Law Commons^™

Asia's Activists And The Future Of Human Rights, Dinah Pokempner

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Human Rights Of Indigenous Peoples: Will The United States Rise To The Occasion?, Dean B. Suagee

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Will Hong Kong Be Successfully Integrated Into China? A Human Rights Perspective, Yu Ping

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article explores the human rights forecast following Hong Kong's reintegration into China. The Article first reviews the British human rights record in Hong Kong, and explains why China was angered by last-ditch British political reform. It then explores the legal framework of Hong Kong, including the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law of Hong Kong, and concludes that neither offers significant protection for human rights in Hong Kong. In particular, Chinese state security and state secrets laws are likely to be used to suppress political dissidents, journalists, international organizations, and other "foreign elements" in Hong Kong. The Article …

Selected Bibliography: The Reintegration Of Hong Kong Into China, Audrey E. Haroz, Jonathan R. Smith

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The reintegration of Hong Kong into the People's Republic of China (hereinafter P.R.C.) on July 1, 1997, brought together two countries, one capitalist and one communist, under one rule. As evidenced by the variety of perspectives offered at the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law's Symposium on Hong Kong's Reintegration into the P.R.C., there is much scholarly debate concerning this merger and the effect it will have on the people and politics of both countries as well as on the international community.

An earlier version of this bibliography is included in the May 1997 issue of the Journal. This bibliography has …

Reflections On The Constitutional Scholarship Of Charles Black: A Look Back And A Look Forward, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Charles L. Black Jr. has been one of the most important constitutional scholars in the United States for more than four decades. Professor Black's writings have helped shape the debate in a wide variety of constitutional areas, from racial equality and welfare rights to constitutional amendment, impeachment, and the death penalty. In this essay, Levine briefly surveys a number of Professor Black's articles, focusing on two areas of his scholarship: unnamed human rights and racial justice. By analyzing these two topics, which represent, respectively, Black's most recent scholarship and his most significant early work, Levine attempts to show certain principles …

Violence Against Aboriginal Women In Australia: Possibilities For Redress Within The International Human Rights Framework, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

This Article addresses the issue of violence against Aboriginal women. Part I concerns the historical violenceagainst Aboriginal people generally, and Part II concerns violence against Aboriginal women in particular. Part III considers how the priorities and perspectives of Aboriginal women and non-Aboriginal women differ insignificant ways despite their congruence in others. In particular, the Article evaluates the awkward relationship between Aboriginal women and the largely white feminist movement in Australia as a consequence of these different priorities and perspectives, and suggests how political victories for white or non-Aboriginal women could be translated into gains for Aboriginal women. The fourth part …

The Tragedy Of Hong Kong, Richard Klein

Scholarly Works

While the world watched the fireworks and celebrations occurring in Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, a far sadder event was, in fact, unfolding. The people of Hong Kong, most of whom had originally fled from China -- the country which was now taking over -- have simply never experienced the basic human right of self-determination. Rule was shifting from a colonial power which had denied the people of Hong Kong their basic human rights for virtually all of its 155-year administration, to a country which, immediately upon assuming sovereignty, made it clear that democracy would remain but a dream.

International Crimes: Jus Cogens And Obligatio Erga Omnes, M. Cherif Bassiouni

Law and Contemporary Problems

There are both gaps and weaknesses in the various sources of International Criminal Law in norms and enforcement modalities. A comprehensive international codification would solve these problems, but this is not forthcoming.

Legal Responses To Genocide And Other Massive Violations Of Human Rights, W. Michael Reisman

Law and Contemporary Problems

The international community could halt the proliferation of genocides by arresting them before, or at least while they are happening, by any means necessary. Instead, the focus is on actions after the fact.

Combating Impunity: Some Thoughts On The Way Forward, Naomi Roht-Arriaza

Law and Contemporary Problems

Some of the tasks needed to be done by legal scholars and advocates to combat impunity in cases of massive violations of human rights are discussed. Pathways for implementation of these ideas are many and overlapping.

Introduction, M. Cherif Bassiouni

Law and Contemporary Problems

Efforts to work against the practice of impunity for major international crimes and violations of fundamental human rights and to develop international guidelines against the practice are discussed.

Searching For Peace And Achieving Justice: The Need For Accountability, M. Cherif Bassiouni

Law and Contemporary Problems

Despite a high level of mass violence in the post-war years, there have been few prosecutions at the international or national level. Impunity for such crimes is a betrayal of human solidarity with the victims.

International Guidelines Against Impunity: Facilitating Accountability, Madeline H. Morris

Law and Contemporary Problems

Reasons for a consistent pattern of compromise when it comes to impunity for international crimes and human rights violations are discussed. Guidelines are presented for facilitating accountability for these crimes.

The Letter Of The Law: The Scope Of The International Legal Obligation To Prosecute Human Rights Crimes, Michael Scharf

Law and Contemporary Problems

While international criminal conventions are limited in their application, there is growing recognition of a duty for states to do something to give meaning to human rights.

Arresting Impunity: The Case For Universal Jurisdiction In Bringing War Criminals To Accountability, Christopher C. Joyner

Law and Contemporary Problems

One means to enhance the prospects for bringing indicted war criminals to justice is to promote adoption of the principle of universality as the legal basis for prosecutorial jurisdiction.

Purging The Past: The Current State Of Lustration Laws In The Former Communist Bloc, Mark S. Ellis

Law and Contemporary Problems

Lustration laws are used in the nations of the former communist bloc to determine whether suspected individuals collaborated with the former state security service. An overview is presented of the current status of such laws.

Lessons From The Americas: Guidelines For International Response To Amnesties For Atrocities, Douglass Cassel

Law and Contemporary Problems

The impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of human rights violations, thanks in part to amnesty laws, is summarized. The international community should adopt guidelines to assist their own officials in responding to future amnesties.

Occupation Of The Womb: Forced Impregnation As Genocide, Siobhan K. Fisher

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The United Nations Role In The Future Of Human Freedoms, Emilio J. Cárdenas

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutionalism In The Global Era, Elisabeth Zoller

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Human Rights Groups Face New Challenges In South Africa, Geoff Budlender

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Human Rights And Community Development Through Low-Income Women's Leadership: The Voice Of An African-American Organizer, Claudine Michel

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

In this essay, I argue that grassroots organizing appears as one of the most viable option worldwide until women are better protected through legislation and public policy. I also posit that it is important to learn from divergent leadership philosophies, from the different values, roles and styles that women adopt in various parts of the world in the course of their day-to-day activities and in their efforts to organize, to support current community programs, and to train future community leaders. This essay relates the experiences of a grassroots organizer and presents what I believe to be a successful model of …

The Awas Tingni Petition To The Inter-American Commission On Human Rights: Indigenous Lands, Loggers, And Government Neglect In Nicaragua, S. James Anaya

St. Thomas Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Cry Of The Children, Gerald Abraham

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Mapping The Limits Of Skepticism In Law And Morals, Eric Blumenson

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This article identifies the theoretical and practical limits of postmodern skepticism about objective, transcultural standards in law and morals.

Stanley Fish tells us that moral issues are intelligible only within the "paradigms or communities that give them their local and changeable shape." This is one formulation of antifoundationalism, which rejects the idea of a transcultural moral reality that binds all people. Antifoundationalists see value judgments as contingent cultural products that cannot be objectively true.

But can we do anything with this thesis in practice? Postmodern pragmatists like Richard Rorty and Joan Williams believe that we can; they say we would …

A Special Forces Human Rights Policy, Jeffrey F. Addicott

Faculty Articles

The use of the United States military to promote human rights values in foreign militaries has taken on a much added significance in the post-Cold War era. Emerging democracies often look to American soldiers to assist them in establishing a law-based military whose policies, rules, and practices are rooted in respect for human rights.

Major General Kenneth Bowra, United States Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) (USASFC(A)), has made the promotion of human rights in the militaries of the emerging democracies a top priority for the Army Special Forces. With regard to America’s desire to inculcate human rights values in friendly …

Women's Rights As Human Rights - Rules, Realities And The Role Of Culture: A Formula For Reform, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Beijing, China. Tuesday, September 5, 1995. Beijing International Conference Center (BICC). The afternoon plenary of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women: Equality, Peace, Development is about to start in a hall too small to seat everyone who wants to be there. Other than places for some of the delegates from each attending State, space is limited and in high demand. A lucky few lined up for hours to get a ticket; many ended up negotiating prime space in front of one of several TV screens strategically located throughout the building. A hushed silence fell in the hall and …

The Status Of Women Under International Human Rights Law And The 1995 Un World Conference On Women, Beijing, China, Margaret Plattner

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The United Nations At Fifty: Sovereignty, Peacekeeping, And Human Right, E.G.H.

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

The Ideology Of Human Rights, Makau Wa Mutua

Journal Articles

This piece argues that although human rights is an ideology although it presents itself as non-ideological, non-partisan, and universal. It contends that the human rights corpus, taken as a whole, as a document of ideals and values, particularly the positive law of human rights, requires the construction of states to reflect the structures and values of governance that derive from Western liberalism, especially the contemporary variations of liberal democracy practiced in Western democracies. Viewed from this perspective, the human rights regime has serious and dramatic implications for questions of cultural diversity, the sovereignty of states, and the universality of human …