Human Rights Law Commons^™

The Current State Of International Law, S. James Anaya

Publications

No abstract provided.

Illegal Peace?: An Inquiry Into The Legality Of Power-Sharing With Warlords And Rebels In Africa, Jeremy I. Levitt

Journal Publications

When warlords use violence to coerce democratically constituted governments to share power, does power-sharing simply become a euphemism for "guns for jobs"? Which legal rules, if any, govern peace agreements in internal conflicts? Specifically, which rules regulate power-sharing? Are the aims of peace, justice, and adherence to the rule of law attainable, let alone compatible, with coerced political transitions where warlords force democratically constituted or legitimate governments to share power?

This Article represents the first conscientious attempt to address these questions, present a conceptual framework for examining the legal and political efficacy of coercing democratically constituted governments into sharing power, …

Liability For Torts In Violation Of International Law: No Hook Under Sosa For Secondary, Complicit Actors, Helena Lynch

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Lenni Benson

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Nature And Causes Of The Immigration Surge In The Federal Courts Of Appeals: A Preliminary Analysis, John R.B. Palmer

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Back To Back To The Future? Lessons Learned From Litigation Over The 1996 Restrictions On Judicial Review, Nancy Morawetz

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Better Part Of Valor: The Real Id Act, Discretion, And The “Rule” Of Immigration Law, Daniel Kanstroom

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

China And The Human Right To Health: Selective Adaptation And Treaty Compliance, Pitman B. Potter

All Faculty Publications

The international community has devoted considerable energy to dialogue and exchanges with China on issues of treaty compliance in areas of trade and human rights, and while many improvements are evident in China’s legal regimes for trade and human rights, problems remain. Further, academic and policy discourses on China’s trade and human rights policy and practice are all too often conflicted by normative differences and illusions about them. The paradigm of “selective adaptation” offers a potential solution by examining compliance with international trade and human rights treaties by reference to the interplay between normative systems associated with international rule regimes …

‘Blissed Out: Section 15 At Twenty’, Margot Young

All Faculty Publications

This paper was written for the 20th anniversary of the coming into force of section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Unfortunately the same themes that defeated Stella Bliss in 1979, when she launched her Canadian Bill of Rights challenge to the Canadian Unemployment Insurance Act continue. While equality law has moved on from the specific facts of Bliss v. Canada (Attorney General), [1979] 1 S.C.R. 183, and from some of the discrete judicial conclusions in that case, it is still true that the series of critical ways of understanding the relationship between equality rights, individuals and …

Rethinking Prison Sex: Self -Expression And Safety, Brenda V. Smith

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

This article analyzes legislation and policies that limit prisoners' sexual expression and autonomy. The article juxtaposes prisoners interest in sexual expression against the interests of the state in regulating sex by and between prisoners. The article concludes that the state has an interest in regulating sex between inmates and staff and in regulating coerced or forced sex between inmates. In other instances prisons could accommodate prisoners' interest in sexual expression and achieve important goals such as better decisionmaking; improved relations with family and partners to aid community reentry; reduction of prison rape; and inmate management.

Integrity In Jail Operations: Addressing Employee/Inmate Relationships, Brenda V. Smith, Nairi M. Simonian

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

Jails often struggle with how to ensure the integrity of operations by establishing policies aimed at governing employee relationships with individuals who are under the supervision of a criminal justice agency. Agencies need to balance their legitimate interests with employees’ basic rights to associate. This article discusses case law around this issue and makes recommendations about how to construct agency policies in this area.

Sexual Abuse Of Women In Prison: A Modern Corollary Of Slavery, Brenda V. Smith

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

This paper addresses the sexual abuse of women in custody as a more contemporary manifestation of slavery and discusses the congruencies and the differences that exist between the sexual abuse of women in custody and slavery. The paper charts the history of the parallel abolition and prison reform movements and examines their divergent paths arguing that the women's movement abandonment of prison advocacy has harmed the women in prison movement. The article concludes that the embrace of human rights norms has assisted in providing new avenues for redressing the sexual abuse of women in custody.

Analyzing Prison Sex: Reconciling Self Expression With Safety, Brenda V. Smith

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

This article examines the complexity of prison sex and the challenges that it raises in the context of recently enacted United States legislation, specifically the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). It begins by identifying a range of prisoner interests in enhanced sexual expression. These interests are described below in an attempt to disentangle prisoners’ rights in sexual expression from states’ legitimate interests in regulating that expression. This article also directs policymakers and decision makers to mine international documents and human rights norms that recognize the necessity of punishment and at the same time outline a standard for the safety of …

Feminist Legal Theory And Human Trafficking In The United States: Towards A New Framework, Cynthia L. Wolken

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

2005 Cardozo International Advocate For Peace Award: Acceptance Speech, Betty Kaari Murungi

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Thank you very much for this truly inspiring award, which I am honored to accept on my own behalf and on behalf of the many women with whom I have been privileged to work over the years. The award is presented against the backdrop of two historic international events: the passing of Rosa Parks and the announcement of the victory of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as the first elected female head of state of an African country.

"The Dean Of Chicago's Black Lawyers": Earl Dickerson And Civil Rights Lawyering In The Years Before Brown, Jay Tidmarsh, Stephen Robinson

Journal Articles

Brown v. Board of Education is a watershed in American law and society. In the years since it was decided, Brown has shaped America's views of race, constitutionalism, and equality. Brown exerts an equally important influence over the historiography of civil rights lawyering in the decades before Brown. In particular, in constructing the story of civil rights lawyering in the crucial years between World War I and World War II, historians and legal scholars have focused primarily on the people and the events that shaped Brown.

Washington's "War Against Terrorism" And Human Rights: The View From Abroad, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

"When it comes to human rights, there is no greater leader than the United States of America," White House spokesman Scott McClellan has said.

The view from abroad is less kind. A recent resolution of the European Parliament, for example, "condemns" our government's treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. It urges Washington to guarantee all prisoners "minimum human rights in accordance with international human rights law and fair trial procedures" and to "immediately clarify the situation of the prisoners." European objections run so deep that a New York Times account finds a "high level of anger in Europe at reports that …

Addressing The Scourge Of Human Trafficking: The Challenge Ahead, Roza Pati

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

International Human Rights And Comparative Mental Disability Law: The Role Of Institutional Psychiatry In The Suppression Of Political Dissent, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

For many years, institutional psychiatry was a major tool in the suppression of political dissent. Moreover, it appears painfully clear that, while the worst excesses of the past have mostly disappeared, the problem is not limited to the pages of history. What is more, the revelations of the worst of these abuses (and the concomitant rectification of many of them) may, paradoxically, have created the false illusion that all the major problems attendant to questions of institutional treatment and conditions in these nations have been solved. This is decidedly not so.

Remarkably, the issue of the human rights of persons …

Peace Versus Justice, Richard J. Goldstone

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"One Good Man": The Jacksonian Shape Of Nuremberg, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States when President Truman asked him in April 1945 to take on, and Jackson accepted responsibility to be the chief United States prosecutor of Nazi war criminals. The International Military Tribunal proceedings that commenced seven months later in Nuremberg, Germany—the first and, in public memory, the Nuremberg trial—are, like Jackson himself, well-known, especially to this audience of participants, witnesses and experts.

The Nuremberg story of Justice Jackson—he who was first among Allied equals at Nuremberg; he who was its architect—is not, however, merely a story …

Triptych: Sectarian Disputes, International Law, And Transnational Tribunals In Drinan's "Can God And Caesar Coexist?", Christopher J. Borgen

Faculty Publications

Can international law be used to address conflicts that arise out of questions of the freedom of religion? Modern international law was born of conflicts of politics and religion. The Treaty of Westphalia, the seed from which grew today's systems of international law and international relations, attempted to set out rules to end decades of religious strife and war across the European continent. The treaty replaced empires and feudal holdings with a system of sovereign states. But this was within a relatively narrow and historically interconnected community: Protestants and Catholics, yes, but Christians all. Europe was Christendom.

To what extent …

Exploring The Limits Of International Human Rights Law, Margaret E. Mcguiness

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The Limits of International Law stands on the shoulders of international relations realists who have traditionally argued that international law does not affect interstate relations and is therefore unworthy of much scholarly attention. International law scholars have in many ways set out to disprove the realist claim and explain the sources and effects of law as separate from politics: Why do states, which are driven primarily (according to realist theory) by a need to protect and expand security interests, insist on using international law at all? In Limits, Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner engage both the international relations …

Medellin, Norm Portals, And The Horizontal Integration Of International Human Rights, Margaret E. Mcguinness

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The dominant narrative of the Medellín v. Dretke line of cases challenging widespread noncompliance by the United States with the notification provisions of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR) tells a story of vertical treaty enforcement. The United States has agreed to be bound by a treaty that requires law enforcement authorities to inform foreign nationals arrested in this country of their right to notify their consulates and also requires authorities to permit the foreign consulate to assist its nationals. The United States has further agreed that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has jurisdiction …

The Idea Of Humanity: Human Rights And Immigrants' Rights, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay asks whether international human rights arguments are likely to be effective in advancing immigrants' rights in the United States. There are certainly reasons to be pessimistic. Despite its history as a nation of immigrants and the ever-increasing diversity of its populace, the United States remains a deeply parochial and nationalist culture. International human rights arguments are often seen as the advocates' last refuge. In the absence of an international forum that can hold the United States accountable, and in the face of Congressional directives that the international human rights treaties it has ratified are not self-executing, international human …

Today's Indian Wars: Between Cyberspace And The United Nations, S. James Anaya

Publications

No abstract provided.

Connecting Care And Challenge: Tapping Our Human Potential - Inclusive Education: A Review Of Programming And Services In New Brunswick, A. Wayne Mackay

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Due to the short time frame for this Review, this cannot be considered an exhaustive report. There is however quite a massive volume of information and sources introduced here touching on the particulars required by the Terms of Reference.

In section I we present legal considerations that have an impact on education in various ways, all of which are related to inclusion and the application of equality rights in Canada. Those considerations include accommodation of students with disabilities, the student-teacher relationship, discipline, safe-schools, and a framework for analysis: the new 3 R’s in education: Rights, Responsibilities and Relationships. Included are …

Enforcement Of Human Rights Under Regional Mechanisms: A Comparative Analysis, Fekadeselassie F. Kidanemariam

LLM Theses and Essays

This is a study about the protection of human rights by regional human rights bodies. The thesis identifies the major regional human rights protection systems i.e. the African human rights system, the inter-American human rights System and the European human rights system. The paper examines the types of mechanisms employed by each regional system and examines each mechanism. The three major mechanisms dealt with in this work are inter-state complaints, state reporting, country reports, finally individual complaints, and execution of the judgments rendered by these regional bodies. The thesis analyzes the procedures involved in each of these mechanisms and examines …

Can Corporations Be Held Liable Under The Alien Tort Claims Act?, Kelsy Deye

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Commentary: Mental Health Legislation, Michael L. Perlin

Other Publications

No abstract provided.