Human Rights Law Commons^™

Education And Promotion Of Human Rights From A European And American Perspective, Rett R. Ludwikowski

Scholarly Articles

What are the concrete goals of human rights education and what obstacles may restrain the development of successful educational projects? What do we actually teach and how advanced are our educational programs in general, and academic education in particular? Is there a concrete consensus on the interdependencies between different types of human rights, their hierarchy, and the standards of their protection? Is an optimistic attitude regarding the universalistic doctrine of human rights fully rooted in facts? How may we communicate to our students the concept of universally recognized, irremovable, and interdependent rights while acknowledging the many ethical, religious and cultural …

Introductory Note To Genocide Accountability Act, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

On December 21, 2007, President George W. Bush signed into law the Genocide Accountability Act of 2007 (GAA) (Public Law 110-151). Co-sponsored on a bipartisan basis by several Senators, this bill passed in the Senate on March 29, 2007, and passed in the House .of Representatives on December 5, 2007, in both cases by voice vote. The GAA received considerable support from human rights groups throughout the legislative process.

Proceedings Of The Second International Humanitarian Law Dialogs, Sixtieth Anniversary Of The Genocide Convention: The Power Of A Word, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Introductory lecture to the Second Annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) was adopted sixty years ago. The legacy of the Genocide Convention is inextricable from the legacy of Nuremberg and the legal work of the Nuremberg prosecutors, some of whom join us today. To this end, celebrating Nuremberg also means celebrating the Genocide Convention.

Diamonds On The Souls Of Her Shoes: The Kimberly Process And The Morality Exception To Wto Restrictions, Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

This Article analyzes the events predicating the Kimberley Process and examines the validity of the Kimberley Process in relation to international trade obligations. Part I describes the background of conflict diamonds and their role in African wars. The section outlines the need for regulation in the diamond industry and examines how other attempted measures at curbing the illicit diamond trade have fallen short. Part II details the Kimberley Process and its guidelines. This section analyzes the relevant U.S. legislation passed in 2003, the Clean Diamond Trade Act. Part II also suggests that because the Kimberley Process ("KP") is predicated upon …

Reparations, Social Reconciliation, And The Significance Of Place: A Legal And Philosophical Examination Of Indigenous Cases In The United States And Their Global Implications, Jill M. Fraley

Scholarly Articles

During genocide, populations are frequently displaced from their homelands. In the process of reparations, displacement is often viewed as a problem of shelter, food, and safety. In this framework, land is treated as an economic commodity—any given piece of land is interchangeable with another or for money. This approach is a product of Enlightenment thinking, which emphasizes the rights of the individual over communal rights to land, and conceptualizes land and social identity as strongly separated. This Enlightenment framework of rights, and the accompanying de-emphasis of place, is particularly strong in the United States. Because American legal principles have played …

Book Review, Transitional Justice In The Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth Versus Justice (Naomi Roht-Arriaza & Javier Mariezcurrena Eds., 2006) And Reconciliation In Divided Societies: Finding Common Ground (Erin Daly & Jeremy Sarkin Eds., 2006), Mark Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

It took a long time to get there but, near the close of the last millennium, humanity embraced measured accountability – instead of the extremes of impunity or vengeance – as the appropriate fate for perpetrators of mass atrocity. This embrace has prompted the construction of institutions, such as the International Criminal Court and the various ad hoc international or internationalized tribunals, to actualize this accountability imperative.

But this institution-building is only the start of the justice matrix. It is not the end point. A newer second generation of scholars and activists presses on. Agreeing on the need for accountability …

Pluralizing International Criminal Justice, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

This Review Essay of Philippe Sands' (ed.) From Nuremberg to the Hague (2003) explores a number of controversial aspects of the theory and praxis of international criminal law. The Review Essay traces the extant heuristic of international criminal justice institutions to Nuremberg and posits that the Nuremberg experience suggests the need for modesty about what criminal justice actually can accomplish in the wake of mass atrocity. It also explores the place of one person's guilt among organic crime, the reality that international criminal law may gloss over criminogenic conditions in its pursuit of individualized accountability, the possibility of group sanction …

Collective Violence And Individual Punishment: The Criminality Of Mass Atrocity, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

There is a recent proliferation of courts and tribunals to prosecute perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The zenith of this institution-building is the permanent International Criminal Court, which came into force in 2002. Each of these new institutions rests on the foundational premise that it is appropriate to treat the perpetrator of mass atrocity in the same manner that domestic criminal law treats the common criminal. The modalities and rationales of international criminal law are directly borrowed from the domestic criminal law of those states that dominate the international order. In this Article, I challenge this …

Law And Atrocity: Settling Accounts In Rwanda, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Ten years ago, genocide ravaged the tiny African nation of Rwanda. In the wake of this violence, Rwanda has struggled to reconstruct, rebuild, and reconcile. Law-in particular, criminal trials for alleged perpetrators of genocide- has figured prominently among various policy mechanisms in postgenocide Rwanda. Criminal trials for Rwandan genocidaires' aspire to achieve several goals. These include exacting retribution, promoting reconciliation, deterring future violence, expressing victims' outrage, maintaining peace, and cultivating a culture of human rights.2 In this Lecture, I examine the extent to which these trials attain these multiple, often competing, and largely overwhelming goals. Part I begins by setting …

Universal Human Rights, The United Nations, And The Telos Of Human Dignity, William J. Wagner

Scholarly Articles

In this short essay, I seek to provide a description of the way the rights framework, by its nature, functions to unify global practice around normative ideals. I then outline obstacles, both theoretical and practical, to the effective functioning of this framework and the advancement of its purpose. Next, I lay out and critique the means that the Church, in its official teaching, proposes for overcoming these obstacles. I conclude by sketching briefly what I understand to be a more adequate program for addressing the impediments that exist to the realization of the aspiration of universal respect for human dignity …

Plea Bargaining At The International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia, Ralph Henham, Mark Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) increasingly has turned to plea bargains to resolve the cases before it. A number of factors motor this trend. One is administrative: the ICTY has been subject to considerable pressure from the United Nations Security Council and donor states to accelerate its work. Another is the desire to obtain acknowledgements of responsibility from perpetrators. Moreover, there is concern that, as time passes, the memories of witnesses dim. The rigours of direct and cross-examination may retraumatise those who have survived mass atrocity. ICTY judges also have expressed their understanding that guilty pleas …

The Ictr And Justice For Rwandan Women, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

In this article, I hope to spring from the discussion of the ICTR's gender jurisprudence to a broader conversation that touches on the relationship between this jurisprudence and life for Rwandan women today. In particular, I'd like to consider three questions: What do both the gender jurisprudence and the jurisprudence at large of the ICTR mean to women, individually and collectively, in Rwanda? How do other modalities of accountability that operate in postgenocide Rwanda respond to gender violence and promote gender equality? What is the situation of Rwandan women today?

The Taliban’S ‘Other’ Crimes, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

This paper explores possible legal responses to the Taliban's 'other' crimes--those inflicted against Afghans during Taliban rule. This criminality largely has been rendered invisible by virtue of the international community's focus on punishing the Taliban's support of transnational terrorists, in particular al-Qaeda. This invisibility is problematic given that carefully constructed prosecutions of these 'other' crimes could play an important role in post-conflict reconciliation and national reconstruction in Afghanistan. Such reconciliation and reconstruction can legitimise a representative post-conflict state and curb terrorist recidivism.

Restorative Justice And Collective Responsibility: Lessons For And From The Rwandan Genocide, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Genocide struck Rwanda in 1994. Since then, national and international trials have endeavored to promote reconciliation, deterrence, peace, justice, and human rights. This article posits a disconnect between these trials and the attainment of their avowed goals. This disconnect emerges in part from the influential agendas of international lawyers who equate selective criminal prosecution with the "rule of law" and espouse criminal prosecution as the preferred and uniform response to mass atrocity. Creating a presumption in favor of criminal prosecution has dampened the need to explore whether such trials actually are suitable for the particular afflicted society. A socio-legal analysis …

Juridical And Jurisdictional Disconnects, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Although extraterritorial trials for human rights abusers certainly achieve some justice, this Article posits -- through a case-study of post-genocide Rwanda -- that the effects of such trials are circumscribed by the fact they may have little meaning among perpetrators and victims in post-conflict societies. This limited meaning particularly attaches to trials conducted extraterritorially through international tribunals as well as trials conducted in foreign national courts through the exercise of what loosely is called "universal jurisdiction." This circumscribed meaning results in these trials' having limited deterrence effects, although they may go some way to satisfying the deontological need to punish …

International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, And Environmental Security: Can The International Criminal Court Bridge The Gaps?, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The gap between international humanitarian law and environmental security should trouble international lawyers. Just as armed conflict often creates a context in which the most serious human rights abuses occur, so too, does it create a similar context for the infliction of wanton and extensive destruction to the environment. This destruction creates profound environmental insecurity. Part (II) of this Article explores the insecurities caused by the environmental consequences of armed conflict. Although the international community has shown considerable concern for the humanitarian consequences of war, it has been significantly more hesitant in accounting for war's environmental consequences. It is for …

Punishment, Postgenocide: From Guilt To Shame To Civis In Rwanda, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Following the 1994 Rwandan genocide, national and international trials set out to encourage national reconciliation, promote peace, punish perpetrators, foster a culture of human rights, and effect justice. In this Article, Professor Mark Drumbl questions the ability of these trials to achieve these goals and suggests they may in fact aggravate ethnic identity politics, thereby threatening Rwanda's long-term stability. He argues that the highly interdependent yet dualist nature of Rwandan society, together with the widespread level of participation in and victimization by the genocide, create a situation where accountability for the violence and the deterrence of future violence can be …

Sclerosis: Retributive Justice And The Rwandan Genocide, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

In the 1994 Rwandan genocide 800,000 people were massacred. The victims were overwhelmingly of the minority Tutsi ethnic group and the aggressors of the majority Hutu group. At present, 125,000 Hutu prisoners remain incarcerated while awaiting trial on genocide-related charges. This article argues that these trials, and the extensive incapacitation that necessarily precedes them, may do little to promote justice, regime legitimacy, or national reconciliation in Rwanda. This, in turn, raises broader questions about the role of criminal punishment and sentencing in situations of mass violence. Criminality usually attaches to deviant conduct. Mass political violence -- from Nazi Germany to …

Sobriety In A Post‐Genocidal Society: Good Neighborliness Among Victims And Aggressors In Rwanda?, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Now as Rwanda begins to mourn the firth anniversary of its genocide, it should also celebrate the fifth anniversary of its survival. As time passes, Rwanda enters a stage of social and historical development which can be referred to as the "post-genocidal" stage. Some would say that Rwanda is actually in an intra-genocidal phase, given the persistence of Hutu rebel insurrection throughout the country, specifically in the Ruhengeri prefecture of the north-west. Although the merits of this classification can be debated, fatalistically characterizing Rwanda to be intra-genocidal assumes an ability to look in the future, a task no scholar is …

Progress For Pilgrims: An Analysis Of The Holy See-Israel Fundamental Agreement, Geoffrey R. Watson

Scholarly Articles

This Article asks whether international human rights law obliges states to admit foreign pilgrims, and if so, whether the existence of such an obligation should influence interpretation of the Fundamental Agreement. Part I of this Article takes up a logically prior question: whether the Fundamental Agreement is a legally binding treaty, and whether it should be interpreted in accordance with treaty law. The Article rejects recent suggestions that one or both parties lack the capacity to make treaties, and it concludes that the Agreement is a binding treaty that should be interpreted in accordance with the Vienna Convention on the …

La Liberté D'Expression Et La Dignité De La Personne Devant La Cour Suprême Du Canada, Mark A. Drumbl, Ian Lee, Martha Rafuse

Scholarly Articles

Although the principle of human dignity is not expressly recognized in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it cannot be denied that it is an important value which underlies many of the rights and liberties which receive explicit constitutional protection. In this article, the authors examine the manner in which the courts, and in particular the Supreme Court of Canada, have taken this fundamental value into consideration when determining the limits that may be imposed on freedom of expression. The authors suggest that the court's jurisprudence does not reveal a coherent approach to the resolution of conflicts which arise …

Illiteracy, Disempowerment And Injustice: How The Ontario Human Rights Code Can Protect Persons With Low Literacy Skills, Mark Anthony Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

For too long individuals with low literacy skills have been viewed as "illiterates" living on the margins of society, unable to function as well as their "literate" counterparts. In reality, the one third of all Canadians who have weak literacy skills perform vital roles in society and deserve not to be discriminated against in political employment and contractual situations.

Accordingly, the author suggests that discrimination against individuals with low literacy skills be prohibited by the creation of a new ground in the Ontario Human Rights Code entitled "lack of proficiency in English or French". The author canvasses the ability of …

Expanding Our Vision Of Legal Services Representation:The Hermanas Unidas Project, Stacy Brustin

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

La Integridad De La Mujer, Women And Human Rights In Mexico City, Internship Report, Stacy Brustin

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.