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February Roundtable: The Arab Revolutions And Human Rights, Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Failure of Governance in the Arab World” by Simon Tisdall. The Guardian. January 11 2011.

A Little Respect, Please, Christina Cerna

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Simon Tisdall suggests that last month, when Mohammed Bouazizi (twenty-six years old), “an unemployed graduate, set himself on fire outside a government building in protest at police harassment,” his act became the “rallying cause for Tunisia’s disaffected legions of unemployed students, impoverished workers, trade unionists, lawyers and human rights activists.” The reaction to his act of self-immolation and death on January 4th led to the flight of President Ben Ali ten days later to Saudi Arabia and to the end of Ali's twenty-three-year rule of Tunisia. Time reported the event as follows: “When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight on Dec. …

He's Our Son Of A Bitch, Robert Funk

Human Rights & Human Welfare

It is said that Franklin Delano Roosevelt defended the US tendency to support dictators by remarking, “He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.” The recent events in Tunisia and Egypt indicate that almost seventy years later, this unfortunate phrase seems to continue to guide US foreign policy.

Abeyance And Spontaneity In Tunisia, Louis Edgar Esparza

Human Rights & Human Welfare

On August 16, 1819, tens of thousands of workers gathered in what is now St. Peter’s Square in Manchester to demand suffrage. Entire families, parishes, and townships assembled, fueled by increasing commodity prices and political disenfranchisement. They had spread the word from town to town, and from church to church, that this previously banned meeting was indeed to occur. It was the culmination of months of agitation on the part of common people to achieve economic and political reform. The government responded violently to the challenge of its authority, as governments so often do, leading to a score of deaths …

Exporting Subjects: Globalizing Family Law Progress Through International Human Rights, Cyra Akila Choudhury

Michigan Journal of International Law

In our popular culture and social consciousness, women are no longer the second-class citizens they used to be. Magazines, television advertisements, and billboards featuring women show us how we have achieved independence, wealth, desirability, and our intelligence. We are no longer the supporting role in movies and entertainment but stars in our own right. For this, we can thank both changing society and the unrelenting work of many women who refused to bring the coffee for the boss. The women's movement in the United States has made large gains for women through the use of social activism and legal action. …

Witchcraft: A Human Rights Conflict Between Customary/Traditional Laws And The Legal Protection Of Women In Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa, Maakor Quarmyne

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Deconstructing Cedaw's Article 14: Naming And Explaining Rural Difference, Lisa R. Pruitt

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

We Live In A Country Of Unhcr: The Un Surrogate State And Refugee Policy In The Middle East, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

Many gaps in the protection of refugees can be connected to a de facto transfer of responsibility for managing refugee policy from sovereign states to United Nations agencies. This phenomenon can be seen in dozens of countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) manage refugee camps, register newly arrived asylum-seekers, carry out refugee status determination, and administer education, health, livelihood and other social welfare programs.

In carrying out these functions, the UN acts to a great …

The Evolving International Judiciary, Karen J. Alter

Faculty Working Papers

This article explains the rapid proliferation in international courts first in the post WWII and then the post Cold War era. It examines the larger international judicial complex, showing how developments in one region and domain affect developments in similar and distant regimes. Situating individual developments into their larger context, and showing how change occurs incrementally and slowly over time, allows one to see developments in economic, human rights and war crimes systems as part of a longer term evolutionary process of the creation of international judicial authority. Evolution is not the same as teleology; we see that some international …

The Global Spread Of European Style International Courts, Karen J. Alter

Faculty Working Papers

Europe created the model of embedded international courts (IC), where domestic judges work with international judges to interpret and apply international legal rules that are also part of national legal orders. This model has now diffused around the world. This article documents the spread of European-style ICs: there are now eleven operational copies of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), three copies of the European Court of Human Rights, and a handful of additional ICs that use Europe's embedded approach to international law. After documenting the spread of European-style ICs, the article then explains how two regions chose European style …

Women And Children Last: The Prosecution Of Sex Traffickers As Sex Offenders And The Need For A Sex Trafficker Registry, Geneva Brown

Law Faculty Publications

Sex trafficking is a moral and legal tragedy that affects thousands in the United States and abroad. The U.S. State Department estimates that human traffickers bring between 14,500 and 17,500 persons annually into the United States for various avenues of exploitation, including involuntary servitude and forced prostitution. Human traffickers are highly organized into criminal syndicates that reap exponential profits exploiting vulnerable women and children. Individual states struggle to prosecute traffickers and must rely on federal prosecution of trafficking enterprises. International cooperation with local law enforcement is essential in combating trafficking, especially in the sex trade. This Article proposes that an …

Is International Law Really Law? Theorizing The Multi-Dimensionality Of Law, Elizabeth M. Bruch

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rule Of Law In Haiti Before And After The 2010 Earthquake, James D. Wilets, Camilo Espinosa

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Islam In The Secular Nomos Of The European Court Of Human Rights, Peter G. Danchin

Faculty Scholarship

Since 2001 the European Court of Human Rights has decided a series of cases involving Islam and the claims of Muslim communities (both majorities and minorities) to freedom of religion and belief. This Article suggests that what is most interesting about these cases is how they are unsettling existing normative legal categories under the ECHR and catalyzing new forms of politics and rethinking of both the historical and theoretical premises of modern liberal political orders. These controversies raise anew two critical questions for ECHR jurisprudence: first, regarding the proper scope of the right to religious freedom; and second, regarding the …

A Return To Lüth, Peter E. Quint

Faculty Scholarship

In the following brief essay, which is based on a paper delivered at the 2009 Annual Meeting of Americal Society of Comparative Law, the author revisits the Lüth case, one of the central decisions of German constitutional law.

A Realist Defense Of The Alien Tort Statute, Robert Knowles

Law Faculty Publications

This Article offers a new justification for modern litigation under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a provision from the 1789 Judiciary Act that permits victims of human rights violations anywhere in the world to sue tortfeasors in U.S. courts. The ATS, moribund for nearly 200 years, has recently emerged as an important but controversial tool for the enforcement of human rights norms. “Realist” critics contend that ATS litigation exasperates U.S. allies and rivals, weakens efforts to combat terrorism, and threatens U.S. sovereignty by importing into our jurisprudence undemocratic international law norms. Defenders of the statute, largely because they do not …

Balancing National Security And International Responsibility: The Immigration System’S Legal Duty To Asylees Fleeing Gang Violence In Central America, Margot Kniffin

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

No abstract provided.

Nuremberg And The Crime Of Abortion, Jeffrey C. Tuomala

Faculty Publications and Presentations

The crime of abortion played prominently in two international trials held at Nuremberg following World War II—the Goering and Greifelt cases. Allied prosecutors made the case that voluntary and involuntary abortion were war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Goering Judgment identified policies promoting abortion as activities marking the Political Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party as a Criminal Organization. The Greifelt Indictment charged ten defendants with voluntary and involuntary abortion. A focus of the prosecution’s case was the removal of the protection of law from unborn children in occupied Poland and racially non-valuable unborn children of Eastern workers in …

Asean And The Evolving State Of Human Rights, Hilary Stauffer

Social Space

What is it about human rights in Asia that has international governments so worked up? According to Hilary Stauffer, it is not necessarily about differences in culture and geography.

El Derecho Naturaly Ia Constitución De Los Estados Unidos = Natural Law And The United States Constitution, Robert S. Barker

Barker Papers

En la Declaración de lndependencia de los Estados U nidos, los Fundadores proclamaron su fe en Dios y en el Derecho Natural. Once años después, otro grupo de Fundadores se reunieron para diseñar un instrumento que fortaleciera la unión entre los Estados. Su obra -la Constitución de los Estados Unidos- es una aplicación práctica de los principios del Derecho Natural invocados en la Declaración de lndependencia.

El Derecho Natural de los Fundadores de la Constitución es el Derecho Natural clásico - tradicional de la civilización griega - romana - cristiana, basado en Dios, y no el Derecho Natural de …

Behrami V. France: An Unfortunate Step Backwards In The Protection Of Human Rights, Sadia R. Sorathia

Maryland Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

The Regulatory Turn In International Law, Jacob Katz Cogan

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In the post-War era, international law became a talisman for the protection of individuals from governmental abuse. Such was the success of this "humanization of international law" that by the 1990s human rights had become "part of... international political and legal culture." This Article argues that there has been an unnoticed contemporary counter trend -- the "regulatory turn in international law." Within the past two decades, states and international organizations have at an unprecedented rate entered into agreements, passed resolutions, enacted laws, and created institutions and networks, formal and informal, that impose and enforce direct and indirect international duties upon …

The Limits Of Constructivism: Can Rawls Condemn Female Genital Mutilation?, Andrew Koppelman

Faculty Working Papers

The strategy for coping with value pluralism that Rawls has proposed is to permit political decisions, at least with respect to basic rights, to depend only on those goods that can be inferred from the bare requirements of respectful relations between persons. His account offers such a parsimonious conception of the good that it cannot cognize some atrocities. I focus on one extreme human rights case: the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), which, it is well established, violates basic human rights. Doubtless Rawls was appalled by the practice. Yet his theory cannot generate a basis for condemning it. A …

Pakistan’S Failed Commitment: How Pakistan's Institutionalized Persecution Of The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Violates The International Covenant On Civil And Political Rights, Qasim Rashid

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

The United Nations (“UN”) adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”) in 1966 and officially implemented it in 1976 to ensure, among other guarantees, that no human is denied his or her right to equal voting, freedom of political association, due process of law, freedom of life, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is among 166 nations that have signed and ratified the ICCPR. Since signing the ICCPR in 2008 and ratifying it in 2010, however, Pakistan has perpetuated state-sanctioned and violent persecution of religious minority groups such …

Sent ‘Home’ With Nothing: The Deportation Of Jamaicans With Mental Disabilities, Georgetown University Law Center, Human Rights Institute

HRI Papers & Reports

No abstract provided.

The Niger Delta And Human Rights Lawsuits: A Search For The Optimal Legal Regime, Micaela L. Neal

Global Business & Development Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Transforming Students, Transforming Self: The Power Of Teaching Social Justice Struggles In Context, Raquel Aldana

Global Business & Development Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Human Right Of Sanitation For All: A Study Of India, Rebecca M. Coleman

Global Business & Development Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Better Than A Thousand Hollow Words Is One Word That Brings Peace: Enforcing Article 49(6) Of The Fourth Geneva Convention Against Israeli Settlements In The Occupied Palestinian Territory, Bianca Watts

Global Business & Development Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Building The International Criminal Court, Anita Usacka

Global Business & Development Law Journal

No abstract provided.