Human Rights Law Commons^™

Bleeding Into Human Rights Law: The Need For A Special Procedure On The Right To Menstrual Health, Hunter Tarry

BYU Law Review

Menstruation, a fundamental biological process experienced by nearly half of the global population, remains shrouded in stigma and silence despite its critical role in sustaining human life. Many women and girls face inadequate menstrual health management and education, undermining their ability to experience a full range of human rights. While menstruation has gained increased public visibility in recent years, the United Nations (UN)—the cornerstone of the global human rights system—has been slow to meaningfully integrate this issue into its agenda. The time is now for the UN to formally recognize menstrual health as a human right by advancing global advocacy …

“We Are Physically Alive But Mentally Dead”: The International Community Must Take Action To Ensure Women’S Right To Education In Afghanistan, Solveig J. Clifford

BYU Law Review

International treaties recognize the right to education as a fundamental human right. The Taliban, which currently act as the government as Afghanistan, are legally bound by treaty obligations to respect the right to education. The Taliban have banned women and girls from receiving education past the sixth grade, which is illegal under international law. During the Taliban’s previous regime in Afghanistan, they implemented a similar policy, which had disastrous results for an entire generation of Afghan women. Once again, the education ban is causing severe harm to the women and girls of Afghanistan. The international community has failed to take …

Religious Freedom As Freedom, Helen M. Alvaré

BYU Law Review

In recent decades, the exercise of religious freedom is increasingly associated with oppression. This is not only due to the disagreement between religions and some governments concerning sexual expression matters—contraception, abortion, same-sex relations, and transgender identity—but is also due to diverging convictions about the substance and sources of freedom. This Article will examine a current and highly visible set of convictions about the contents of human freedom, which together suggest that a thriving religious witness threatens freedom itself. These convictions often surface in the context of laws touching upon sexual expression. It will then contrast these convictions with those found …

Agreeing To Disagree: Abortion Jurisprudence In Jewish And Islamic Law, Rabea Benhalim

BYU Law Review

This Article challenges the prevailing perception that religious people and religious legal traditions are anti-abortion. While this may be true within certain conservative Christian perspectives, this perception is an inaccurate representation of Jewish and Muslim Americans and their respective legal traditions. Both the Jewish and Islamic legal traditions offer a range of nuanced positions on abortion. Furthermore, diverse opinions of Jewish and Islamic abortion jurisprudence inform a variety of topics salient to the current legal debate in the United States. This range of opinions includes strict limitations on abortion, circumstantial legality, and general permissibility. Scholars from both traditions engaged in …

Two Concepts Of Judicial Deference To Religious Claims, Chagai Schlesinger

BYU Law Review

Religious exemptions from general laws are everywhere. The U.S. Supreme Court is expanding its exemption doctrine, systemically preferring religious needs over conflicting considerations. This ignites an ongoing debate between those celebrating religious liberties and those fearing their societal costs. Assessing this judicial trend, as this Article highlights, requires noticing how it is facilitated by a broad deferential approach to religious claims, refraining from evaluating their content.

This Article argues that this broad expression of judicial deference is analytically flawed and normatively implausible. The problem lies in the failure to distinguish between two types of religious claims when deferring to them: …

Flattening The Curve: Why Amending The International Health Regulations Is The Common-Sense Solution To Future Pandemics, Brittney Graff

BYU Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic presented an unprecedented challenge for the World Health Organization (WHO) and international community. The outbreak and ongoing pandemic prompted States to reassess the efficacy of the International Health Regulations (IHR). In November 2021, the World Health Assembly (WHA) decided to develop a new agreement to increase international pandemic preparedness. This paper analyzes the current gaps in the IHR to present a pragmatic approach wherein the WHA would amend rather than replace the IHR. It starts by examining the purpose and history of the IHR, including past revisions. It then addresses the constitutional framework of the IHR, and …

Ukraine, Urban Warfare, And Obstacles To Humanitarian Access: A Predicament Of Public International Law, Harriet Norcross Eppel

BYU Law Review

Humanitarian assistance is not carried out in a vacuum. As urban warfare historically complicates humanitarian aid’s access to civilians in war zones, Ukraine, having suffered and still facing highly publicized violence in civilian-dense areas, has encountered dire obstacles in acquiring necessary resources for civilians’ survival, including both direct and incidental attacks on humanitarian access. Thus, it is vital the international legal community take measures to mitigate current and future dangers of urban warfare, as well as design new solutions, such as strengthening current international law under which obstructing humanitarian access constitutes a violation of jus cogens principles, attempting to induce …

The Right To Be Proselytized Under International Law, Ryan Cheney

BYU Law Review

Legal analyses of proselytism have tended to focus on the rights of the proselytizer and on the right of the target of proselytism, or “proselytizee,” to be free from such “interference.” However, such analyses do not fully account for all rights involved in proselytism. When people are prevented from being proselytized, such as by law or by persecution, an important consequence is that they are cut off from a significant source of information on and mechanism for exploring and joining other religions. Despite stigmatizations of proselytism, many people regularly accept it and learn about and join other faiths through it. …

Treaty Interpretation At The Human Rights Committee: Reconciling International Law And Normativity, David H. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

The Human Rights Committee, the expert body overseeing states’ compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”), is a key institution in the international human rights architecture. The Committee’s work requires constant interpretation of the ICCPR’s human rights guarantees. While international law dictates how to interpret treaty provisions, including those of the ICCPR, the Committee does not consistently follow the international law of treaty interpretation. Rather, normativity plays an influential role in the Committee’s interpretations. This approach is not uniformly negative; it has both costs and benefits. To minimize the costs, however, this Article identifies a path …

Clark Memorandum: Fall 2022, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• A Certain Idea of BYU
• Building Bridges Between the Latter-day Saint and Jewish Communities
• Exemplary Scholars, Devoted Leaders

The Legitimacy Of International Human Rights Law—Addressing The Justification Gap, Brock M. Mason

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Rise And Fall Of Human Dignity, Nicholas Aroney

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Christian Accounts Of Religious Liberty: Two Views Of Conscience, Joel Harrison

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Christian Faith-Based Organizations As Third Party Interveners At The European Court Of Human Rights, Eugenia Relaño Pastor

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Christian Dignity And The Overlapping Consensus, Frederick Mark Gedicks

BYU Law Review

This Article rejects arguments by Christian leaders, scholars, and others who lament the secularization of the West and urge Christian dignity as the foundation of universal human rights. It argues instead that only a secular conception of dignity free of Christian metaphysics can create an overlapping consensus in support of human rights.

Part I describes the roots of Christian dignity in medieval theology and status. Part II briefly recounts how the Renaissance and Enlightenment re-centered the end of dignity from knowing God to knowing oneself, while the Reformation's extension of original sin to the intellect left Catholicism as the primary …

Christianity, Human Rights, And Dignity: Squaring The Triangle, Brett Scharffs, Andrea Pin, Dmytro Vovk

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Catholicism, Liberalism, And Populism, Andrea Pin, Luca P. Vanoni

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Human Dignity Has No Borders: Respecting The Rights Of “People On The Move” And The Rights And Religious Freedom Of Those Who Aid Them, Christine M. Venter

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Friends Of The Court: Christian Conservative Arguments On Human Dignity Before The U.S. Supreme Court And The European Court Of Human Rights, Pasquale Annicchino

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dignity And Discrimination, Frederick Mark Gedicks

BYU Law Review

Delivered as the Dignity in Law Symposium keynote address, this essay surveys uses of dignity in U.S. constitutional law, with a focus on conflicts between the dignities attached to citizenship and religious conscience. Parts I and II discuss dignity as state sovereignty and hierarchical status. Part III examines the collision of dignities in the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. Part IV argues that attention to the public or private nature of the site where religious accommodation is demanded clarifies when accommodation is appropriate, using a house of worship and a government office as illustration s. Part V lists other sites of accommodation …

Indigenous Dignity And The Right To Be Forgotten, Trevor Reed

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Does The State Owe To Its People? Toward A “Responsibility To Develop”, Amit Khardori

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pregnancy During Incarceration: A “Serious” Medical Need, Rahgan Jensen

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Medical Disputes And Conflicting Values: Is There A “Right To Die” Later?, Janet L. Dolgin

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

With An Even Hand: The Call For Pakistan’S Executive Task Force For Religious Tolerance, J. Clifford Wallace

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Clark Memorandum: Spring 2020, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• Of Rights and Responsibilities: The Social Ecosystem of Religious Freedom
• I am the Woman Who Can
• Flashes of Light: Thoughts on Circumstantial Evidence
• Capital Markets and Human Flourishing

Read on Issuu

Dignity: The Most Important Common Resource, Brianna Rosier

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Changing The Narrative: Sex Trafficking And Its Victims, Danica Baird

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Clark Memorandum: Spring 2019, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• Declaring Human Dignity (Photographs by Steve McCurry)
• How Not to Be Stupid (Michael Mosman)
• Religion, Democracy, and the Habits of the Heart (Elder Bruce C. Hafen)
• Loving Our Neighbors (D. Carolina Núñez)
• Memoranda

The Universal, Inalienable Right Of The Child To The Marriage Of His Biological Parents, Patrick F. Fagan, William L. Saunders

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.