Human Rights Law Commons^™

Duress, Demanding Heroism, And Proportionality, Luis E. Chiesa

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article discusses the Erdemovic case in order to examine whether duress should be a defense to a crime against humanity. Although the Article contends that the arguments in favor of permitting the defendant to claim duress weaken as the seriousness of the offense charged increases, the Article also argues that the duress defense should usually succeed if it can be proved that the actor could not have prevented the threatened harm by refusing to capitulate to the coercion.

After balancing the competing considerations, the Author concludes that the defendant in Erdemovic should have been able to claim duress as …

Redesigning The European Court Of Human Rights: Embeddedness As A Deep Structural Principle Of The European Human Rights Regime, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is the crown jewel of the world’s most advanced international system for protecting civil and political liberties. In recent years, however, the ECHR has become a victim of its own success. The Court now faces a docket crisis of massive proportions, the consequence of the growing number of states subject to its jurisdiction, its favourable public reputation, its expansive interpretations of individual liberties, a distrust of domestic judiciaries in some countries, and entrenched human rights problems in others. In response to this growing backlog of individual complaints, the Council of Europe has, over …

The New Innovation Frontier? Intellectual Property And The European Court Of Human Rights, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the intellectual property case law of the European Court of Human Rights ("ECHR"). Within the last three years, the ECHR has issued a trio of intellectual property rulings interpreting the right of property protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. These decisions, which view intellectual property through the lens of fundamental rights, have important consequences for the region's innovation and creativity policies. The cases are also emblematic of a growing number of controversies in domestic and international law over the intersection of human rights, property rights, and intellectual property. The article …

Taking Liberties: The Personal Jurisdiction Of Military Commissions, Madeline Morris

Faculty Scholarship

On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda operatives attacked civilian and military targets on US territory, causing thousands of deaths and billions of dollars of economic loss. The next day, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1368 characterizing the attack by Al Qaeda as a "threat to international peace and security" and recognizing the right of states to use armed force in self defense.

Slipping Through The Cracks And Into Schools: The Need For A Uniform Sexual Predator Tracking System, Cheryl Page

Journal Publications

Over half a million registered sex offenders currently live in the United States. Sex offenses are among the most devastating crimes because of the long-lasting emotional, physical, and psychological effects it has on victims. Sadly, most victims of sex offenses are innocent children. "Most sex offenders are not in prison, and ... are largely unknown to people in the community." Sex offenders also have a propensity for reoffending their crimes. "While community supervision and oversight is widely recognized as essential, the system for providing such supervision is overwhelmed." There are many loopholes in the current system that allow sex offenders …

Female Genital Mutilation: Exploring Strategies For Ending Ritualized Torture; Shaming, Blaming, And Utilizing The Convention Against Torture, Patricia A. Broussard

Journal Publications

The intent of this article is to graphically describe female genital mutilation (FGM); discuss the background of FGM and its health, psychological, and social implications; propose some workable solutions to ending FGM; and raise the level of awareness of the pain and suffering of women around the world. In part, this article will discuss invoking the Convention against Torture against those nations unwilling to end this horrific practice. There is also a caveat to this article: the author acknowledges that discussing solutions to the practice of FGM is not a simplistic and straight-forward endeavor. Solutions to ending FGM are as …

The Legacy Of The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial To American Bioethics And Human Rights, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

In this lecture I argue that modern bioethics was born at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial, a health law trial that produced one of the first major human rights documents: the Nuremberg Code. Accepting this conclusion has significant consequences for contemporary American bioethics generally, and specifically in the context of our continuing global war on terror in which the United States uses physicians to help in interrogations, torture, and force-feeding hunger strikers.

The primary force shaping the agenda, development, and current state of American bioethics has not been either medicine or philosophy, but law, best described as health law. Like bioethics, …

Lambs Into Lions: The Utilization Of Child Soldiers In The War In Iraq And Why International And Iraqi Laws Are Failing To Protect The Innocent, Anna-Liisa Jacobsen

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

No abstract provided.

Panel: Restrictions On Freedom Of Association Through Material Support Prohibitions And Visa Denials, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the 1950s, we were afraid of communism. We were afraid, in particular, of the Soviet Union, the world's second greatest superpower, which was armed with masses of nuclear warheads aimed at all our largest cities. As a result, we fought the Cold War, engaged in espionage, proxy wars, and an arms race. We also took aggressive preventive measures at home. The principal preventive measure of that period was guilt by association. We made it a crime to be a member of the Communist Party, and we created a whole administrative scheme to implement and enforce this notion of guilt …

Tinkering With Torture In The Aftermath Of Hamdan: Testing The Relationship Between Internationalism And Constitutionalism, Catherine Powell

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Bridging international and constitutional law scholarship, the author examines the question of torture in light of democratic values. The focus in this article is on the international prohibition on torture as this norm was addressed through the political process in the aftermath of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Responding to charges that the international torture prohibition--and international law generally--poses irreconcilable challenges for democracy and our constitutional framework, the author contends that by promoting respect for fundamental rights and for minorities and outsiders, international law actually facilitates a broad conception of democracy and constitutionalism. She takes on the question of torture within …

Rights Over Borders: Transnational Constitutionalism And Guantanamo Bay, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay argues that the most profound implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush may lie not in what it says about the place of law in the war on terror, but in what it reflects about the Supreme Court’s altered conceptions of sovereignty, territoriality, and rights in the globalized world.

Boumediene was groundbreaking in at least three respects. For the first time in its history, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a law enacted by Congress and signed by the president on an issue of military policy in a time of armed conflict. Also for the first …

No Reason To Believe: Radical Skepticism, Emergency Power, And Constitutional Constraint, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay reviews Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule’s Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts, which I consider the most serious, sustained, and thoughtful effort to defend the Bush administration’s aggressive tactics in the war on terror yet written. That the book is ultimately deeply flawed only underscores the failure of the Bush administration’s approach.

Where most historians view with regret the excesses of past security crises, from the criminalization of speech during World War I to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, Posner and Vermeule advance the contrarian view that the system worked exactly …

Equality's Future: An Introduction, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We stand at an extraordinary moment: never before have so many powerful men wished to be women. For the first time in history, a massive number of male and female voters--18 million in fact--cast their ballots to nominate a woman, Senator Hillary Clinton, to be President of the United States. Disappointed at Senator Clinton's failure to win the Democratic Party's nomination, many women threatened to bolt the party. Sensing opportunity, the Republican Presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, promptly named as his vice-presidential running mate the first woman ever nominated by the Republican Party to a Presidential ticket. And, not to …

Book Review: Elizabeth Wicks' Human Rights And Healthcare, Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

The Author reviews the book Human Rights and Healthcare, by Elizabeth Wicks and published by Hart Publishing, 2007. Although the book focuses mainly on rights within the United Kingdom, those familiar with healthcare and bioethics issues within the United States or elsewhere will find it an extremely useful comparative resource.

Tolling For The Luckless, The Abandoned And Forsaked: Community Safety, Therapeutic Jurisprudence And International Human Rights Law As Applied To Prisoners And Detainees, Michael L. Perlin, Astrid Birgden

Articles & Chapters

There has been an explosion of interest in therapeutic jurisprudence as both a filter and lens for viewing theextent to which the legal system serves therapeutic or anti therapeutic consequences. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of therapeutic jurisprudence on questions of international human rights law and the role of forensic psychologists. Human rights are based on legal, social, and moral rules. The paper will propose that human rights principles can add to the normative base of therapeutic jurisprudence, and in turn, therapeutic jurisprudence can assist forensic psychologists to actively address human rights. As duty bearers, forensic …

International Standards For Detaining Terrorism Suspects: Moving Beyond The Armed Conflict-Criminal Divide, Monica Hakimi

Articles

Although sometimes described as war, the fight against transnational jihadi groups (referred to for shorthand as the "fight against terrorism") largely takes place away from any recognizable battlefield. Terrorism suspects are captured in houses, on street comers, and at border crossings around the globe. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the high-level Qaeda operative who planned the September 11 attacks, was captured by the Pakistani government in a residence in Pakistan. Abu Omar, a radical Muslim imam, was apparently abducted by U.S. and Italian agents off the streets of Milan. And Abu Baker Bashir, the spiritual leader of the Qaeda-affiliated group responsible for …

The Human Rights Quagmire Of 'Human Trafficking', James C. Hathaway

Articles

Support for the international fight against "human trafficking" evolved quickly and comprehensively. The campaign launched by the UN General Assembly in December 19981 led to adoption just two years later of the Trafficking Protocol to the UN Convention against Organized Crime.2 U.S. President George W. Bush was among those particularly committed to the cause, calling for collective effort to eradicate the "special evil" of human trafficking, said by him to have become a "humanitarian crisis."3 One hundred and twenty-two countries have now ratified the Trafficking Protocol, agreeing in particular to criminalize trafficking and to cooperate in investigating and prosecuting allegations …

Labeling Mass Atrocity: Does And Should International Criminal Law Rank Evil?, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

This essay concerns mass atrocity, not the kind that happened on September 11th, but an older kind when governments and those under them and supported by them killed innocent civilians on the basis of their ethnicity, on the basis of their politics, on the basis of their religion, or other traits of the group. These acts, crimes against humanity and genocide, were criminalized in the period after World War II by the International Military Tribunal and then by the Genocide Convention. These were very, very important steps forward in international criminal law, but the result of the post-war period was, …

Whose Child Is This?: Genetic Analysis And Family Reunification Immigration In France, Tera R. Murdock

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In an attempt to limit fraudulent family reunification immigration and control how many migrants enter its borders, France statutorily implemented the use of DNA testing in family reunification immigration in late 2007. Where an immigrating child possesses suspicious documentation, and the child is seeking to reunite with his or her mother in France, the statute provides for voluntary DNA testing to establish that the child has a biological connection with the mother. The requirement of proof of a biological link between family members is diametrically opposed to family recognition policies that apply to French citizens, which emphasize the establishment of …

Three Narratives Of Medellín V. Texas, Margaret E. Mcguiness

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Every once in a while, a Supreme Court case comes along that holds a mirror up to the changing face of the American polity. Medellín v. Texas (Medellín II) is such a case, reflecting divisive national debates over immigration, the death penalty, victims' rights, the scope of executive power, U.S. adherence to international human rights standards, the salience of international law to national security, and the appropriate role of judicial review of political decisions. Which of those issues stands out among the reflected images depends on who is peering into the mirror.

For international law scholars, the significance of …

The Domestic Incorporation Of Human Rights Law And The United Nations Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, Janet E. Lord, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

This Article reviews the processes by which domestic-level transposition of international human rights norms may occur as a consequence of human rights treaty ratification, or other means of incorporation. Specifically, we consider the transformative vision of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD or Convention) as a vehicle for fostering national-level disability law and policy changes. In doing so, we outline the challenges and opportunities presented by this new phase in disability rights advocacy, and we draw conclusions that bear generally upon human rights practice and scholarship. We contend that the role of human rights in domestic …

Through The Wild Cathedral Evening: Barriers, Attitudes, Participatory Democracy, Professor Tenbroek, And The Rights Of Persons With Mental Disabilities, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

This article is a commentary on Michael Ashley Stein & Janet Lord, Jacobus TenBroek, Participatory Justice, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, - Tex. J. Civ Lib. & Civ. Rts. - (2008) (in press). In it, I seek to expand their analysis of the new UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in an effort to invigorate an area of institutionalized patients rights law that is now nearly forgotten: the rights of such persons to exercise civil rights while institutionalized. I also argue that Prof. Stein and Ms. Lord's paper should lead us …

Everybody Is Making Love/Or Else Expecting Rain: Considering The Sexual Autonomy Rights Of Persons Institutionalized Because Of Mental Disability In Forensic Hospitals And In Asia, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

One of the most controversial policy questions in all of institutional mental disability law is the extent to which patients in psychiatric hospitals have a right to voluntary sexual interaction. The resolution of this matter involves the resolution of difficult and sensitive questions of law, social policy, clinical judgment, politics, religion, and family structures.

As difficult as these questions are in cases involving civil hospitals, the difficulties are exacerbated when the topic is the application of the right in forensic hospitals. Such facilities typically house individuals involved in the criminal justice system (either those who may be incompetent to stand …

Through The Wild Cathedral Evening: Barriers, Attitudes, Participatory Democracy, Professor Tenbroek, And The Rights Of Persons With Mental Disabilities, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

This article is a commentary on Michael Ashley Stein & Janet Lord, Jacobus TenBroek, Participatory Justice, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, - Tex. J. Civ Lib. & Civ. Rts. - (2008) (in press). In it, I seek to expand their analysis of the new UN Convention on the Rights of Persons withDisabilities in an effort to invigorate an area of institutionalized patients rights law that is now nearly forgotten: the rights of such persons to exercise civil rights while institutionalized. I also argue that Prof. Stein and Ms. Lord's paper should lead us to …

Killing Them Softly: Meditations On A Painful Punishment Of Death, Robert I. Blecker

Articles & Chapters

This brief essay argues that any attempt by the U.S. Supreme Court and others to establish a painless punishment, especially lethal injection, fails logically and morally.

From the beginning, by definition, etymologically and existentially, “punishment” and “pain” have been inseparably connected. Those who advocate ‘painless punishment’ call for contradiction. Whether looking to the future (utilitarians) or the past (retributivists), we once clearly understood and embraced the inseparable connection between punishment and pain. Gradually, however, punishment has morphed into something which denies its own nature, culminating in today's move toward a massive dose of anesthetic as the ultimate punishment - as …

Just Back From The Human Rights Council, Makau Mutua

Journal Articles

The piece critically looks at the transition from the UN Commission on Human Rights to the UN Human Rights Council in 2006 and questions whether the change is one of substance or form. It argues that the same paralysis that dogged the Commission will continue to afflict the Council because power politics and regional blocs - fueled by the global asymmetries of power - will not go away. The piece also contends that the charge by the West that the Commission was utterly compromised by the Third World was without merit because it was the one forum where developing could …

Human Rights In The United States Human Rights In The United States: A Special Issue Celebrating The 10th Anniversary Of The Human Rights Institute At Columbia Law School: Foreword, Sarah Cleveland, Catherine Powell

Faculty Scholarship

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Human Rights Institute (HRI) at Columbia Law School. Appropriately, it also marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundational instrument of the modern international human rights regime. When HRI was founded in 1998, it was established as a crossroads for human rights at Columbia, which would bridge theory and practice, human rights and constitutional rights, and law and other disciplines. From its inception, HRI has been a partner with the university-wide Center for the Study of Human Rights, which was established twenty years earlier …

Adr - Appropriate Disaster Recovery, Michael Tsur

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The legal system may be as old as society itself. Since the dawn of civilization, man has incorporated law and judgment as primary tools to help regulate both civil and criminal aspects of social life. Both ancient and modern societies are often historically evaluated by the structure and quality of their legislative and judicial systems. People seem to have been caught in dispute ever since they began living together and effective dispute resolution was necessary for fundamental social structure and order.

Denying Genocide: Law, Identity And Historical Memory In The Face Of Mass Atrocity Conference, Belinda Cooper

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

In 2006, France's lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, adopted a bill that would have made it a crime to deny that the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians during and after World War I. Almost simultaneously, Turkish writers and scholars, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, were being charged by Turkish authorities for precisely the opposite "crime": calling the killing of Armenians by Turks a genocide and, in the process, "denigrating Turkishness.'' These two diametrically opposed events provided an illustrative backdrop to the Denying Genocide: Law, Identity and Historical Memory in the Face of Mass Atrocity conference at …

A Constitutional "Right" To Deny And Promote Genocide? Preempting The Usurpation Of Human Rights Discourse Towards Incitement From A Canadian Perspective, Karen Eltis

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

I would like to thank the organizers of the conference, particularly Sheri Rosenberg, for their gracious invitation to speak to what is undoubtedly one of the most pressing themes commanding our attention - genocide and its denial. This is a time when historical truth struggles to endure in the face of insidious attacks at times couched in human rights rhetoric.