Human Rights Law Commons^™

The Interdependence Of Racial Justice And Free Speech For Racists, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Taking Exception To Assessments Of American Exceptionalism: Why The United States Isn't Such An Outlier On Free Speech, Evelyn Aswad

Faculty Articles

One of the most significant challenges to human freedom in the digital age involves the sheer power of private companies over speech and the fact that power is untethered to existing free speech principles. Heated debates are ongoing about what standards social media companies should adopt to regulate speech on their platforms. Some have argued that global social media companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, should align their speech codes with the international human rights law standards of the United Nations (“U.N.”). Others have countered that U.S.-based companies should apply First Amendment standards. Much of this debate is premised on …

Trade, Economy, And Work: A Shared Agenda For A Stronger Economic Future, Alvaro Santos, Christopher Wilson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The economies of the United States and Mexico have become inextricably linked. For both countries, the other is their top trading partner, with an annual value of $616.38 billion in 2019. Beyond cross-border trade, however, our global competitiveness is linked due to the depth of manufacturing integration. As a result, job creation and export growth are largely regional enterprises. Well over a billion dollars in commerce crosses the border each day, and the GDP of the six Mexican and four U.S. border states is larger than the GDP of all but the three largest countries in the world.

The new …

Closing International Law's Innocence Gap, Brandon L. Garrett, Laurence R. Helfer, Jayne C. Huckerby

Faculty Scholarship

Over the last decade, a growing number of countries have adopted new laws and other mechanisms to address a gap in national criminal legal systems: the absence of meaningful procedures to raise post-conviction claims of factual innocence. These legal and policy reforms have responded to a global surge of exonerations facilitated by the growth of national innocence organizations that increasingly collaborate across borders. It is striking that these developments have occurred with little direct help from international law. Although many treaties recognize extensive fair trial and appeal rights, no international human rights instrument—in its text, existing interpretation, or implementation—explicitly and …

Seeking Economic Justice In The Face Of Enduring Racism, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Reckoning: Dialogue About Racism, Antiracists, And Business & Human Rights, Erika George, Jena Martin, Tara Van Ho

Faculty Articles

Video of George Floyd's death sparked global demonstrations and prompted individuals, communities and institutions to grapple with their own roles in embedding and perpetuating racist structures. The raison d'tre of Business and Human Rights (BHR) is to tackle structural corporate impediments to the universal realization of human rights. Yet, racism, one of the most obvious of such barriers, has been a blind spot for BHR. While the field has contended with gender inequality, there have only been tokenistic nods to intersectional harms caused by business activities. The failure to address racism seriously undermines both the promise of BHR generally and …

The Role Of Lawyers In Bridging The Gap Between The Robust Federal Rights To Education And Relatively Low Education Outcomes In Guatemala, Maryam Ahranjani

Faculty Scholarship

Relative to other countries in the world and in Central America, the Guatemalan Constitution and the federal education law include a robust and detailed right to education. However, literacy rates and secondary educational attainment, particularly for Indigenous people and young women living in rural communities, remain low. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated disparities. Once children return to schools after the pandemic, the gaps will be even larger. Lawyers can play a critical role in making the strong Constitutional right to education more meaningful.

Defining The Relationships: "Cause, Contribute, And Directly Linked To" In The Un Guiding Principles On Business And Human Rights, Tara Van Ho

Faculty Articles

According to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, businesses owe remediation when they "cause" or "contribute to" a human rights impact, but not when they are only "directly linked to" it. These terms determine when a victim is entitled to seek remediation from a business, but they have largely been ignored in existing scholarship. This article investigates the meaning of "cause, contribute, and directly linked to", revealing confusion and uncertainty before proposing a new system, built on existing authoritative guidance, for interpreting the terms and determining when businesses owe remediation for their human rights impacts.

The Right To Feast And Festivals, Juan C. Riofrio

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Festive behavior is a basic characteristic of human life, as evidenced from ancient times. Humans need to use ceremony and ritual in specific places and times to mark their triumphs, joys, and sorrows. However, some categories of individuals are harmed because they cannot celebrate the most important highlights of their lives through such festive feasts: prisoners, mariners at sea, soldiers on the frontlines, workers subject to the pressures of ungenerous employers, towns occupied by oppressive invaders, and impoverished individuals who cannot afford customary celebrations, among others. When feasts and festivals are restricted, societies lose well-being, communities lose identity, and individuals …

Media Freedom And Technological Change, Vivek Krishnamurthy, Mark Latonero, Rachel Kuchma, Elif Nur Kumru, Geneviève Plumptre

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Law Of Ai, Margot Kaminski

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Right To Contest Ai, Margot E. Kaminski, Jennifer M. Urban

Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used to make important decisions, from university admissions selections to loan determinations to the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. These uses of AI raise a host of concerns about discrimination, accuracy, fairness, and accountability.

In the United States, recent proposals for regulating AI focus largely on ex ante and systemic governance. This Article argues instead—or really, in addition—for an individual right to contest AI decisions, modeled on due process but adapted for the digital age. The European Union, in fact, recognizes such a right, and a growing number of institutions around the world now call for …

Algorithmic Impact Assessments Under The Gdpr: Producing Multi-Layered Explanations, Margot E. Kaminski, Gianclaudio Malgieri

Publications

Policy-makers, scholars, and commentators are increasingly concerned with the risks of using profiling algorithms and automated decision-making. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has tried to address these concerns through an array of regulatory tools. As one of us has argued, the GDPR combines individual rights with systemic governance, towards algorithmic accountability. The individual tools are largely geared towards individual “legibility”: making the decision-making system understandable to an individual invoking her rights. The systemic governance tools, instead, focus on bringing expertise and oversight into the system as a whole, and rely on the tactics of “collaborative governance,” that is, …

Indigenous Peoples And Diplomacy On The World Stage, Kristen Carpenter, Alexey Tsykarev

Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Symposium On The Impact Of Indigenous Peoples On International Law, S. James Anaya, Antony Anghie

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Prolegomenon To The Study Of Racial Ideology In The Era Of International Human Rights, Justin Deystone

Publications

There is no critical race approach to international law. There are Third World approaches, feminist approaches, economic approaches, and constitutional approaches, but notably absent in the catalogue is a distinct view of international law that takes its point of departure from the vantage of Critical Race Theory (CRT), or anything like it. Through a study of racial ideology in the history of international legal thought, this Article offers the beginnings of an explanation for how this lack of attention to race and racism came to be, and why it matters today.

Living The Sacred: Indigenous Peoples And Religious Freedom, Kristen A. Carpenter

Publications

No abstract provided.