Human Rights Law Commons^™

Male Rape In U.S. Prisons: Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Shara Abraham

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

The Application Of Universal Human Rights Law To People With Mental Disabilities, Debra Benko, Brittany Benowitz

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

The Optional Protocols To The Un Convention On The Rights Of The Child On Sex Trafficking And Child Soldiers, Cris R. Revaz

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

China's Crackdown On Falun Gong, Erin Chlopak

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Guatemala: Children's Rights Case Wins Judgment At Iachr, Ismene Zarifis

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Communities And Intimate Partner Violenec

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Panelist Valerie B, a survivor of domestic abuse, discussed her experience in a abusive relationship with another woman. She discussed the trauma and how she slowly got out of the relationship. Panelist Lisi Lord, associate director of programs at My Sisters' Place, then gave an overview of the things she has learned working with victims of violence on the LGBT community. She discussed some of the barriers they face as a marginalized group and how their expression of sexuality and societal response to it makes their problems unique. Panelist Lt. Grace A. Telesco, chair of the Behavioral Science Department of …

Review Of Human Rights In Global Politics, Christine M. Chinkin

Reviews

The fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1998, coming in the decade after the resurgence of Western-style liberal democracies, has generated much writing and activity over the current status and future development of international human rights law, practice, and discourse. International lawyers tend to take for granted the canon of rights that, in the wake of the Universal Declaration, have been enshrined within the body of international instruments that have been adopted within regional and global arenas. In the 1990s, these lawyers largely turned their attention away from standard setting and to issues of effectiveness. Considerable …

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

Scholarly Works

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.

Lena Olive Smith: A Minnesota Civil Rights Pioneer, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

Lena Olive Smith and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) created a spirited partnership in the public interest during the 1920s and 1930s. Throughout their long collaboration, this woman lawyer, her clients, and the Minneapolis branch of a national grassroots organization faced similar challenges: to stay solvent, to end segregation and increase equality, and to live with dignity. This article is divided into four sections. The first three roughly correspond with stages in Smith’s life and work. Part II briefly chronicles Smith’s first thirty six years, 1885 to 1921, as a single African-American woman in the …

Reflections On When "We, The People" Kill, 34 J. Marshall L. Rev. 713 (2001), Michael P. Seng

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Culture And The Practice: Postmodern Depiction Of The Rule Of Law, Jeffrey E. Thomas

Faculty Works

Professor Thomas suggests that the television series the practice breaks from tradition by portraying the law as arbitrary and subject to manipulation. On one hand, its narratives show that law may require the guilty to be set free. On the other hand, the law sometimes fails to protect the innocent. Outcomes often turn on extralegal factors such as luck, race, or heroic efforts. This portrayal is a "postmodern" depiction of the rule of law. The narratives from the practice deconstruct the traditional rule of law hierarchy by showing that the rule of man can lead to more just results. The …

Now We Know About Pinochet, But Where Do We Go From Here?, Gerald Robert Pace

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of Chile Under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights), 1999. 296pp.

General Augusto Pinochet, who served as military and civil leader of Chile from 1973 until 1990, forged perhaps one of the most authoritarian regimes ever to govern in the Western Hemisphere. Spearheading the violent coup d’état that ousted socialist President Salvador Allende, Pinochet not only achieved power, but also created a personalistic dictatorship bolstered by a military run governmental bureaucracy to secure his rule. And indeed, this combination perpetuated Pinochet’s seventeen-year tenure.

Expedited Removal, Karen Musalo

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Trade/Human Rights Linkage By The United States: Is Enforcing Human Rights By Use Of Trade Sanctions Effective?, Blaise Omondi Odhiambo

LLM Theses and Essays

Universally held basic human rights must remain separate from political rights. Such basic human rights are those that are so universal that all societies, systems, nations, and ideology could, and do espouse them. Conversely, political rights are those that are dependent upon compatibility with the system of government in place and arc therefore far less likely to gamer universal support. An effective multilateral enforcement mechanism can only succeed if there are universal agreement and acceptance of the protected rights. Accordingly, at the outset of such a mechanism, only basic human rights may be enforced through trade sanctions. Once such a …

The Impact Of Modernization And Development On Muslim Women In Egypt: A Legal Perspective, Mazahir Muhammed Ata El-Sid

LLM Theses and Essays

This study examines the effectiveness of the modernization theory in Egypt, a developing Muslim society. As in the case of other developing societies, Egypt's modernization is uneven. Therefore, I will examine modernization as it relates to Muslim women in Egypt in as far as they vary in their exposure to the modernizing influences of advanced technology. Egypt has experienced a variety of social, judicial, economic, demographic, and political modifications. These changes have greatly affected Muslim women in Egypt and their family life. Not all of the issues underlying modernization will be addressed in this research. Type of family structure and …

Through The Looking Glass Of Teaching: The Death Penalty And The Political Culture Of Detached Passions, Adelaide H. Villmoare

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Today, despite daily struggles in courtrooms against capital punishment, there appears little legal room to challenge the death penalty. Most constitutional questions appear "settled. Given the present composition of the Supreme Court, there is scant expectation of any major reversals. Also, the Court's future is to be decided by a President who was governor of a state that has executed more people since 1976 than any other state in the nation. While abolitionist scholars and activists continue to raise constitutional issues, the most dramatic events challenging the death penalty have occurred in the larger political arena outside the courtroom. The …

La Libertad De Expresion En El Sistema Interamericano De Proteccion De Los Derechos Humanos, Claudio Grossman

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

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 …

Cultural Relativism, Economic Development And International Human Rights In The Asian Context, Richard Klein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Temporary Protection Of Refugees: Threat Or Solution?, James C. Hathaway

Book Chapters

While many of us in the refugee protection community have traditionally seen temporary protection as something to be resisted, I believe that temporary protection could, in contrast, be a profoundly important part of a solution to the international refugee protection crisis. To make my argument that the right kind of temporary protection could be an important means to give new life to international refugee protection, I will briefly address three issues. First, I would like to suggest why it is that states around the world, in the North and increasingly in the South as well, are refusing the live up …

Privacy And Power, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Something has gone wrong in modem America, argues Jeffrey Rosen in The Unwanted Gaze. Our medical records are bought and sold by health care providers, drug companies, and the insurance industry. Our e-mails are intercepted and read by our employers. Amazon.com knows everything there is to know about our reading and web-browsing habits. Poor Monica Lewinsky's draft love letters to President Bill Clinton were seized by the villainous Ken Starr, and ultimately plastered all over the nation's newspapers.

To Rosen, the nature of the problem is clear: These examples are all part of a troubling "phenomenon that affects all …

Latinas, Culture And Human Rights: A Model For Making Change, Saving Soul, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay provides an overview of progresses achieved for women in the Americas by virtue of the use of the human rights model to further women's rights and attain betterment of their lives. Specifically, this work reviews the location of Latinas both within and outside the United States fronteras. As women of color within larger U.S. society and as women within their comunidad Latina, Latinas experience different multifaceted subordinations. A human rights model that recognizes the multidimensional nature of gendered racial discrimination and of racialized gender discrimination can serve to improve the lives of Latinas as well as non-Latina women …

Property, Wealth, Inequality And Human Rights: A Formula For Reform, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Shelbi D. Day

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay scrutinizes the persistence of inequality in the United States through a human rights lens and grapples with the troubling disparities unearthed by two works: American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass and Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. These two highly enlightening and, simultaneously, deeply troubling and depressing books elucidate the myriad locations at which inequalities persist and the historical, social, psychological, and legal foundations of, and explications for, such disparities in the African American community.

This work proposes a human rights paradigm that provides a methodology to analyze, deconstruct and unravel …

Introduction To Torture As Tort: From Sudan To Canada To Somalia, Craig M. Scott

Articles & Book Chapters

The present work is chapter 1 of the edited volume, Torture as Tort: Comparative Perspectives on the Development of Transnational Human Rights Litigation (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2001). At the time the book was generated, the controversial nature of seeking globalised justice through national courts had become starkly apparent in the wake of the Pinochet case in which the Spanish legal system sought extradition of the former President of Chile from the United Kingdom in order to bring him to account under Spanish criminal law for a variety of alleged violations in Chile of human rights, most notably involving torture. Yet, …

Turf: An Eye-Witness Account Of The Sovereign Sensitivities Of The Un Human Rights Committee, Craig M. Scott

Articles & Book Chapters

In late March 1998, the author was present, as an observer, at a Human Rights Committee meeting at the United Nations in New York during which attention was drawn to an unofficial written statement drafted by the 1997- 1998 Chairperson of the Chairpersons (Philip Alston, then-Chairperson of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights). The Human Rights Committee members understood the statement had been delivered verbatim the day before to the Commission on Human Rights by Alston on behalf of the Chairpersons. That statement was intended to inform the Commission of the Chairpersons’ latest views as contained in their …

Public Health Versus Civil Liberties: Washington State Imposes Hiv Surveillance And Strikes The Proper Balance, Robin Sheridan

Seattle University Law Review

The article examines the controversy surrounding the Washington HIV surveillance system in light of a long-standing conflict between public health concerns and civil liberties. 7 Part I of the article briefly describes the inception of the AIDS epidemic. Part II focuses on AIDS legislation and the justifications for surveillance. Part III discusses the tension between public health and civil liberties. Part IV describes AIDS’s social stigmatization and deterrence. Part V addresses the nature of medical information and the potential for government misuse. Part VI describes the types of HIV surveillance available and the benefits and burdens which accompany both tracking …

Gender Mainstreaming In Legal And Constitutional Affairs: A Reference Manual For Governments And Other Stakeholders, Christine Chinkin

Books

This is one of the sectoral guides that are part of the Gender Management System (GMS) resource kit, a series of publications presenting GMS. GMS is an innovative system developed by the Commonwealth Secretariat for gender mainstreaming. The system is a comprehensive network of structures, mechanisms and processes for bringing a gender perspective to bear on all government policies, plans, programmes and projects. The kit consists of a handbook which presents the GMS in detail; sectoral guides to gender mainstreaming in specific sectors; and resource documents to assist the user in gender analysis, monitoring, evaluation and other aspects of gender …

Public Executions In America Should Death Row Inmates Be Able To Choose Between Private And Public Death, Nicholas Compton

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

On June 13, 1997, Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19,1995. The bombing resulted in the deaths of 168 people and the wounding of over 500 more. McVeigh successfully petitioned U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch to put an end to his appeals and expedite his execution. At midnight on February 16, 2001 McVeigh let pass his deadline to petition President George W. Bush for clemency. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection on May 16, 2001 at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, …

Freedom Of Expression In The Inter-American System For The Protection Of Human Rights, Claudio Grossman

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Death Penalty In Virginia: Attempts At Legislative Reform, Tara Elgie

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

This paper will argue that the time has come for legislative reform of capital punishment. It will briefly examine the history of the death penalty, focusing on the provisions under which it was reinstated and whether those provisions are met under today's implementation. Then it will look to recent attempts by the Virginia General Assembly to reform the procedures by which it implements the death penalty. The paper will also explore public perception of the death penalty as an explanation for why the death penalty persists as the ultimate punishment, despite recent problems with its implementation.