Human Rights Law Commons^™

Socio-Economic Rights And Refugee Status: Deepening The Dialogue Between Human Rights And Refugee Law, Fatma E. Marouf, Deborah Anker

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Over the past two decades, international human rights law has provided an increasingly useful framework for interpreting key criteria of the definition of a refugee. A human rights-based approach to analyzing refugee status helps to increase consistency and uniformity in decision making by state parties regarding who qualifies for international protection.

Michelle Foster's book, International Refugee Law and Socio-economic Rights: Refuge from Deprivation (Cambridge U. Press 2007), comes at a critical time, not only because of increasing acceptance of the connection between refugee law and human rights law and significant developments in the current understanding of economic and social rights, …

Queer Lockdown: Coming To Terms With The Ongoing Criminalization Of Lgbtq Communities, Ann Cammett

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The criminal justice system exacts a toll on some Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) communities. The experience of living in poverty and the concomitant exposure to a variety of governmental systems puts all poor, but especially LGBTQ low-income people of color, at risk of incarceration. What typically goes unexamined are the myriad ways that LGBTQ people are drawn into and experience the carceral system because of sexual identities and expression. This negative effect surfaces at every conceivable level: the marginalization and subsequent criminalization of queer youth; anti-gay bias in the judicial system; the rerouting of domestic violence cases …

The Course Of True Human Rights Progress Never Did Run Smooth, Diane Marie Amann

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As the United States moves toward the inauguration in January 2009 of a new President, greater attention is paid to what the country might do to restore and reinforce its traditional role as a leader in the promotion of human rights. This essay warns against any assumption that innovation alone will assure greater enforcement of rights; its points of reference are not only the current administration, but also one long past, that of President John F. Kennedy. Rather than jump to embrace new, global concepts like responsibility to protect, therefore, it argues for careful pursuit of local change. It then …

Punish Or Surveil, Diane Marie Amann

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This Article endeavors to paint a fuller picture of previous practice and present options than is often present in debates about the United States' antiterrorism measures. It begins by describing practices in place before the campaign launched after September 11, 2001. The Article focuses on punishment, the first prong of the policy long used to combat threats against the United States. Ordinary civilian and military courts stood ready to punish persons found guilty at public trials that adhered to fairness standards, and national security interests not infrequently were advanced through such courts. That is not to say that courts were …

The Immigrant Rights Marches (Las Marchas): Did The “Gigante” (Giant) Wake Up Or Does It Still Sleep Tonight?, Sylvia R. Lazos

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This article documents the genesis of the March 2006 immigrant rights protests and analyzes their impact. Las Marchas were truly spontaneous grassroots protests, the largest massive civil rights mobilization effort for a single event in the United States to date. This paper provides a macro- and micro-analysis of the forces that account for this success. First, the catalyst, HR 4437, a bill that was successfully approved by the House of Representatives would have criminalized illegal presence. This law was perceived as unjust, and engendered a debate around immigrant rights debate in terms with universal and simple appeal, human dignity, the …

Emerging Latina/O Nation And Anti- Immigrant Backlash, Sylvia R. Lazos

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This foreword is an introduction to the LatCrit XI, Working and Living in the Global Playground: Frontstage and Backstage symposium, convened at William S. Boyd School of Law, in Las Vegas Nevada, during October 2006 and called upon over 150 academics to focus on the impacts of globalization and immigration. At no time has LatCrit's critical approach of interconnecting the structures of inequality, the market forces of globalization, and the cultural hostility towards outsider groups been more relevant.

Backlash against immigrants, particularly Latina/o “illegals,” is on the rise. This Introduction seeks to outline the challenges that the current immigration quandary …

Restitution As A Remedy For Refugee Property Claims In The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Michael Kagan

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This Article examines restitution as an autonomous human right for refugees displaced in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and assesses the implications of taking such a rights-based approach. The author concludes that the refugees have a strong legal claim to restitution. In international law, compensation is relevant only when restitution is materially impossible, where property has been damaged or declined in value so that restitution is not a complete remedy for the victim's loss or where a refugee chooses not to seek restitution. Current empirical research about land usage in Israel indicates that a great deal, and possibly the majority, of lost …

Destructive Ambiguity: Enemy Nationals And The Legal Enabling Of Ethnic Conflict In The Middle East, Michael Kagan

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In the course of the Middle East conflict since 1948, both the Arab states and Israel have tended to take harsh measures against civilians based on their national, ethnic, and religious origins. This practice has been partially legitimized by a norm in international law that permits states to infringe the liberty and property interests of enemy nationals during armed conflict. Middle Eastern governments have misused the logic behind this theoretically exceptional rule to justify far-reaching measures that undermine the “principle of distinction” between civilians and combatants and erode the principle of non-discrimination that lies at the center of human rights …

A Comparative Analysis Of The Jewish Law And The Secular Perspective On International Human Rights (Part Of The Article, “Human Rights In The Bible, An Exchange Of Ideas”)., Richard Klein, Chaim Povarsky

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No abstract provided.

Child Marriage And Guardianship In Tanzania: Robbing Girls Of Their Childhood And Infantilizing Women, Tamar Ezer, Kate Kerr, Kara Major, Aparna Polavarapu, Tina Tolentino

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No abstract provided.

Conscience And Emergency Contraception, Leslie C. Griffin

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No abstract provided.

Bringing Families In: Recommendations Of The Incarceration, Reentry And Family Roundtables, Ann Cammett, Johnna Christian, Nancy Fisherman, Lori Scott-Pickens

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Building on the findings of the New Jersey Reentry Roundtable and a growing concern around the state about how to improve outcomes for the more than 70,000 individuals expected to return home from prison over the next five years, the roundtable examined the complex role that families – broadly defined – play in the lives of prisoners during incarceration and after their release. This document presents a set of recommendations emerging directly from roundtable sessions and provides a road map for individual and collaborative efforts accepted by a range of key players in New Jersey, including government officials, community and …

Frontier Justice: Legal Aid And Unhcr Refugee Status Determination In Egypt, Michael Kagan

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Where UNHCR conducts refugee status determination (RSD), its reactions to legal aid for asylum-seekers have been mixed. Statistical evidence collected from Egypt in 2002 indicates a correlation between receiving some form of legal aid service and an asylum-seeker's increased chances of gaining refugee protection from UNHCR. Unconventional forms of legal aid, including limited services by supervised non-lawyers (including volunteers from the refugee community) showed a positive impact on first instance cases, while traditional legal aid models showed an impact at the appeal stage. Legal aid should form an essential part of UNHCR's RSD procedures, and NGOs should work to expand …

The Beleaguered Gatekeeper: Protection Challenges Posed By Unhcr Refugee Status Determination, Michael Kagan

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The number of individual Refugee Status Determination (RSD) applications received by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offices worldwide nearly doubled from 1997 to 2001, while UNHCR’s RSD operations have been criticized for failing to implement basic standards of procedural fairness. Yet, although there is some literature critiquing how UNHCR determines refugee status, there is little literature examining whether UNHCR should do so, and if it should, when, where, and under what conditions.

UNHCR performance of RSD poses protection challenges because it is founded on a basic contradiction. On the one hand, government action is essential for effective refugee …

Foreword: Confronting The Rights Deficit At Home And Abroad, Ruben J. Garcia

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In this foreword, the author introduces the idea of the rights deficit faced by people of color and low socioeconomic status by linking it to related debates—first on the nature of rights and second on whether there are domestic and international “democracy deficits.” Then the author describes the essays from the 2006 Western Law Professors of Color Conference in the three groups in which they appear in the issue. One group of essays focuses on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for the domestic rights deficit. In the area of education law and policy, the issue is not just the rights …

Abu Ghraib, Diane Marie Amann

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This article posits a theoretical framework within which to analyze various aspects of post-September 11 detention policy - including the widespread prisoner abuse that has been documented in the leaks and official releases that began with publication of photos made at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Examined are the actions of civilian executive officials charged with setting policy, of judicial officers who evaluated it, and military personnel who implemented it. Abuse has been attributed to failures of training or planning. The article concentrates on a different failure, the failure of law to keep lawlessness in check. On September 11, law's map …

Redressing Colonial Genocide: The Hereros' Cause Of Action Against Germany, Rachel J. Anderson

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In February 2003, the Herero People's Reparations Corporation filed a complaint against Germany in the District Court of the District of Columbia alleging violations of international law, crimes against humanity, genocide, slavery, and forced labor before, during, and after the German-Herero War (1904-07). The German government, modern scholars, and other commentators have long taken the position that genocides committed by colonial governments in the nineteenth century did not violate international law at that time. Arguments for this position rely, inter alia, on the belief that all forms of genocide were first criminalized and made punishable by the 1948 U.N. Convention …

Making Work Pay: Promoting Employment And Better Child Support Outcomes For Low-Income And Incarcerated Parents, Ann Cammett

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The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice prepared this report in response to concerns about child support debt—in particular as it creates a barrier to employment for low-income parents and works at cross-purposes with the goals of the child support program. Drawing on examples from other states, this report identifies a range of policies that inform child support practice in New Jersey and offers administrative, legislative, and programmatic solutions to address child support arrears owed by low-income and incarcerated parents.

Book Review, Michael Kagan

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There is a frequent critique of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ protection role, which goes like this: as UNHCR has grown as a humanitarian aid delivery agency, law and human rights have lost currency. In Rights in Exile: Janus-Faced Humanitarianism, Guglielmo Verdirame and Barbara Harrell-Bond (with Zachary Lomo and Hannah Garry) take this as a starting point from which to reach a far more searing conclusion: UNHCR itself directly violates the human rights of the people it is supposed to protect. Detailed, direct and at times passionate, this book should be required reading for anyone who wants to …

Rhetoric Or Rights?: When Culture And Religion Bar Girls' Right To Education, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

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Women account for almost two-thirds of the world's illiterates. In the year 2000, the World Education Forum met in Dakar, Senegal and set goals to (1) eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and (2) achieve gender equality in education by 2015. Two months before 2004, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported that sixty percent of the 128 countries that attended the Dakar Conference would not meet these goals. The report attributed the failure to sharp discrimination against girls in social and cultural practices.

The report failed to mention that social and cultural …

Guantánamo, Diane Marie Amann

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This article addresses not only offshore detainees at Guantánamo and elsewhere, but also the two Americans and one Qatari held in the United States as enemy combatants. It focuses on the critical issues in U.S. litigation - extraterritoriality and deference - yet also examines the scope of detention and the propriety of proposed special tribunals. After demonstrating that in the wake of September 11, 2001, no U.S. constitutional precedent governed these issues, the article then looks to norms drawn from international humanitarian and human rights law to aid decision. The Supreme Court increasingly consults such external norms as persuasive authority; …

Treaty Governance, Intellectual Property And Biodiversity, John Linarelli

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When resources become valuable, various social and institutional pressures come to bear to enclose them in a property rights regime. Given the substantial progress of biotechnology and the life sciences, genetic resources found in biological diversity are experiencing such pressures. The question of how much commodification or commercialization of genetic resources is appropriate is of global concern; it affects the distribution of wealth in and among societies and countries. This article explores the emerging treaty law on intellectual property and biodiversity. It inquires What is biodiversity? and Why is biodiversity preservation important? It then focuses on the United Nations Framework …

Flores V. Southern Peru Copper Corporation: The Second Circuit Fails To Set A Threshold For Corporate Alien Tort Claim Act Liability, Lori D. Johnson

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In Flores v. Southern Peru Copper Corporation, the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, re-examined its Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) jurisprudence and assumed that a private domestic company acting in its private capacity could be liable to Peruvian nationals under the ATCA for a wide range of torts under international law, including violations of rights to “life and health.” Previous cases and other Circuits held that only a handful of egregious crimes, when committed by a private individual or corporation, can justify private liability under the ATCA. Rather than abiding by these interpretations, however, the court examined in depth …

Is Truth In The Eye Of The Beholder? Objective Credibility Assessment In Refugee Status Determination, Michael Kagan

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Credibility assessment is often the single most important step in determining whether people seeking protection as refugees can be returned to countries where they say they are in danger of serious human rights violations. Despite its importance, credibility-based decisions in refugee and asylum cases are frequently based on personal judgment that is inconsistent from one adjudicator to the next, unreviewable on appeal, and potentially influenced by cultural misunderstandings. Some of the people who need protection most are especially likely to have trouble convincing decision-makers that they should be believed.

This article sets out principles, standards, and criteria drawn from international …

Ghost Workers In An Interconnected World: Going Beyond The Dichotomies Of Domestic Immigration And Labor Laws, Ruben J. Garcia

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Beginning with the September 11, 2001 ("9/11") terrorist attacks, the labor movement's plans to organize immigrant workers and achieve immigration reform have met serious challenges. After 9/11, the political climate surrounding immigrants put the AFL - CIO's hopes for legislative reform on hold, because of socially perceived connections between immigrants and terrorism. Then, in a March 2002 decision titled Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, the U.S. Supreme Court held that undocumented immigrant workers could not collect back pay under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) when their rights to join unions are violated. According to the Court, back …

Protection Of Female Prisoners: Dissolving Standards Of Decency, Martin A. Geer

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Almost fifty years ago, the United Nations set standards that reached international consensus and limited male correctional employees’ activities in female inmate residences. These restrictions were of particular importance to women prisoners. It is well documented that female prisoners who are particularly vulnerable, are traumatized by unwanted touching, assault, harassment, and invasion of their physical privacy and integrity. Despite this population’s history and international legal standards, there was a significant turn around in penology. The resulting cross-gender supervision for housing units and body searches became the norm in the United States.

This article examines how the U.S. penal system transposed …

Missouri, The “War On Terrorism,” And Immigrants: Legal Challenges Post 9/11, Sylvia R. Lazos

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This article explains how the 2000 census confirmed what many already knew--the traditional image of what it means for Missouri to be a heartland state is changing. The 2000 census shows that the fastest growing racial/ethnic group in Missouri are Latinos. This growth in first generation immigrants has not been limited to Missouri's large urban centers. In rural Missouri and its small towns, the major group of first generation immigrants is Latinos.

Persecution In The Fog Of War: The House Of Lords’ Decision In Adan, Michael Kagan, William P. Johnson

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International law requires that a refugee have a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group. It is not enough to be at risk of being persecuted, nor is it even enough to be a member of a particular race or religion. There must be a “nexus” between the danger and one of the five Convention-recognized reasons for persecution. In the 1998 decision in Adan v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, the House of Lords concluded that a man fleeing clan warfare in Somalia could not …

Capital Punishment: Corporate Criminal Liability For Gross Violations Of Human Rights, Diane Marie Amann

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These remarks were presented on February 24, 2001, in a panel concluding a conference entitled "Holding Multinational Corporations Responsible Under International Law" at Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco, California.

Calling Children To Account: The Proposal For A Juvenile Chamber In The Special Court For Sierra Leone, Diane Marie Amann

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In a unique proposal to the United Nations Security Council, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended that a Juvenile Chamber of the Special Court have authority to try defendants as young as fifteen. The plan sparked immediate controversy. Sierra Leoneans wanted the worst perpetrators punished regardless of age, while human rights organizations argued that juvenile prosecutions would weaken rehabilitative efforts. The Security Council subsequently diluted the proposal; nevertheless, it merits examination, given the increasing use, in Africa and around the world, of children in combat.