Human Rights Law Commons^™

Human Rights, Between Peace And Dignity, Ryan Liss

Michigan Journal of International Law

Today, it seems self-evident that human rights are enshrined at the international level because they protect universal human dignity—a cosmopolitan entitlement that cannot be left to the contingencies of domestic law. The prevalence of this received wisdom, however, masks a fundamental transformation in the idea of human rights over the last century. When human rights were first enshrined in international law—during and following the Second World War— their international status was not seen to be justified primarily by the inherent dignity of persons, but by the instrumental role human rights were understood to play in securing interstate peace. This article …

The Internet At War: An Empirical And Legal Analysis Of Harmful Narratives On Social Media During Armed Conflict, Bailey Ulbricht, Allen Weiner

Michigan Technology Law Review

This Article empirically investigates the connection between harmful narratives on social media and violent acts perpetrated against persons protected under international humanitarian law (IHL) during armed conflict, and then examines the legal implications of such a relationship. First, examining comprehensive datasets from two inter-state armed conflicts (Russia-Ukraine and Armenia-Azerbaijan) as case studies, this Article documents patterns in Telegram data indicating that more violent acts are preceded by increases in harmful narratives than decreases in such content. This suggests that harmful narratives on social media platforms may plausibly contribute to the incidence of real-world violence committed against protected persons during armed …

The Durability Of Protections Against Abuse At Interpol Amidst Rising Authoritarian Pressures, Kristina Daugirdas

Articles

Over centuries and across continents, authoritarian governments have demonstrated a large appetite for international cooperation to target political opponents across borders. In 1851, the “first modern police organization”—the Police Union of German States, whose members included Austria and Prussia—was established “with the express purpose of policing the political opposition of established autocratic regimes.” During the 1970s and early 1980s, military regimes in South America participated in a secret scheme known as Operation Condor to coordinate their efforts to suppress subversion. A recent analysis of twenty-nine “hard authoritarian” regional organizations found that twenty-five were engaged in police cooperation. The Shanghai Cooperation …

Citizen Shareholders: The State As A Fiduciary In International Investment Law, Eleanor L. Thompson

Michigan Law Review

International investment law provides stability for investors, helps capital flow across the globe, and can be a critical tool for sustainable development. This regime, however, has become increasingly controversial, in part due to its inability to reconcile investor obligations with competing human rights obligations. International investment treaties provide substantive guarantees to investors, including submission to binding arbitration in the event of breach. When found in breach of one of these guarantees, international investment arbitral tribunal awards are often in the hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially creating “regulatory chill” for states that may otherwise take affirmative action to protect human …

An Ecofeminist Approach To Climate Risks, Angela Hefti

Michigan Journal of International Law

Climate change poses significant risks to the human right to life. However, international adjudicators have either neglected to examine right to life claims in the context of climate risks or dismissed them as prospective and speculative. International human rights bodies have long applied the standard of imminence to determine whether a threat to the right to life exists and the extent to which it constitutes a violation. In climate change cases, this standard has hardened, requiring a tight temporal connection between climate risks and a violation of the right to life. This article argues that failing to recognize the impact …

Intersectionality's Travels To International Human Rights Law, Jens T. Theilen

Michigan Journal of International Law

Over the last two decades, references to intersectionality have become increasingly common in international human rights law. Many human rights bodies now make use of intersectionality in some form, and scholars propose more widespread and in-depth intersectional analysis as a way to better capture how human rights are realized or violated. Against the backdrop of this intersectional turn, this article scrutinizes the dynamics of intersectionality’s travels to international human rights law, asking how power structures influence where and how intersectionality can travel, and how its meaning and use change across contexts.

This article provides a bird’s-eye view of different human …

Are Race-Based Environmental Justice Policies Safe?, Oday Salim

Other Publications

In recent years, we have seen a signiicant volume of federal and state environmental justice policy with attorneys general developing enforcement plans focused on environmental justice. Environmental and conservation agencies have adopted limited English proiciency (LEP) plans to ensure that LEP individuals are not let out of decision-making processes. And, in some states, there are environmental justice laws on the books that impact public hearings, siting, and permitting. Many of these recent policies require the government to consider race directly or indirectly when making decisions. In light of recent jurisprudence on the legality of race-conscious state action—particularly the U.S. Supreme …

Discussant Commentary On The Twenty-Fourth Annual Grotius Lecture, Karima Bennoune

Other Publications

I express my sincere thanks to the American Society of International Law and the International Legal Studies Program at American University Washington College of Law for the invitation to be this year’s commentator. It is indeed an honor to respond to Judge Charlesworth’s erudite Grotius Lecture: “The Art of International Law.”

The War In Ukraine And Legal Limitations On Russian Vetoes, Anne Peters

Articles

A veto exercised by a permanent member of the UN Security Council to shield that state’s own manifest and prima facie aggression from condemnation and collective action by the Council is legally flawed. The UN Charter can be reasonably interpreted as prohibiting such a veto and depriving it of legal force. This flows from Article 27(3) of the Charter, in conjunction with the prohibition of the abuse of rights, as a manifestation of the principle of good faith, and the obligation to respect the right to life, against the background that the prohibition has the status of jus cogens. These …

Missed Connections In The U.N. Agenda: Applying The Women, Peace And Security Framework To The Feminization Of Poverty, Lauren A. Fleming

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Women, Peace and Security, a multifaceted agenda intended to address the particular ways in which conflict affects women, has been on the United Nations agenda since the landmark Security Council Resolution 1325 passed in 2000. The unequal burden of poverty on women, a phenomenon that has been coined “the feminization of poverty,” has been on the United Nations agenda for even longer, since the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women. Yet, despite the fact that poverty and inequality both cause and result in conflict in a violent cycle, the problem of the feminization of poverty has not been integrated into the …

Rebraiding Frayed Sweetgrass For Niijaansinaanik: Understanding Canadian Indigenous Child Welfare Issues As International Atrocity Crimes, Alyssa Couchie

Michigan Journal of International Law

The unearthing of the remains of Indigenous children on the sites of former Indian Residential Schools (“IRS”) in Canada has focused greater attention on anti-Indigenous atrocity violence in the country. While such increased attention, combined with recent efforts at redressing associated harms, represents a step forward in terms of recognizing and addressing the harms caused to Indigenous peoples through the settler-colonial process in Canada, this note expresses concern that the dominant framings of anti-Indigenous atrocity violence remain myopically focused on an overly narrow subset of harms and forms of violence, especially those committed at IRSs. It does so by utilizing …

Relentless Atrocities: The Persecution Of Hazaras, Mehdi J. Hakimi

Michigan Journal of International Law

As one of the main ethnic groups in Afghanistan, Hazaras are Farsi-speaking and mostly Shi’a Muslims in a predominantly Sunni Muslim country. They are also distinguishable by their Asiatic appearance. Throughout Afghanistan’s history, Hazaras have suffered considerably under different regimes, enduring recurring massacres, enslavement, and forced displacement. Despite Afghanistan’s accession to the Rome Statute in 2003, the plight of Hazaras has not improved. Indeed, the assaults on Hazaras have only intensified in recent years, impacting virtually every aspect of their lives.

This article argues that the recent and ongoing attacks against Hazaras constitute a crime against humanity. In particular, I …

Justice Without Power: Yemen And The Global Legal System, Amulya Vadapalli

Michigan Law Review

The war in Yemen has remained the world’s worst humanitarian crisis since 2015, and yet it is shockingly invisible. The global legal system fails to offer a clear avenue through which the Yemeni people can hold the state actors responsible for their harm accountable. This Note analyzes international legal mechanisms for vindicating war crimes and human rights abuses perpetrated in Yemen. Through the lens of Yemen’s humanitarian crisis, it highlights gaps in the global legal structure, proposes alternative accountability processes, and uses a variety of sources—including interviews with practitioners and Arabic language legal scholarship—to explicate a victim-centered transitional justice process …

Shedding New Light On Multinational Corporations And Human Rights: Promises And Limits Of “Blockchainizing” The Global Supply Chain, Chang-Hsien Tsai, Ching-Fu Lin

Michigan Journal of International Law

Over the last few decades, advances in transportation and production technology, in conjunction with economic globalization and the emergence of multinational corporations, have consolidated fragmented production processes into long and complex supply chains across jurisdictions. While there are benefits to such global supply chains (“GSCs”), the prevalence of human rights violations attributable to information asymmetry, as well as rule of law gaps between different jurisdictions, has been a constant challenge. Modern slavery, child abuse, harsh working conditions, low wages, and other problems have reoccurred in the factories of upstream suppliers in the global South and have been systemically ignored by …

Report Of The International Commission Of Human Rights Experts On Ethiopia, Mohamed Chande Othman, Steven Ratner, Radhika Coomaraswamy

Other Publications

In the present report, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 51/27, the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia provides an overview of the human rights situation in Ethiopia. It identifies grave and systematic violations of international law and crimes committed in Tigray, as well as in Amhara, Afar and Oromia. Violations include mass killings, rape, starvation, forced displacement and arbitrary detention. The conflict in Tigray has not ended, with Eritrean troops and Amhara militias engaging in ongoing violations. Past and current violations and abuses in the four regions mentioned above demand further investigation. The Government of Ethiopia …

Litigation, Referendum Or Legislation? The Road To Becoming The First In Asia To Institutionalize Same-Sex Marriage, Tzu-Chiang Huang

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In the pursuit of same-sex marriage, advocates in each country evaluate the appropriate decision-making process for addressing this highly disputed issue—litigation, legislation, or referendum. The choice may be partially based on the institutional advantages of each approach, but more importantly, the choice is also conditioned by the legal and political context of each country, such as the authority of the court, the framing of public opinion, and the dynamics between movement and countermovement. Uniquely, all three decision-making processes are involved in the course of the institutionalization of same-sex marriage in Taiwan. This Article, focusing on the experience in Taiwan, examines …

Let Them Eat Rights: Re-Framing The Food Insecurity Problem Using A Rights-Based Approach, Benedict Sheehy, Ying Chen

Michigan Journal of International Law

Food insecurity is a global issue. Large parts of the global population are unable to feed themselves adequately with hundreds of millions of people suffering from hunger and malnutrition. This problem is recognized widely by governments, industry and civil society and is usually understood using one of three approaches or frames: a basic production problem solved by technology and increased industrialization of agricultural, and an economic problem solved by economic growth and a commercial problem resolved by expanding markets. Much of the discussion and policy advice is based on the premise that hunger is primarily a wealth issue and, that …

Defining Sexual Orientation: A Proposal For A New Definition, Andrew Park

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation are becoming more common in all parts of the world. Few of these laws provide useful definitions of the term sexual orientation. As a result, the meaning and impact of these laws remains unclear. This Article reviews past and current definitions of sexual orientation according to how well they incorporate current empirical knowledge of sexual orientation, and how their use in human rights laws impacts the dignity, right to equality, and human development of sexual minorities. The Article gives particular attention to the definition of sexual orientation found in the Yogyakarta Principles which …

Advancing Reproductive Justice In Latin America Through A Transitional Justice Lens, Rosario Grimà Algora

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Reproductive autonomy is a pivotal part of women’s access to equal citizenship, yet it has not been included in any international nor regional human rights treaty. In the past decades, the U.N. Committees, notably the CEDAW Committee, and regional human rights bodies, particularly the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights, have timidly advanced reproductive justice through their jurisprudence, including through the use of reparations. Drawing from the standards of reparations developed in the field of transitional justice, human rights bodies increasingly rely on reparations to enhance the transformative effects of their decisions. These reparations intend to include a …

Report Of The International Commission Of Human Rights Experts On Ethiopia, Kaari Betty Murungi, Steven Ratner, Radhika Comaraswamy

Other Publications

In the present report, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution S-33/1, the international Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia presents its initial findings. The Commission concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that violations such as extrajudicial killings, rape, sexual violence and starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare have been committed in Ethiopia since 3 November 2020. The Commission finds reasonable grounds to believe that, in several instances, these violations amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Commission provides an assessment of transitional justice developments and makes urgent recommendations.

Gendered Normativities: The Role And Rule Of Law, Susanne Baer

Book Chapters

In the 21st century, human rights are as present as they are endangered. Specifically, sex/gender equality rights are contested, or actively abridged, which is to be understood as an attack on women and on people who do not fit a ‘normal’ pattern of gender relations. Yet in addition, these are attacks on democratic constitutionalism itself. The article argues that to properly understand the recent contestations of human rights, one must distinguish between critique and attack, and revisit the very form and content of human rights, to deal with law’s ambivalence, such as ‘legal colonialism’, and also take into account critical …

Failed Interventions: Domestic Violence, Human Trafficking, And The Criminalization Of Survival, Alaina Richert

Michigan Law Review

Over the last decade, state legislators have enacted statutes acknowledging the link between criminal behavior and trauma resulting from domestic violence and human trafficking. While these interventions take a step in the right direction, they still have major shortcomings that prevent meaningful relief for survivor-defendants. Until now, there has been no systematic overview of the statutes that require courts to consider a defendant’s history of trauma in the contexts of domestic violence and human trafficking. There has also been no attempt to explore how these statutes relate to each other. This Note fills those gaps. It also identifies essential elements …

The Hague Rules On Third-Party Joinder: A Revised Framework, Emma Macfarlane

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

This paper critically assesses the Hague Rules’ stance on third-party joinder. Third-party joinder is an important feature in business human rights disputes. It is a mechanism that victims of human rights abuses can use to bring claims against corporate defendants where the victims do not otherwise have an underlying agreement on which to base their claim. Keeping in line with traditional conceptions of commercial arbitration, the Hague Rules are grounded in party consent to arbitrate. Conceptions of consent therefore have an outsized impact on the universe of parties who can bring actions against corporations before arbitral tribunals for human rights …

The Fallacy Of Contract In Sexual Slavery: A Response To Ramseyer's "Contracting For Sex In The Pacific War", Yong-Shik Lee, Natsu Taylor Saito, Jonathan Todres

Michigan Journal of International Law

Over seven decades have passed since the end of the Second World War, but the trauma from the cruelest war in human history continues today, perpetuated by denial of responsibility for the war crimes committed and unjust attempts to rewrite history at the expense of dignity, life, and justice for the victims of the most serious human rights violations. The latest such attempt is a troubling recharacterization of the sexual slavery enforced by Japan during the Second World War as a legitimate contractual arrangement. A recent paper authored by J. Mark Ramseyer, entitled “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” …

Sexual Slavery As A War Crime: A Reform Proposal, Alessandro Storchi

Michigan Journal of International Law

For the first time in the history of international criminal law, the ICC Elements of Crimes included a statutory definition of sexual slavery as a war crime and as a crime against humanity. Such definition is derived from, and in fact almost identical to, the definition of enslavement in the same text. In July 2019, that language for the first time was adopted and applied in the conviction of general Bosco Ntaganda, the first ever conviction for sexual slavery as a war crime and as a crime against humanity at the ICC, as part of the situation in the Democratic …

A Different Type Of Property: White Women And The Human Property They Kept, Michele Goodwin

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. by Harriet A. Jacobs, and They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers.

The Aggravating Duty Of Non-Aggravation, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

International law's duty of non-aggravation requires states to avoid actions that might inflame an international dispute, both to maintain international peace and to preserve the effectiveness of judicial or arbitral proceedings. Yet parties on the receiving end of calls for non-aggravation --whether from the Security Council or at tribunal -- have little idea of what conduct they are expected to avoid. This state of affairs is most unfortunate in light of the centrality of this norm to the peaceful resolution of disputes and, in particular, examples of seemingly provocative and aggravating acts in recent years. This article attempts to give …

Emergencies End Eventually: How To Better Analyze Human Rights Restrictions Sparked By The Covid-19 Pandemic Under The International Covenant On Civil And Political Rights, Eric Richardson, Colleen Devine

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, states have been quick to adopt emergency measures aimed at curbing the spread of the virus. However, poorly constructed restrictions threaten to undermine hard won human rights protections and may in fact erode important elements of international human rights law as a result of overreaching implementation or lack of rigorous analysis in how the restrictions are put, and kept, in place. This article analyzes the International Convent on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) standards which apply to emergency regulation in times of public health crisis and the tangled morass of legal tests which …

Mega-Dams And Indigenous Human Rights, Kate E. Britt

Law Librarian Scholarship

Mega-Dams and Indigenous Human Rights (“Mega-Dams”) is a 2020 monograph by Itzchak Kornfeld. Kornfeld is a law professor with extensive experience working with governments and non-governmental organizations on the legal and geological aspects of water development, water sustainability, and sustainable development of land. Mega-Dams reflects this expertise, as well as the author's express opinions.

From The Spectacular To The Everyday: International Law, Violence And The Agenda For Women, Peace And Security, Christine M. Chinkin

Book Chapters

This article looks at the conceptions of violence within WPS and thus within these diverse international legal regimes as they relate to women and girls. It first examines the regulation of inter-state violence, both legal recourse to the use of force and constraints upon the means and methods of warfare. It then outlines how state obligations to prevent and punish violence against women were brought into human rights law in the early 1990s, primarily by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee). The WPS resolutions are then summarised, focusing on provisions for the prevention of …