Human Rights Law Commons^™

A Constitutional Right Of Religious Exemption: An Historical Perspective, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Did late eighteenth-century Americans understand the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution to provide individuals a right of exemption from civil laws to which they had religious objections? Claims of exemption based on the Free Exercise Clause have prompted some of the Supreme Court's most prominent free exercise decisions, and therefore this historical inquiry about a right of exemption may have implications for our constitutional jurisprudence. Even if the Court does not adopt late eighteenth-century ideas about the free exercise of religion, we may, nonetheless, find that the history of such ideas can contribute to our contemporary analysis. …

International Human Rights Law In Soviet And American Courts, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

To what extent should domestic courts apply international law – specifically the international law of human rights? I would like to examine this question with reference to two very different states: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States. For quite distinct reasons, neither of the two has yet fully embraced the idea of direct application in national tribunals of the body of international law that regulates the relationship between human beings and their own governments. As the post-Cold War era unfolds, it is time to ask whether either or both of these erstwhile adversaries might finally be …

Corruption, Legal Education And Change In West Africa: A Broader View Of Human Rights, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

"Will we ever move again?" I wondered as I sat with my knees jammed into my chin, sore from the long and bumpy ride on the wooden plank which lined the back of a "bush taxi" – the only public transport between villages in Northern Mali. The "taxi" was actually a rusty and roadworn pickup truck packed with more than two dozen men, women and children, more than I ever imagined could fit in the small, flat space between the cab and the tailgate. "Why are we stopping now?" I smiled at myself as I felt a sense of exasperation …

Nicaragua: United States Assistance To The Nicaraguan Human Rights Association And The Nicaraguan Resistance, Suzanne B. Goldberg, Lee Crawford, Kevin Reed, John Tennant

Faculty Scholarship

The question of providing aid to the Nicaraguan Resistance has been significant to United States human rights policy throughout the Reagan Administration. Although events have changed repeatedly during the winter of 1988, including a truce between the Nicaraguan Government and the Resistance and a Congressional decision not to provide military aid to the Resistance, the underlying policy issues remain constant. The Harvard Human Rights Yearbook presents two notes, infra, discussing the Military Construction Appropriations Act of 1987, which granted $100 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Resistance. The first note discusses the Nicaraguan Human Rights Association (Asociacidn Nicaraguense Pro-Derechos Humanos …

The Right To Life, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

In the theory of rights we repeatedly encounter the problem of reconciling someone's having a right with his properly suffering damage to the interest protected by the right. In the case of right to life, we have to assess numerous cases in which individuals are killed or allowed to die, and we wish nonetheless to affirm their right to life. These cases include killing an aggressor in self-defense, accidental homicide, terminating life-sustaining therapy, and capital punishment.

My program in this Article is to provide an account of how it is that those with a right to life may nonetheless be …

New York's Right Of Privacy – The Need For Change, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In 1890 Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis wrote a famous article on the right to privacy. Concerned especially with newspaper publications about private and family matters, they urged that courts recognize an explicit right to privacy from unreasonable publicity. According to Warren and Brandeis, certain already recognized rights did in fact protect a person's wish to keep his private thoughts private, though these 1ights were founded on some more traditional legal theories. For example, the privilege of a writer of a letter to bar anyone's publication of the letter had been articulated in decisions as a property right, even when …