Law Commons^™

Lawyering Peace: Infusing Accountability Into The Peace Negotiations Process, Paul Williams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

On August 28, 2019, Dr. Paul R. Williams delivered the Bruce J. Klatsky Endowed Lecture on Human Rights at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. This article, based on his lecture, examines how justice has repeatedly found a foothold in peace processes, and how the international community can continue to work towards embedding accountability into peace processes to achieve durable peace. This article traces the arc of accountability in peace processes, from an era of impunity and a period of stepping stones moments, to today’s uncertain moment for post-conflict accountability and justice mechanisms. The author argues that comprehensive transitional …

Executive Overreach And Underreach In The Pandemic, Kim Lane Scheppele, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

The pandemic that convulsed the globe in 2020 was long foretold but still surprising to many. Within a few months of its appearance, COVID-19 became one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Governments struggled at first to comprehend what was happening – and then reacted in very different ways. Most political leaders followed the advice of epidemiologists. Many declared states of emergency. A few pursued autocratic agendas. And some did almost nothing.

During emergencies, constitutional scholars normally worry about executive aggrandizement at the expense of human rights and democratic values. Emergencies often require national executives to act quickly and …

Emerging Challenges In The Relationship Between International Humanitarian Law And International Human Rights Law, Claudia Martin, Diego Rodriguez-Pinzon

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

We are delighted to present this year's publication of the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, which includes two of the best essays in English and in Spanish recognized in the 2019 Human Rights Essay Award competition. A third winning essay will be included in Volume 35, Issue 3. It is satisfying to think that this competition allowed a number of participants an opportunity to expound their thoughts on so many important topics and areas of the world. We hope these participants are able to use their articles as mechanisms for change.

The Mainstreaming Of Sex Workers' Rights As Human Rights, Chi Adanna Mgbako

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Race, Gender And Nation In An Age Of Shifting Borders: The Unstable Prism Of Motherhood And Masculinity, Catherine Powell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Human Rights For Health Across The United Nations, Benjamin Mason Meier, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United Nations (UN) plays a central role in realizing human rights to advance global health. Looking beyond state obligations, the UN has called on all its specialized agencies to mainstream human rights across all their activities. With globalization compelling these UN institutions to meet an expanding set of global challenges to underlying determinants of health, human rights are guiding these international organizations in addressing public health. These international organizations within the UN system are actively engaged in implementing health-related human rights—in both their mission and their actions to carry out that mission. Through this mainstreaming of human rights, global …

Building A Lifeline: A Proposed Global Platform And Responsibility Sharing Model For The Global Compact On Refugees, Sarnata Reynolds, Juan Pablo Vacatello

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

In 2016, the leaders of 193 governments committed to more equitable and predictable sharing of responsibility for refugees as part of the New York Declaration, to be realized in the Global Compact on Refugees. To encourage debate, this paper presents the first global model to measure the capacity of governments to physically protect and financially support refugees and host communities. The model is based on a new database of indicators covering 193 countries, which assigns a fair share to each country and measures current government contributions to the protection of refugees. The model also proposes a new government-led global platform …

Dignity Takings In Leviathanic Immigration Proceedings, Christopher Mendez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Current immigration law in the United States is rife with racially motivated biases necessitating immediate correction. Among the many problems with current law, constitutional rights are withheld from a large populace. This article reflects upon the history of immigration law in the United States, noting key decisions which have formed the status quo. This article also proposes remedies such as the cessation of infringement by government agents on the property rights that affected immigrants have on their own bodies and a modern-day amnesty reflective of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. This article also introduces Bernadette Atuahene’s concept …

Animal Rights: Time To Start Unpacking What Rights And For Whom, Jane Kotzmann, Nick Pendergrast

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bridging The Gap Between Immigration Detainment And Parental Rights: A Constitutional Consideration Of Migrant Children Separation, Kelsey Burge

Northern Illinois Law Review Supplement

Federal immigration law does not completely comport with state family law because some federal legislation, such as the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), requires states to initiate parental custody proceedings due to children being separated from their parents for a statutorily defined period, even when parents are detained in immigration centers with very uncertain timelines. Parental custody proceedings involve factors that each state has authority to enact evaluating parental fitness; however, the factors may be implicitly or explicitly biased toward migrant parents, resulting in migrant parental custody being terminated unfairly. While Trump's zero-tolerance policy enacted in 2018 sparked outrage …

Outcome Report On The Climate Crisis, Global Land Use And Human Rights Conference, Mateusz Kasprowicz, Sam Szoke-Burke, Kaitlin Y. Cordes

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

On September 27^th, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Landesa, the New York City Bar Association International Environmental Law Committee, and Wake Forest Law School hosted a day-long conference on the intersection between land use, the climate crisis and clean energy transition, and human rights.

Held at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, the conference brought together individuals from civil society organizations, governments, and academia, as well as lawyers, climate scientists, land-rights experts, indigenous representatives and other stakeholder groups. The panelists analyzed the critical role that land plays in …

Securing Adequate Legal Defense In Proceedings Under International Investment Agreements: A Scoping Study, Lise Johnson, Brooke Guven

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

CCSI prepared a Scoping Study for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Also available are:

• A summary version of the study (33 pages)
• A webinar (March 24, 2020), hosted by CCSI and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, discussed the Scoping Study and its findings (see also accompanying slides with speaking notes).
• A webinar organized by UNCITRAL (April 21, 2020). CCSI presented the Scoping Study. A video link of the webinar along with CCSI’s slides are available in English (with speaking notes) and French at that link. CCSI Senior Fellow Karl Sauvant also presented his UNCITRAL …

Environmental Injustice: How Treaties Undermine The Right To A Healthy Environment, Lisa E. Sachs, Lise Johnson, Ella Merrill

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Our planet faces unprecedented threats, including irreversible global warming, loss in biodiversity, and water pollution and water scarcity. The impacts of these environmental crises also threaten human rights and exacerbate inequality. Slowing these worsening environmental trends – and addressing the impacts of environmental change on populations – will require cumulative policy responses at the national and international level.

Singapore, Land Use And The Lessons For Human Development, Wellington Migliari

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

A study of the impact of using land use controls as a strategic tool to further human development among all social classes is presented. We advocate that human rights include a long-term practice of combining public policies, manufacturing industry, and property system. Further, this study strives to educate economists and those in other academic areas (e.g. humanities) on the importance of considering land use, ownership, and urban planning with economics to form a new theory of developmentalism. Singapore provides a case study demonstrating similar aspects that may shed light on that debate. The Housing & Development Board and the Urban …

Human Rights, Economic Justice And U.S. Exceptionalism, Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan

Pace International Law Review

On April 5, 2019, PILR held their triennial symposium titled: Revisiting Human Rights: The Universal Declaration at 70. As a reflection of the event, a few panelists composed contribution pieces reflecting on the topic.

Leahy—Sharpening The Blade, Nandor F.R. Kiss

Pace International Law Review

Over the course of the last 20 years, the Leahy Law has become one of the cornerstones of foreign and human rights policy. Yet, despite its largely unchallenged importance, field practitioners and other stakeholders have identified a number of substantive and practical deficiencies that greatly diminish the law’s ability to achieve the desired effect, and worse, may pose a risk to the United States’ interests. In reflecting on these deficiencies, and armed with decades of data and anecdotal evidence, this Article proposes adjustments focused on better aligning the law’s intent and effect. These recommendations range from semantic edits to substantive …

Ethics And Methods Of Human Rights Work: Exploring Both Theoretical And Practical Approaches, Shayna Plaut, Maritza Felices Luna, Christina Clark Kazak, Neil Bilotta, Lara Rosenoff Gauvin

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This workshop will explore both theoretical and practical approaches to methodologies and ethics as it relates to human rights work.

The goal of the workshop is to create a dynamic space that encourages participants to share and learn from our own experiences navigating the messiness of human rights ethics and methods. We specifically address formal education and systems and structures so that we may all design, do and teach research and practice related to human rights in a more critical and sustainable manner. We recognize the tensions of creating research, programs and advocacy that is seen as “legitimate” to educational …

Delinking The "Human" From Human Rights: Artificial Intelligence, Transhumanism And The Future Of Human Rights, A. Kayum Ahmed

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights discourses are deeply embedded in an epistemic anthropocentricism that centers the human in human rights. However, conceptions of what constitutes the human are being eroded through the development of artificial intelligence, bio-hacking and transhumanism, all of which, support the emergence of new kinds of humans.These emergent humans include the enhanced human who possesses abilities that compel us to reconsider the parameters of humanness, as well as computer systems that demonstrate characteristics thought of as uniquely human. The blurring of the divide between human and machine therefore compels us to reconsider our understanding of the human in human rights, …

Rehumanization Among Veterans Of The Yugoslav Wars: Rethinking Reconciliation And Post-Conflict Justice, Jordan N. Kiper

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Rehumanization is a central element in powerful social movements after war. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in the Balkans, I consider the convergence and divergence between notions of rehumanization found in human rights literature and the role of rehumanization among veterans in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. Rehumanization plays a prominent role among these veterans because of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which has had varied social effects on Balkan communities. By supporting the ICTY, veteran associations have vetted themselves of potential war criminals, and thereby developed overlapping justice discourses that converge on the notion of reconciliation. There are …

Fiscal Citizenship: How Can Tax Efficiency And Isonomy Aid In The Promotion Of Economic Rights, Social Participation, Political Accountability, And Cultural Diversity?, Gustavo Voeroes Dénes

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

According to the World Inequality Report 2018 (WID 2017), Brazil is one of the few countries that has not recently displayed an increase in income inequality, having instead sustained it on persistently very high levels, actually composing the world’s “inequality frontier”. While such levels of inequality may be partly attributed to poor distribution of property rights, human capital endowments, and specificity of labor relations, a significant part of it is undoubtedly due the national fiscal system’s reduced distributive capacity, compromised by one the worst taxation systems in the world. Occupying the 184th position out of 190 countries in the World …

How Can Human Rights Activism Help Tackle Economic Inequality? Lessons From Mining Affected Communities In South Africa, Allison Corkery

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The dramatic rise in socioeconomic inequality produced by neoliberal globalisation has provoked a crisis of confidence in the human rights community and inspired a wave of debate about whether human rights have anything meaningful to offer in advancing economic justice. The pessimistic view argues human rights are inadequate for challenging socioeconomic inequality because they are too closely aligned to Western liberalism and too uncritical of the rise of capitalism. The more optimistic view does not dismiss these critiques entirely. It argues that they are only valid for particular (arguably dominant) types of human rights praxis, however. Failing to acknowledge this …

The Human Right To A Healthy Environment: Pushing The Boundaries In The Inter-American System, Sarah Dávila-Ruhaak

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The connection between the environment and human rights is not a surprising one. The enjoyment of human rights depends on a person’s ability to live free from interference and to have his or her rights protected. The interdependence of human rights and the protection of the environment is manifested in the full and effective enjoyment of the rights to life, highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, adequate standard of living, adequate food, clean water and sanitation, housing, culture, freedom of expression and association, information and education, participation, effective remedies, and the rights of indigenous peoples. Without adequate access …

Human Rights, Environmental Justice, Social Justice, Faith Values And Ethics: Building Stronger Partnerships For The Common Good By Understanding The Differences, Theresa Harris, Leanne M. Jablonski, Sarah Fortner, Malcolm Daniels

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Partnerships between human rights practitioners, local communities, scientists, engineers, and health professionals have shown potential to address deeply rooted, systemic human rights concerns. These collaborations are essential for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and for engaging the perspectives and expertise of all constituents. However, even when the individuals in these partnerships or the organizations they represent have common goals, their motivations, analyses, and solutions often come from different perspectives. Members of good will can inadvertently alienate one another when attempting to work together. The fields of human rights, social justice, environmental justice, and ethics have each developed their …

Decolonizing Human Rights: Sovereignty. Disruption. Tactics., A. Kayum Ahmed

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Despite its emancipatory potential, human rights remains locked in a form of epistemic coloniality that defers to Euro-American knowledge and reinforces anthropocentric exceptionalism. In order to employ human rights as a source of emancipation, human rights must itself be emancipated—it must be decolonized. Drawing on the notion of 'decoloniality' as a framework that advances radical possibilities by delinking from structural racism, patriarchy and class embedded in capitalism and Western modernity, a typology of human rights as sovereignty, disruption, and tactics is developed as a way of understanding human rights from the position of the colonized.

Mediating Suffering: Buddhist Detachment And Tantric Responsibility In Michael Ondaatje’S Anil’S Ghost, Justin M. Hewitson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In “Mediating Suffering: Buddhist Detachment and Tantric Responsibility in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost,” Justin Hewitson argues that the global mediation of suffering following human rights abuses creates the offender-victim binary. The way in which moral judgments drive urgent peacemaking is seldom connected to long-term victimhood narratives. This psychology can exacerbate cyclical patterns of anger, exploitation, and violence by deferring responsibility. Ondaatje’s controversial novel, Anil’s Ghost, which reflects these charged accusations, refuses to settle blame on any side of the Sri Lankan conflict; instead, it offers the troubling recognition that offenders, victims, and mediators are all causal agents. Hewitson …

It's Complicated: The Challenge Of Prosecuting Tncs For Criminal Activity Under International Law, Jena Martin

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This essay aims to tackle an increasingly thorny and relevant issue: what do you do if a Transnational Corporation (TNC) commits a crime? The question raises a number of challenges, both philosophically and practically. First, what does it mean to prosecute an organization? Although there are some limited examples (the United States’ prosecution of accounting firm Arthur Andersen being among the most note-worthy), we have relatively little precedence regarding what this would entail; how exactly do you put a corporation on trial? Second, practically speaking, where do you hold the trial? This challenge is magnified by the fact that, by …

Briefing For Civil Society Organizations – Understanding Commercial Eucalyptus Plantations: How Do They Work And What Are Their Environmental Impacts?, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

If a company wants to use a community’s land for eucalyptus plantations, the community should think carefully about whether this is a good idea. Civil society organizations that support communities can use this briefing to help communities understand the potential environmental impacts the community should be aware of. The briefing explains plantation forestry and the life-cycle of eucalyptus tree plantations. It also notes the different possible negative environmental impacts of eucalyptus plantations before exploring how this information can be factored into community decision-making about a proposed eucalyptus plantation. While the briefing focuses on eucalyptus plantations, a lot of it will …

Glocalised Constitution-Making In The Twenty-First Century: Evidence From Asia, Maartje De Visser, Bui Ngoc Son

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

How have Asian nations conducted, or how are they conducting, constitution-making in the face of pressures associated with globalization, and how do they balance those forces with domestic interests and realities? This article aims to develop an analytical framework that can capture this global-local interplay. It introduces the concept of “glocalized constitution-making” to denote the co-existence and relationship between the two governance levels as manifested in the forces, actors and norms pertaining to the process of drafting a new constitution as well as its substance. Glocalization permeates the entirety of a constitution-making episode, from the impetus to initiate the process, …

The Past As Present, Unlearned Lessons And The (Non-) Utility Of International Law, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

The contemporary moment provides an acute illustration of the dangers of historical amnesia—as if the Trump Administration’s policies of exclusion, extremist nationalism, and presidential imperialism were singular to ‘now,’ and entirely reversible in the next election. This Article argues to the contrary; that we have been down this road before, and the current crisis in immigration and refugee policies is the inevitable development of trends of racism, including anti-Arab, anti-Muslim racism and xenophobia, that have only become normalized by the populist resurgence of Trumpism. If this premise is correct—that we are experiencing a culmination of a historical trajectory—what lessons from …

Human Rights Law And The Investment Treaty Regime, Jesse Coleman, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Lise Johnson

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In its current form, the international investment treaty regime may stymie the business and human rights agenda in various ways. The regime may incentivize governments to favour the protection of investors over the protection of human rights. Investment treaty standards enforced through investor-state arbitration risk adversely affecting access to justice for project-affected rights holders. More broadly, the regime contributes to a system of global economic governance that elevates and rewards investors’ actions and expectations, irrespective of whether they have adhered to their responsibilities to respect human rights. Without comprehensive reform, investment treaties and investor-state arbitration will continue to interfere with …