Human Rights Law Commons^™

Gender-Based Violence And Botswana's Constitutional Failure To Protect Women's Rights, Cameron Mcdonald

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

Gender-based violence (“GBV”) remains a pervasive human rights issue throughout Botswana. When it comes to gender equality, Botswana’s dual constitutional and customary legal system is a paradox. Despite its commitment to equality and nondiscrimination, Botswana’s Constitution allows customary courts to discriminate freely to preserve traditional practices that disadvantage women. These traditional practices affect women’s right to property, inheritance, marriage, legal representation, and personal safety. Customary law continues to constrain women’s right to economic autonomy and access to justice, leaving many women dependent on the men who abuse them. As a result, many Batswana women experience structural discrimination in both their …

Armed Conflict: Addressing Violations Against Children's Human Rights, Noelia Torres Guillen

Posters - 2026

• Research question: How has armed conflict violated children's human rights, and how have international legal frameworks been effective in addressing these violations?

• The CRC sets the standard international definition, which defines a child as every human being below the age of eighteen years

• There are six grave violations: Killing and maiming of children, the recruitment or use of children as soldiers, sexual violence, abduction, attacks against schools and hospitals, and denial of humanitarian access for children.

• Argument (thesis): Although there are several legal instruments implemented to protect children's human rights during armed conflict, children are still …

Three Paths To Justice: Comparing Feminist Strategies Against Gender-Based Violence In East Asia, Ashley Chon

The Dialogue

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Ubuntu Philosophy In Nigeria's Environmental Law: A Pathway To Sustainable Plastic Pollution Regulation, Ndubuisi Augustine Nwafor

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

International & Constitutional Law Implications Of U.S. Attacks On Iran, Cardozo Law Institute In Holocaust And Human Rights (Clihhr), Floersheimer Center For Constitutional Democracy

2025–2026 Flyers

Join the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights (CLIHHR) and Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy for a critical discussion on the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Desperate Crossings, Unjust Seas: Challenging The Interdiction And Forcible Return Of Asylum Seekers On The High Seas, Katarina Herring-Trott

Fordham Law Review Online

In the past two years, irregular maritime migration has reached levels not seen in decades. International human rights law requires that states screen migrants’ asylum claims and prohibits states from returning migrants to a place where they face persecution. However, due to recent trends in refugee securitization, states attempt to dodge their international obligations by going to the high seas and forcibly returning migrant vessels. States are not held accountable for these forced returns, owing to gray areas in overlapping provisions of maritime and human rights law. This Essay analyzes ambiguous maritime law provisions, interpreting them in accordance with relevant …

Outbound Investment Restrictions And International Law’S Challenge, Harlan Grant Cohen

Seattle University Law Review

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. The …

Global Supply Chain Resilience In Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Bitcoin Mining, Kishanthi Parella, Carla L. Reyes

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has put into motion bold plans in critical and emerging technologies to bolster its national and economic security.  For example, the federal government created a national bitcoin strategic reserve and a stockpile of other cryptocurrency; while several states have committed to or are considering similar goals.  However, the security of these reserves is dependent on two types of supply chains within the Bitcoin mining industry: analogue supply chains, relating to the physical components needed for Bitcoin mining, and data supply chains, relating to the complex and layered logistical network of actors that create input into the software …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

Restricting Data Flows Is A Sign Of Weakness, Nikolas Guggenberger

Seattle University Law Review

There has been a seismic shift in American attitudes toward the free flow of data across borders.  In less than a decade, the United States has transitioned from condemning barriers to digital trade to constructing a digital fortress of its own. It passed legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban affecting 170 million U.S. users, citing national security concerns about its ties to China and the potential for data surveillance and content manipulation. Upon legal challenge by TikTok on First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court affirmed the ban’s constitutionality. Recent federal legislation …

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

Resilient Dispute Resolution Systems For International Energy Conflicts, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Seattle University Law Review

Energy-related conflicts are on the rise, spanning diverse issues such as the impacts of rare mineral mining on local communities, the impacts of sanctions on energy investments due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impacts of expanded subsidies on the electric vehicle and solar panel industries. Increasingly, companies, communities, and governments are clashing over the challenges of pursuing disparate and sometimes competing energy policies. This Article argues that dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy investment sector must be fundamentally rethought. Traditional semi-adjudicatory models, which focus on winners and losers, fail to accommodate the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary energy …

Product Nationality And Corporate Identity, Trang (Mae) Nguyen

Seattle University Law Review

Global supply chains have long depended on a deceptively technical device: the attribution of a “nationality” to goods. A trade law principle, rules of origin assign products an “economic passport” that governs how they are treated at the border, including what markets they may enter and which tariff rates apply. In recent years, however, product nationality has taken on a new and far more ambitious role. As U.S. trade policy increasingly intersects with national security and human rights policy, policymakers rely on nationality-based measures to police supply chain linkages, curb geopolitical issues, and discipline firms for their links to forced …

The Indeterminacy Of Customary International Law, Mohamed Diaa Tawfik

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the judicial formation of customary international law and examines how international courts oscillate between interpretive and law-making functions. It analyzes key theoretical frameworks—including Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law, Dworkin’s Law as Integrity, Kennedy’s radical indeterminacy, and Koskenniemi’s Descending-Ascending Approach—to understand how courts assert and shape customary norms beyond mere state practice and opinio juris. The work concludes that the International Court of Justice and other tribunals increasingly act as de facto lawmakers under the guise of interpretation, advocating the indeterminacy they try to avoid.

Finding Luis: A Creative Nonfiction Account Of Law & Society, Jason M. Leggett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This essay explores the contradictions in legal theory and human experience through creative nonfiction. Its main purpose is to argue that a truly just society requires acknowledging the profound influence of individual narratives on the law. This is supported by blending personal narratives, critical analysis, and philosophical inquiry to reveal the gap between codified law and lived realities for marginalized individuals. This unique Legal Poetics methodology employs a series of six vignettes, such as the author's and Luis's shared experiences with traumatic brain injury and the denial of justice, as data. By integrating autoethnography, law as narrative, and performativity theories, …

Blurring The Lines: A Reflection On The ‘Relaxation’ Of The Organization Requirement Of Article 7(2)(A) Of The Rome Statute Since The Situation In Kenya Decisions, Leonardo Helman

Human Rights Brief

International criminal liability for Crimes Against Humanity (CAH) was born during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to address the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime against civilians throughout the Third Reich. Since the post-World War II tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo, the definition of CAH has undergone several evolutionary stages to better reflect the circumstances in which atrocities have been committed. The ad hoc tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda substantially adjusted the definition of CAH to fit the context of these conflicts. However, this evolution of CAH in the ad hoc cases did not yield a definition applicable in …

Beyond Borders: Transnational Repression As A System Of Authoritarian Control In Russia, Kazakhstan, And Kyrgyzstan, Jasmine D. Cameron

Human Rights Brief

This Article examines transnational repression, state-sponsored persecution of citizens, human rights defenders, journalists, members of diaspora, and critical voices located outside physical borders, as a systemic tool of political control employed by Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Based on analysis of legislation, published reports, UN Special Rapporteur findings, and case files, this Article provides three case studies that demonstrate different stages of an escalating trend towards transnational repression systems. From Kyrgyzstan, where the government has started to develop and implement harmful practices to persecute its citizens abroad, to a more established system in Kazakhstan, where numerous incidents of transnational repression showed …

How The Sui Generis Principle Has Been Historically Abused In International Law: From The British To The Israelis, Ahmad Hamdan

Human Rights Brief

I. Introduction

For over a century, powerful actors have used a single Latin phrase, sui generis, as a shield to evade accountability under international law. Meaning “of its own kind,” this theory dictates that a situation is so unique that ordinary rules should not apply. In international law, sui generis typically refers to situations or entities that cannot easily be categorized under existing legal frameworks or conventions. Its use indicates that there is no directly applicable precedent and that, as a result, no legal principles apply; instead, the situation itself will set the precedent. While some researchers argue that …

Stability And Accountability In Nagorno-Karabakh And The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict, Callum Heath

Human Rights Brief

I. Introduction

On August 8, 2025, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia were hosted at the White House by U.S. President Donald Trump to announce the Agreement on Establishment of Peace and Inter-State Relations (the Agreement) in a Joint Declaration. The Agreement sets out to end the decades-long conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Armenian ethnic enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan, and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, which is separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by Armenia. While the White House hails the Agreement as a “historic peace deal,” the reality is more …

“Durable Solutions” Revisited: Italy’S Train-To-Hire Pathway Under The Cutro Decree As Alternative Refugee Protection, Tim Streit

Human Rights Brief

I. Introduction

If the average person were asked to imagine a refugee, they might conjure the image of a migrant fleeing war or persecution, showing up at the border of a new country with a few belongings in hand, and asking not to be sent back to the dangerous place from which they came. In fact, it is not only the hypothetical “average person” who pictures this scenario. The international refugee protection system, developed after World War II through the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention) and its 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees …

Migration In Context And Law: Global Displacement And The U.S. Immigration System, Saya Khandar, Dominic Brunaccioni, Samantha Johnson, Nisa Manzar, Lindsey Nye, Alexis Stephens, Sherise Tracey

Human Rights Brief

On February 20, 2026, the Human Rights Brief at American University Washington College of Law (WCL) held its annual symposium, titled “Migration in Context and Law: Global Displacement and the U.S. Immigration System.” This symposium was curated in response to intensified immigration operations across the United States (U.S.), which have resulted in significant harm to individuals and families nationwide. The discussion centered on the humanity of immigration and explored how global displacement, armed conflict, economic instability, and climate change continue to shape migration. Organizers brought together legal scholars, practitioners, and advocates to examine current immigration policies in the context of …

The Lives Of Fritz Haber And Of International Law: Entwined Tales Of Tragedy And Irony, Mark A. Drumbl, C. William Vardy

Scholarly Articles

This article recounts the life of international law through the story of a single individual. This is the narrative of biographical international law. The subject — equally protagonist and antagonist — of this article is Fritz Haber, a German-Jewish scientist born in 1868. Devoted to the Kaiser, Haber was declared a war criminal by the Allies following World War I for having been ‘the father’ of chemical warfare. Haber argued that chemical weapons were more humane than conventional weapons. While under this shadow, Haber also won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1920 for his pioneering work with ammonia …

Enforcing International Humanitarian Law Through The Business Responsibility To Respect Human Rights, Tara Van Ho

Faculty Articles

Insulation produced by the Danish company Rockwool—or its Russian subsidiary—lines thirty-one Russian Navy warships. Though not a weapon, this material is essential to the vessels’ operation. Did Rockwool have a responsibility under international law to stop the transfer of the insulation to the Russian Navy before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine? This article examines the business responsibilities under the 2011 United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (“UNGPs”). In doing so, the article finds that the business responsibility to respect human rights in the UNGPs provides a strong mechanism for enforcing international humanitarian law (“IHL”). However, it requires …

Comparative Visions For U.S. Group-Based Asylum Proposal, Lauren N. Hughes

Scholarly Articles

Images of asylum seekers and migrants desperate to enter the United States at the southern border abound in U.S. media. Less familiar to the American public, but intertwined with the highly politicized modern migration crisis, is the ever-growing backlog of pending asylum applications before both the Asylum Office and Immigration Courts. This backlog has many causes, including underresourced agencies, a growing number of asylum applicants, the high evidentiary burden and complexities inherent to asylum law, and the lack of counsel for many asylum seekers. In response to this crippling backlog, some scholars propose the adoption of a “group-based” asylum mechanism. …

The Reception Of International Human Rights Law In Charter Litigation: "Not A Box Of Chocolates" But You Still "Never Know What You're Gonna Get", Karinne Lantz

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the reception of international human rights law(IHRL)in Canada. Focusing on the Charter context, it demonstrates that how IHRL applies in Canada continues to lack clarity despite repeated (and recent) efforts by the Supreme Court of Canada to provide it. This article argues that this lack of clarity is an important matter for the Court to address, particularly as IHRL is increasingly being invoked before courts and other tribunals around the world. It argues that the Court should adopt a methodology that: (i) endorses the “Dickson Doctrine,”according to which the “minimum protection approach”is robustly applied for international human …