Human Rights Law Commons^™

Women Lawyers, Women’S Rights In Senegal: The Association Of Senegalese Women Lawyers, Judy Scales-Trent

Journal Articles

L'Association des Femmes Juristes Sénégalaises (The Association of Senegalese Women Lawyers) has been working to improve the lives of women in Senegal for almost forty years. In a predominantly Muslim country where most women do not even attend high school, these women have used their legal skills to make change. With little money, no paid attorneys on staff, and using a borrowed room in a law firm as an office, they have successfully pushed the government to make positive changes in the Family Code and other laws and have played an important role in the development of human rights consciousness …

Plural Vision: International Law Seen Through The Varied Lenses Of Domestic Implementation, D. A. Jeremy Telman

Law Faculty Publications

This Essay introduces a collection of essays that have evolved from papers presented at a conference on “International Law in the Domestic Context.” The conference was a response to the questions raised by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Medellín v. Texas and also a product of our collective curiosity about how other states address tensions between international obligations and overlapping regimes of national law.

Our constitutional tradition speaks with many voices on the subject of the relationship between domestic and international law. In order to gain a broader perspective on that relationship, we invited experts on foreign law to …

Dickens Redux: How American Child Labor Law Became A Con Game, Seymour Moskowitz

Law Faculty Publications

Millions of American teens are employed today in a variety of workplaces. The jobs they hold typically provide little human capital for their future economic self·sufficiency, and pose substantial immediate and long-term safety, academic, and behavioral risks for this generation. This Article seeks to answer the question of how American law and society reached this situation, which has such disastrous effects for working youth, their families, and society as a whole. Three main themes are developed:

1. Child labor has always been part of the American economy, from colonial times until today. While there have been more than 150 years …

Pulling Teeth: The State Of Mandatory Immigration Detention, Geoffrey Heeren

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Relevance Of International Law To The Domestic Decision On Prosecutions For Past Torture, Bartram Brown

All Faculty Scholarship

The US, as a champion of human rights abroad, has often been skeptical and even critical when other states have granted de facto amnesty allowing impunity for gross violations of human rights. Nonetheless, some now argue that the US should turn a blind eye to the evidence indicating that under the Bush Administration US government officials formulated and implemented a policy of torture. Naturally, arguments about US national security have been central to the debate. The CIA’s own reports insist that enhanced interrogation techniques have been effective in yielding valuable information vital to the national security of the United States, …

Notes From The Field: The Criminalization Of Undocumented Migrants: Legalities And Realities, Tanya Golash-Boza

Societies Without Borders

Undocumented migrants are not criminals. Detention is not prison. Deportation is not punishment. These are truths in the legal system of the United States. However, undocumented migrants are treated like criminals; detainees feel as if they are in prison; and deportees experience their exclusion as punishment. This article examines the contradictions between legal arguments which indicate that immigration proceedings are not criminal proceedings and the experiences of deportees who often feel as if they were treated like criminals and that banishment from the country in which they have lived most of their lives is a cruel punishment.

Collateral Consequences Of Criminal Convictions: Confronting Issues Of Race And Dignity, Michael Pinard

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the racial dimensions of the various collateral consequences that attach to criminal convictions in the United States. The consequences include ineligibility for public and government-assisted housing, public benefits and various forms of employment, as well as civic exclusions such as ineligibility for jury service and felon disenfranchisement. To test its hypothesis that these penalties, both historically and contemporarily, are rooted in race, the article looks to England and Wales, Canada and South Africa. These countries have criminal justice systems similar to the United States’, have been influenced significantly by United States’ criminal justice practices in recent years, …

Defaming Muhammad: Dignity, Harm, And Incitement To Religious Hatred, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

The Danish cartoons controversy has generated a torrent of commentary seeking to define and defend competing conceptions of the normative implications of the affair. This Article addresses the question of how liberal democratic states ought to respond to visible manifestations of hatred, especially speech that constitutes incitement to religious hatred. Taking the publication of the Danish cartoons as its point of departure, the Article interrogates the complex historical and normative relationship between free speech and freedom of religion in the liberal democratic order and discusses the two critical questions of whether the cartoons give rise to a genuine conflict of …

Community Recovery Lawyering: Hard-Learned Lessons From Post-Katrina Mississippi, Bonnie Allen, Barbara Bezdek, John Jopling

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Migrants' Bill Of Rights—Between Restatement And Manifesto, Gerald Neuman

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

These comments first provide a general perspective on the nature of the proposed International Migrants Bill of Rights (IMBR) and then offer some specific observations on the current draft, in particular its provisions on the subject of equality or nondiscrimination, including but not limited to Article 2.

Avoiding Evasion: Implementing International Migration Policy, Justin Gest

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

Despite the broadening range of international arbiters of global migration, the state—with its sovereign control of its territory and its subjection to the politics of its society—remains the only arbiter that oversees the actual interactions during which a proposed bill of rights would be followed. “As long as the nation-state is the primary unit for dispensing rights and privileges, it remains the main interlocutor, reference and target of interest groups and political actors, including migrant groups and their supporters.” This suggests that the normative persuasion and mobilization of even the most powerful non-state actors can only be in the ultimate …

The Most-Favoured Nation Principle, Equal Protection, And Migration Policy, Tomer Broude

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

This article discusses the theoretical interaction between the economically grounded most-favoured nation (MFN) treatment principle and the human-rights based concept of equal protection of migrants. In the multilateral law of international trade, MFN is an article of faith that lays a valid claim to having significantly contributed to the success of the trade-liberalizing and welfare-enhancing role of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade /World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO). Above and beyond its trade-related economic roles, when it applies to individuals of different nationalities, the logic of MFN also appears to generally conform to fundamental principles of equal protection of the …

Soft Law And The Protection Of Vulnerable Migrants, Alexander Betts

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

Since the 1980s, an increasing number of people have crossed international borders outside of regularized migration channels, whether by land, air or sea. Policy debates on these kinds of movements have generally focused on security to the neglect of a focus on rights. In a range of situations, though, irregular migrants, who fall outside of the protection offered by international refugee law and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), may have protection needs and, in some cases, an entitlement to protection under international human rights law. Such protection needs may result from conditions in the country of origin …

Protecting And Promoting The Human Right To Respect For Family Life: Treaty-Based Reform And Domestic Advocacy, Ryan Mrazik, Andrew I. Schoenholtz

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

This article examines the right to respect for family life in international law, focusing on its underlying principles and explicit protections. The article identifies these legal norms so that drafters of international treaties, specifically the International Migrants Bill of Rights, and United States legal practitioners representing immigrant children can incorporate the right to respect for family life into their drafting and advocacy, thereby protecting and promoting this critical human right.

To encourage both high-level, international treaty-based reform and the grassroots domestic advocacy necessary to comprehensively protect and promote this right, this article provides specific ideas for incorporating the right to …

From Status To Agency: Defining Migrants, Avinoam Cohen

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

Migrants share an intricate relationship with the law. Identifying a person as a migrant implies, in ordinary language, that she has crossed legally defined territorial boundaries. In legal terminology, invoking the term migrant usually alludes to a particular legal status that entails a specific set of rights, distinguished from those of the citizen. Acknowledging the role of law in identifying and classifying people that move across national frontiers, migrants appear as legal constructs, structured by and within the law. Regulatory mechanisms designed to direct and control migration are deeply intertwined with the phenomenon they strive to govern. In itself, this …

Extreme Vulnerability Of Migrants: The Cases Of The United States And Mexico, Jorge A. Bustamante

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

This paper deals with the notion of vulnerability of migrants, with respect to the realities of two countries, the United States and Mexico. The vulnerability of migrants is understood as a heterogeneously imposed condition of powerlessness. This is based on the premise that migrants are inherently vulnerable as subjects of human rights from the point of their departure as they leave home to initiate their migration. That is, any human being is less vulnerable at home than after she leaves home to become a migrant. The same applies to a sociological extension of the notion of home--a community of origin. …

Reaffirming Rights: Human Rights Protections Of Migrants, Asylum Seekers, And Refugees In Immigration Detention, Eleanor Acer, Jake Goodman

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

The International Migrants Bill of Rights (IMBR) addresses migrants’ rights in a variety of contexts, and this paper looks closely at some of the most crucial rights that apply to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers who are held in immigration detention.

Migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are entitled to a broad range of rights protections. These protections are spelled out in the provisions of core human rights treaties and regional human rights conventions that apply to all people, as well as in the specific conventions relating to refugees and migrants. While States have the authority to regulate migration, their immigration …

Human Rights Of Migrants: The Dawn Of A New Era?, Ryszard Cholewinski

International Migrants Bill of Rights Symposium

The purpose of this article is to highlight a number of key legal and policy developments which have occurred since the turn of the twenty-first century and to reflect on how these have and may advance the protection of the human rights of migrants. This article is optimistic and forward-looking in tenor, although the generally positive developments discussed do not necessarily mean that abuses of migrants and violations of their rights are no longer taking place. Nonetheless, if ten years of relatively intense activity can be viewed as a sound measure of progress, there is some cause for optimism that …

Book Review Of Achieving Human Rights, Fatemeh Shayan

Societies Without Borders

No abstract provided.

"A Guantanamo On The Sea": The Difficulties Of Prosecuting Pirates And Terrorists, Eugene Kontorovich

Faculty Working Papers

As a surge in pirate attacks in the seas around the Horn of Africa threatens to seriously damage international trade, the nations of the world have refused to enforce international law against these criminals. The dozens of nations patrolling the Gulf of Aden have ample legal authority to detain and prosecute pirates. Yet the United States and other navies have, as a matter of policy, been releasing apprehended pirates because of the difficulty of detaining or successfully prosecuting them. These fears are not unwarranted. As this Essay shows, while on the one hand international law requires all nations to fight …

International Human Rights At The Close Of The Twentieth Century, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

Speculates as to why the human-rights revolution is increasingly likely to dominate our foreign-policy attentions in the decades to come. Ventures some predictions, of particular interest perhaps to international lawyers, about where the cause of international human rights is heading.

Human Rights As Part Of Customary International Law:A Plea For Change Of Paradigms, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

The question for us international lawyers is how, and how much of, public sentiment for human rights has been transformed into binding international law.

On Genocide, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

The crime of genocide is the newest international crime. It must be kept as a separate, distinct, and coherent concept. It is the first truly subjective crime; all other crime, though requiring mens rea, require only that the defendant consciously committed the criminal acts. In the case of genocide, however, the underlying criminal acts are no different from the acts required to prove ordinary crimes. The difference is one of motive. What is being punished by the crime of genocide is the selection of victims according to their involuntary membership in four kinds of groups: national, ethnical, racial, or religious. …

The Relation Of The Individual To The State In The Era Of Human Rights, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

I address the question of the relation of the individual to the state and, in so doing, invoke Hegel, the preeminent philosopher of relationships. As students of international law, we should look forward to achieving the complex synthesis implicit in Hegel's philosophy: to promote the human rights of all persons in the natural context of the unique nation in which they live. Examines a legal problem that highlights this interrelatedness: Frolova v. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Bridging Accountability Gaps—The Proliferation Of Private Military And Security Companies And Ensuring Accountability For Human Rights Violations, Amol Mehra

Global Business & Development Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Perils Of Privatization: International Developments And Reform In Water Distribution, Adam D. Link

Global Business & Development Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Torture, American Style: A Recipe For Civil Tort Immunity, Matthew J. Jowanna

McGeorge Law Review

No abstract provided.

International Human Rights Law In Japan: The View At Thirty, Timothy Webster

Faculty Publications

Japanese courts have become increasingly open to the use of international human rights law in the past two decades. This paper examines several of the key decisions that reflect the judiciary's embrace of international law, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure and minority rights. I argue that the judiciary has eclipsed the other branches of government as the primary disseminator of human rights norms in Japan.

Walking The Legal Tightrope: Solutions For Achieving A Balanced Life In Law, Leslie L. Cooney

Faculty Scholarship

For over twenty years, issues surrounding women and their status in the legal profession have been documented, analyzed, and reported. The American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Women in its 1988 study concluded that a thorough reexamination of attitudes and structures within the legal profession was needed to remedy the underrepresentation of women in the positions of power within the profession-law firm partnerships and judicial appointments. Nearly a decade later, the ABA Commission on Women found that little progress had been made in female representation and concluded the mere passage of time alone would not render sufficient corrections. Although the …

Reconstituting The “Un-Person”: The Khmer Krom &The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Mahdev Mohan

2008 Asian Business & Rule of Law initiative

Despite the grand promise of victim participation at the ongoing trials of Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (“ECCC”), this article notes the plight of an undeserved ethnic community, the members of which have become forgotten victims of genocide. The Article argues that if the ECCC’s trials are to have any resonance for the Khmer Krom, its affiliates and victims’ lawyers should avoid “othering” Khmer Krom victims of genocide, and instead adopt ethnographic approaches to lawyering that seek to ascertain communal desires for vindication.