the ATS gained new relevance in the late twentieth century when it was used to hold individuals and corporations accountable for human rights abuses committed abroad, making it a critical tool in seeking justice for human rights violations.

This Comment argues that there is no longer a realistic federal forum for ATS suits against …

In Memoriam Thomas Buergenthal (1934-2023), Sean Murphy

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Thomas Buergenthal—a Holocaust survivor; a ground-breaking scholar, teacher, and mentor; and a practitioner who scaled the heights of his profession—died at his home in Miami on May 29, 2023. This In Memoriam briefly notes his remarkable life and professional accomplishments, including his youth spent in Nazi concentration camps and his service as a Judge of the International Court of Justice.

When reflecting on his life-long pursuit of robust and effective human rights, Judge Buergenthal understood that, despite great progress in the field of human rights, much remained to be done, and that sadly many atrocities continued across the globe. Yet …

Collective Data Rights And Their Possible Abuse, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Ukraine's Push To Prosecute Aggression: Implications For Immunity Ratione Personae And The Crime Of Aggression, Rebecca Hamilton

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine dates back to its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s southern peninsula, Crimea. It was Russia’s brazen full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, however, that captured global attention and put the crime of aggression – the resort to war in violation of the UN Charter3 – in the spotlight.

Conference On Sea Level Rise And International Law: Assessing Its Impacts On The Americas Opening Speech, Claudio Grossman

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This conference took place on July 26–27, 2022 during the 73rd Session of the International Law Commission meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, with virtual attendance via webinar made available by the American University Washington College of Law.

The Who’S 75th Anniversary: Who At A Pivotal Moment In History, Lawrence O. Gostin, Danwood Mzikenge Chirwa, Helen Clark, Roojin Habibi, Björn Kümmel, Jemilah Mahmood, Benjamin Mason Meier, Winnie Mpanju-Shumbusho, K. Srinath Reddy, Attiya Waris, Miriam Were

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The World Health Organisation (WHO) was inaugurated in 1948 to bring the world together to ensure the highest attainable standard of health for all. Establishing health governance under the United Nations (UN), WHO was seen as the preeminent leader in public health, promoting a healthier world following the destruction of World War II and ensuring global solidarity to prevent disease and promote health. Its constitutional function would be ‘to act as the directing and coordinating authority on international health work’. Yet today, as the world commemorates WHO’s 75th anniversary, it faces a historic global health crisis, with governments presenting challenges …

The So-Called Stateless: Firm Resettlement, African Immigrants, And Human Rights Violations In Mexico, Claire R. Thomas

Articles & Chapters

This paper explores Mexico’s reactionary migration policies, especially concerning the labeling of African migrants and asylum-seekers as so-called “stateless” and the subsequent unsolicited permanent residence status it offers, and address the numerous international and domestic legal violations contained within. Part I of this article presents the lived experiences of African asylum-seekers traveling through Mexico in 2015 and 2019 to demonstrate the direct impact of Mexican migratory policy changes. Many Black migrants and asylum-seekers, as well as Afro-Mexicans, have raised awareness of anti-Blackness in Mexico and of how racism is pervasive. Part II of this article explains Trump-era changes to U.S. …

The Political Economy Of Due Diligence Legislation, Peter Draper, Andreas Freytag, Naoise Mcdonagh, Matthias Menter

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The policy challenge. Citizens and politicians in Western democracies have increasingly become aware of the importance of human rights, civil liberties, social rights, and sustainability issues as well as the different adherence to basic rights (such as equal treatment) all over the world. This trend has recently materialized in laws in the United States (US), Europe, Australia, and elsewhere. To varying extents, these oblige domestic businesses to comply with, and enforce, Western values and standards along their international supply chains. This values-based due diligence legislation has caused ongoing controversies over compliance costs, impacts on foreign relations – particularly with developing …

Deportations For Drug Convictions In The United States And The European Union: Creating A More Compassionate Approach Toward Drug Convictions In The Immigration Law, Megan Smith

San Diego International Law Journal

This Comment begins by examining and comparing the legal framework for deportation and other immigration consequences for convictions of drug offenses in the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. This Comment then looks at the harsh effects of current immigration policy on individuals and marginalized communities. Finally, this Comment argues that immigration law should be reformed to adopt a more humanitarian approach toward non-citizens convicted of drug offenses. Deportation and other harsh immigration consequences for drug offenses levy disproportionately severe punishments toward vulnerable minority immigrant communities, exposing them to consequences much harsher than non-immigrants would face for …

Beyond The Corporate Responsibility To Respect Human Rights In The Dawn Of A Metaverse, Kuzi Charamba

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

Technological advances in the 21st century pose new threats to human rights from business activities. In this new technological age, individuals and communities engage through an increasing myriad of digital means and platforms, all facilitated by a smaller, more powerful set of global BigTech companies, such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Meta (formerly known as Facebook). In so doing, however, our lives as workers, consumers, and citizens become subject to increasing corporate control through surveillance capitalism and algorithmic governance. With the dawn of metaverses—3D immersive digital environments in which you can interact with others via avatars and through virtual and …

Gender Justice And Human Rights Symposium: Holistic Approaches To Gender Violence, Denisse Córdova Montes, Tamar Ezer, Reem Ali, Kayla Bokzam, Renu Sara Nargund, Megan Norris, Maxwell Zoberman

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Human Rights And Labor Rights Organizations And Experts As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioners, Janie A. Chuang

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

Since Congress first enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, it has expanded and strengthened it through successive reauthorizations. Congress has broadened the scope of the TVPRA in order to impose criminal and civil liability on individuals, corporations, and other legal persons who use, or knowingly benefit from ventures that use, forced labor, as well as those who aid and abet these practices. Through this legislation, Congress has bolstered efforts to hold traffickers accountable, opening the courthouse doors to victims of these egregious crimes.

The Ninth Circuit's decision below undermined the very statutory scheme Congress put in place to …

Human Rights In The Era Of Artificial Intelligence “Figures, Opinions And Solutions”, Dr. Heidi Issa Hassan

مجلة جامعة الإمارات للبحوث القانونية UAEU LAW JOURNAL

Technology has cast its shadow on us in most aspects of our lives and nothing has escaped its grip even human intelligence. Human intelligence now has a major rival known as "artificial intelligence" (AI). The main question is can machines think like humans?!

Since AI involves, in part, the dispensation with humans, then it is a matter that affects human rights, regardless of the manifestations, consequences or even scope of this dispensation.

Accordingly, this study has several problems to tackle: 1) the absence of adequate binding national and international provisions governing AI, 2) AI systems involve changing the way businesses …