Human Rights Law Commons^™

Between Idealism And Realism: A Few Comparative Reflections And Proposals On The Appointment Process Of The Inter-American Commission And Court Of Human Rights Members, Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

In this Article, Professor Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen, a renowned scholar in European and Latin-American law, explores flaws in the process by which members are appointed to the Inter-American Commission and Court of human rights, respectively. Seeking to strike a balance between "Idealism" and "Realism," Burgorgue-Larsen seeks methods for improving the independence and impartiality of the Commissioners and Judges in the Inter-American system in the hopes of ultimately lending greater credibility and legitimacy to the system as a whole. Drawing comparisons to the appointment of judges on national and international courts worldwide, Burgorgue-Larsen ultimately produces specific suggestions for improving the appointment process, …

Death Penalty, Amnesty Laws, And Forced Disappearances: Three Main Topics Of The Inter-American Corpus Juris In Criminal Law, Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor, Pablo GonzáLez DomíNguez

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

In this Article, Judge Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and International Human Rights Researcher Pablo González Domínguez explore three of the richest and most contentious areas of the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: death penalty cases, amnesty law, and cased regarding forced disappearance. These topics encompass some of the most pressing human rights issues in the Inter-American System. For each topic, Ferrer Mac-Gregor and González Domínguez provide a succinct but comprehensive view of the Inter-American Court's jurisprudence, discuss the ways in which the core principles of this jurisprudence have been applied in …

Between Protection And Punishment: The Irregular Arrival Regime In Canadian Refugee Law, Efrat Arbel

All Faculty Publications

This chapter questions the Canadian border’s reconstitution as a site of punishment for refugee claimants by examining the Designated Foreign National (DFN) regime, which permits the Canadian government to discipline foreign nationals for suspected violations of Canadian border laws by subjecting them to penalties that are formally classified as administrative, but amount to de facto punishment. These include mandatory arrest and detention, as well as compulsory reporting and ongoing document inspection. In this chapter, I examine the operation of the DFN regime in relation to other border measures, focusing specifically on the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement. I argue that …

First Amendment Right To Record Police: When Clearly Established Is Not Clear Enough, 49 J. Marshall L. Rev. 101 (2015), Matthew Slaughter

UIC Law Review

First Amendment jurisprudence supports the recognized right to film police activity as articulated by the circuits. Some commenting circuits have held the right is clearly established, while others have declined to extend their holdings so far. Practically, citizens are restrained from freely exercising their right to film police activity in public even in circuits that have found the right clearly established. Because reasonable restrictions have not yet been clearly articulated, such uncertainty will inevitably lead to a chilling effect on the otherwise protected activity. A national standard should affirmatively memorialize such a right, as well as articulate objective reasonable restrictions …

National Insecurity: The National Defense Authorization Act, The Indefinite Detention Of American Citizens, And A Call For Heightened Judicial Scrutiny, 49 J. Marshall L. Rev. 69 (2015), Harvey Gee

UIC Law Review

This essay outlines the problems posed by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (“NDAA”) and interprets the Act’s language to answer the question of: whether American citizens can be indefinitely detained under the NDAA?

Sexual Assault And Rape In The Military: The Invisible Victims Of International Gender Crimes At The Front Lines, Stella Cernak

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In the past several years in particular, intra-military sexual assault and rape in the U.S. armed forces have been the focus of frequent media attention and intense congressional debate. Despite reforms, the rate of intra-military sexual crimes continues to remain high, as does soldiers’ wariness to report instances of sexual violence to military commanders. These problems and others have invigorated the position taken by some that outside judicial review of intra- military sexual crimes is necessary to provide justice to victims and lower the rate of intra-military sexual assault and rape. This Note argues that one of the primary contributors …

Recognizing "Access To Information" As A Basic Human Right: A Necessary Step In Enforcing Human Rights Provisions Within Free Trade Agreements, Brittany Grasmick

Loyola University Chicago International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Immigration Policy And The Rhetoric Of Reform: “Deport Felons, Not Families,” Moncrieffe V. Holder, Children At The Border, And Idle Promises, Terri R. Day, Leticia M. Diaz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Adopting An International Convention On Surrogacy—A Lesson From Intercountry Adoption, Seema Mohapatra

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mexico, T. Matthew Hansen, Eduardo Isaias Riviera Rodriguez, Alonso Gonzalez-Villalobos, Paulina Aguilar Cervantes, Michell Nader, Jose Sifuentes, Garardo Calderon-Villegas, Isaac Shefer, Stefano De Luca, Maria Cadelaria Pelayo Torres, Evangelina Flores Preciado, Alicia Vicente Rodriguez, Maria Erika Cardenas Briseno, Juan Pablo Venegas Contreras

The International Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Data Breach (Regulatory) Effects, David Thaw

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

Breach notification laws have been a major driver of data protection efforts in U.S. organizations for more than a decade. This form of disclosure-based regulation exists in 47 of 50 U.S. states, as well as four other U.S. jurisdictions, but has yet to be adopted as a law of general applicability at the federal level.

This Essay considers the effects the structure of existing disclosure-based cybersecurity regulation has on the efficacy of U.S. firms’ cybersecurity measures. Drawing on previous empirical work and analysis of firm incentives, it suggests two modest conclusions about the most efficacious legal structures: (1) that any …

United States V. George Tenet: A Federal Indictment For Torture, William J. Aceves

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses the absence of accountability for torture in the War on Terror. Part II examines the U.S. obligation under international law to investigate and prosecute acts of torture regardless of where such acts occurred. It also reviews the domestic legislation that implements this international obligation. Adopted by Congress to implement the Convention against Torture, the Torture Statute (18 U.S.C. § 2340A) establishes criminal liability for torture committed outside the United States. Part III then reviews the first and only case ever brought under the Torture Statute. Roy Belfast, Jr., a U.S. citizen, was prosecuted and subsequently convicted in …

Prosecutorial Discretion In The Investigation And Prosecution Of Massive Human Rights Violations: Lessons From The Argentine Experience, Mariano Gaitan

American University International Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Three C'S Of Jurisdiction Over Human Rights Claims In U.S. Courts, Chimène I. Keitner

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The legal aftermath of the Holocaust continues to unfold in U.S. courts. Most recently, the Seventh Circuit dismissed claims against the Hungarian national railway and Hungarian national bank for World War II-era crimes against Hungarian Jews on the grounds that the plaintiffs had not exhausted available local remedies in Hungary or provided a “legally compelling” reason for not doing so. More broadly, heated debates about the role of U.S. courts in enforcing international human rights law have not abated since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., which restricted but did not eliminate federal …

The Impact Of Obergefell: Tradition Marriage's New Lease On Life, David Pimentel

Articles

The Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in June 2015 provided a dramatic turn in America's ongoing debate over same-sex marriage. Justice Kennedy's opinion speaks in emotionally evocative terms about the compelling societal and personal significance of marriage, holding that the right to marry is a fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment, a right that extends to same-sex couples. Justice Kennedy's rhetoric about the importance of marriage is noteworthy, even curious, given marriage's steady decline over the past 50 years. Just when it seemed that marriage was losing its significance in our society-because marriages are more easily ended, because …

Feminist Rule Of Law Reform And Health Impact Of Legal Systems Premised On Women As Communal Gauges Of Honor, Tzili Mor

University of Baltimore Law Review

Gender equality is touted as key for sustainable development, improved public health, decreased poverty, and robust democratic systems. Yet despite growing interest by international bodies and national governments, the "gendering" of rule of law reform has received limited critical attention. This Article argues that transformative gendered rule of law reform requires holistic and intersectional analysis of the domestic legal landscape that genuinely accounts for lived experiences. Using Jordan as a case study, it critiques the short-sighted and perhaps harmful "technical" feminist law reform efforts of calling for repeal of isolated provisions related to sensational "honor killings." As in many countries, …

Producing Better Mileage: Advancing The Design And Usefulness Of Hybrid Vehicles For Social Business Ventures, John E. Tyler, Evan Absher, Kathleen Garman, Anthony J. Luppino

Faculty Works

Since 2008 approximately half of the states in the U.S. have enacted statutes permitting “hybrid” business forms that blend aspects of traditional for-profit ventures with characteristics normally associated with traditional non-profit entities. This article analyzes theoretical, academic, practical, legal, and regulatory questions regarding the extent to which the existing hybrids are suited to achieving social purposes objectives, including in comparison to modified traditional forms of business organization. Finding the current fleet of hybrids an innovative, useful start, but with need to evolve, this article proposes statutory language (set forth in a detailed appendix, and summarized in the article text), and …

Thinking Globally, Policing Locally: A Model For Decentralized Law Enforcement In Cote D'Ivoire, 15 J. Int'l Bus. & L. 15 (2015), Hugh Mundy

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Believable Victims: Asylum Credibility And The Struggle For Objectivity, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

Asylum adjudication is often the invisible frontline in the struggle by oppressed groups to gain recognition for their plights. Through this process, individual people must tell their stories and try to show that they are genuine victims of persecution rather than simply illegal immigrants attempting to slip through the system. In 2002, because the world had not yet acknowledged the nature of the calamity from which they were escaping, many Darfurian asylum cases would have relied on the ability of each individual to convince government offices to believe their stories. They would have had to be deemed “credible,” or they …

Immigrant Victims, Immigrant Accusers, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

The U Visa program provides an immigration status to noncitizen victims of crime, which is essential to prevent unauthorized immigrants from being afraid to seek help from the police, and thus becoming easy prey for criminals. This visa falls into a category of immigration programs that grant benefits on the basis of victim status, rather than on family or employment connections to the United States. But the federal government structured the U Visa program so that in order to be protected as a victim, a person must also become an accuser. The U Visa thus implicates the rights of third …

Corporate Social Responsibility Versus Business And Human Rights: Bridging The Gap Between Responsibility And Accountability, Anita Ramasastry

Articles

This article explores the evolution of business and human rights (BHR) from a lawyer’s perspective and examines how it is contextually and conceptually different from corporate social responsibility (CSR) in its aims and ambitions. While CSR emphasizes responsible behavior, BHR focuses on a more delineated commitment in the area of human rights. BHR is, in part, a response to CSR and its perceived failure. This has led to a gap with two disciplines or strands of discourse that are diverging rather than converging. This article explores how the quest for accountability shapes a very different narrative for BHR, which takes …

White Paper: Options For A Treaty On Business And Human Rights, Anita Ramasastry, Douglass Cassell

Articles

The United Nations Human Rights Council decided in June 2014 to establish an Intergovernmental Working Group to “elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.” The first meeting of the Working Group took take place in Geneva in July 2015. The Council did not further specify what sort of instrument should be drafted. The Center for Human Rights of the American Bar Association and the Law Society of England and Wales asked the present authors to prepare a “White Paper” on possible options for a treaty …

Economic Migration Gone Wrong: Trafficking In Persons Through The Lens Of Gender, Labor, And Globalization, Dana Raigrodski

Articles

This Article argues for an economic analysis of human trafficking which primarily looks at globalization, trade liberalization, and labor migration as the core areas that need to be explored to advance the prevention of human trafficking.

Part I briefly examines the prevailing criminal law enforcement framework regarding human trafficking—both at the international level and in the United States—which stems out of viewing human trafficking as primarily a threat to global security and an underground industry of transnational criminal enterprises. It argues that while criminalization no doubt helped bring much needed attention (and resources) to human trafficking, the narrow criminal law …

Law Enforcement And White Power: An F.B.I. Report Unraveled, 41 T. Marshall L. Rev. 103 (2015), Samuel Vincent Jones

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Because of intensifying civil strife over the recent killings of unarmed Black men, women, and boys, many Americans are wondering, “What's wrong with our police?” Remarkably, one of the most compelling but unexplored explanations may rest with an FBI warning of October, 2006, which reported that “[W]hite supremacist infiltration of law enforcement” represented a significant national threat.

Mental Health Functioning In The Human Rights Field: Findings From An International Internet-Based Survey, Amy Joscelyne, Sarah Knuckey, Margaret Satterthwaite, Richard A. Bryant, Meng Li, Meng Quian, Adam D. Brown

Faculty Scholarship

Human rights advocates play a critical role in promoting respect for human rights world-wide, and engage in a broad range of strategies, including documentation of rights violations, monitoring, press work and report-writing, advocacy, and litigation. However, little is known about the impact of human rights work on the mental health of human rights advocates. This study examined the mental health profile of human rights advocates and risk factors associated with their psychological functioning. 346 individuals currently or previously working in the field of human rights completed an internet-based survey regarding trauma exposure, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), resilience and occupational …

For The Love Of Drugs: Using Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials Abroad To Profit Off The Poor, Breanne M. Schuster

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

No Refuge: Hungarian Romani Refugee Claimants In Canada, Julianna Beaudoin, Jennifer Danch, Sean Rehaag

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

From 2008 to 2012, large numbers of Hungarian Romani refugee claimants came to Canada. Their arrival was controversial. Some political actors suggested that their claims were unfounded and amounted to abuse of Canada’s refugee processes -- abuse which could only be prevented through wide-scale reforms to the refugee determination system. Many advocates for refugees, by contrast, argued that persecution against Roma was rampant in Hungary and noted that hundreds of Hungarians had been recognized as refugees in Canada. Some went further and contended that Romani refugee claimants fled persecution in Hungary only to be confronted with similar mistreatment in Canada. …

Climate Change And Human Rights: How? Where? When?, Basil E. Ugochukwu

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

Climate change poses a threat to several internationally recognized human rights, including the rights to food, a livelihood, health, a healthy environment, access to water and the rights to work and to cultural life. Actions taken to mitigate and adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change have to be centred on human rights. In negotiations for a binding international climate change instrument, nation states have been called upon to fully respect human rights in all climate-related actions. As important as this demand is, there is also the need to describe and plan how human rights can be integrated into …

Ending Homelessness: Building Not Only Homes But Relationships Of Respect, Janet Mosher

Commissioned Reports, Studies and Public Policy Documents

No abstract provided.

Cherokee Freedmen And The Color Of Belonging, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article addresses the Cherokee Nation and its historic conflict with the descendants of its former black slaves, designated Cherokee Freedmen. This Article specifically addresses how historic discussions of black, red, and white skin colors, designating the African-ancestored, aboriginal (Native American), and European-ancestored people of the United States have helped to shape the contours of color-based national belonging among the Cherokee. The Cherokee past practice of black slavery and the past and continuing use of skin color-coded belonging not only undermines the coherence of Cherokee sovereignty, identity, and belonging but also problematizes the notion of an explicitly aboriginal way of …