Human Rights Law Commons^™

The Persistent Nation State And The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Mark L. Movsesian

Cardozo Law Review

One hears a great deal these days about the decline of the nation state. The concept of a sovereign country whose inhabitants share a common ancestry or culture is said to be obsolescent, if not already obsolete. Several factors, apparently, are responsible: the creation of supranational institutions like the European Union and the World Trade Organization; the growing influence of nongovernmental organizations; the emergence of a new global economy; and the formation of a worldwide consumer culture, to name just a few. The law, it is argued, must adapt.

Abolitionist Feminism, Moral Slavery, And The Constitution: “On The Same Platform Of Human Rights”, David A.J. Richards

Cardozo Law Review

The analogy between race and gender plays an increasingly important role in the interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, interpretive arguments about the analogy make little or no reference to the abolitionist historical background of the Reconstruction Amendments in general and the Fourteenth Amendment in particular. This might make some sense if the only legitimate interpretive appeal to history were Raoul Berger's version of originalism, namely, the specific denoted things (including persons and practices) to which the relevant drafters and ratifiers of the pertinent constitutional text would or would not have applied the language in …

Native American Life Stories And "Authorship": Legal And Ethical Issues, Lenora P. Ledwon

Faculty Articles

Juridical discourse concerning life stories has been primarily concerned with property and contract issues, and categories such as "ownership" and "authorship." Such legal discourse generally fails to acknowledge the unique nature of Native American life stories, particularly when such stories are written in collaboration with a non-Native editor or transcriber. This essay focuses on one fundamental question with overlapping legal and ethical aspects: how does a non-Native collaborator avoid a colonizing relationship to Native American texts? In suggesting possible answers to this vexing question, I always have on the horizon of my mind's eye two figures-Emmanuel Levinas, the philosopher, and …

Comment On Guyora Binder, “The Slavery Of Emancipation”, Michael Les Benedict

Cardozo Law Review

When I first received Professor Binder's highly theoretical, speculative, and thought-provoking paper, I wondered whether I was the right person to comment upon it. Professor Binder has a philosophical turn of mind; he is at home in the world of Hegel. I am disoriented in territory more exotic than that of Locke. In the history department of the Ohio State University, I teach the course that introduces our graduate students to the philosophy of history. However, I have always considered that a cosmic practical jokeon my students more than me-cooked up by the shades of Hegel, Collingwood, and Croce.

Comment On Donald Nieman's Paper, Randall Kennedy

Cardozo Law Review

I have two responses to Professor Neiman's paper. One emphasizes a point he makes. The other disagrees a bit with his reading of the promise of Reconstruction.

Black Suffrage And The Redefinition Of American Freedom, 1860-1870, Xi Wang

Cardozo Law Review

One of the most important outcomes of the Civil War was the establishment of a new constitutional order. Under this new order, African Americans, a people whose essential human rights had been denied under the old constitutional order, were constitutionally emancipated from slavery and recognized as American citizens. They received the privileges and immunities that white Americans had automatically assumed. Male black Americans also received the right to vote. This new order, as embraced by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, was a truly remarkable achievement of Reconstruction. What is additionally significant is that these Amendments became …

The Slavery Of Emancipation, Guyora Binder

Cardozo Law Review

The Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution commands that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist." What has been the effect of this command?

It will serve my present purpose to offer the following toosimple answer to this complex question: the Thirteenth Amendment secured little more than the manumission of slaves already practically freed by the friction of war. It guaranteed, in Confederate General Robert Richardson's now well-known phrase, "nothing but freedom."

Supposing this answer to be true, a further question presents itself: Did the Thirteenth Amendment's effect fulfill its command? Did universal manumission abolish slavery?

A full answer to …

Jurgen Habermas’S Theory Of Legal Discourse, Robert Alexy

Cardozo Law Review

Jurgen Habermas's discourse theory of law attempts to show that the ideal contents of the discourse principle can be realized within the institutional frame of a legal system. The result is a theory of the democratic constitutional state whose basic idea is the association and self-determination of free and equal consociates under the law. This theory is far more than a mere application of discourse theory to the law. Discourse theory, on the one hand, demands the institutionalization of a legal system for reasons internal to the theory. On the other hand, the positive law remains dependent on discourse theory …

The Dynamics Of Constitutional Adjudication, Bernhard Schlink

Cardozo Law Review

Habermas determines the role and legitimacy of constitutional adjudication through three confrontations. First, he confronts both the liberal and the welfare-state paradigms of law, seeing constitutional adjudication move from the former to the latter. Habermas wants this move to arrive at a procedural paradigm of law. Second, he confronts a norm- and a value-oriented understanding of the constitution. Habermas indicates the dangers of the former and the merits of the latter, and attempts to show that principles, understood as norms, should guide constitutional adjudication. Third, he confronts the liberal and the republican views of the political and constitutional process, developing …

The United Kingdom, The European Court Of Human Rights, And Constitutional Review, A. W. Bradley

Cardozo Law Review

The aim of this Article is to consider whether there is now in the United Kingdom the embryo of a procedure for constitutional review that results from the United Kingdom's adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights as well as the burgeoning case law being developed by the European Court of Human Rights. To the extent that such an embryo exists, I hope to show that this is a development which has not been directly willed by the United Kingdom Parliament, nor by successive United Kingdom governments. Assuming that this process deserves to be described as piecemeal constitution making, …

The Merryman Power And The Dilemma Of Autonomous Executive Branch Interpretation, Michael Stokes Paulsen

Cardozo Law Review

Most everybody today concedes some degree of executive branch autonomy in the interpretation of federal law. The examples most frequently given of areas of executive interpretive autonomy involve situations where the President interprets the law incident to the exercise of those constitutional powers that are thought to be exclusively presidential (and thus unreviewable by the courts), such as the pardon and the veto. The President may grant a pardon (it is generally conceded) on legal grounds rejected by the courts. For example, he may issue a pardon based on his opinion that a conviction was unconstitutional, notwithstanding the judiciary's contrary …

The United Nations And Human Rights And The Contribution Of The American Bill Of Rights, Jan Martenson

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Open Justice In A Closed Legal System?, Bernhard Schlink

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Whose Womb Is It Anyway: Are Paternal Rights Alive And Well Despite Danforth?, Ruth H. Axelrod

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Monroe E. Price

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Freedom Of Speech And Holocaust Denial, Gerald Tishler

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.