Human Rights Law Commons^™

The “Arab Spring” And Its Theoretical Significance: Samuel Huntington’S Theory, “The Clash Of Civilizations,” Revisited, Mahmoud "Max" Kashefi

Societies Without Borders

Using the characteristics and the demands of the recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa or so called “Arab Spring,” this study questions the significance of some propositions deduced from Huntington’ popular theory of “The Clash of Civilizations.” The research asserts that globalization, especially the development of new technology, has created opportunities for the new generations in the region to be acculturated with a set of values reflecting their basic civilian and human rights. The new values, while credited with the development in the West, belong to all human beings and are gaining the status of universal human …

Book Review, David R. Boyd, The Environmental Rights Revolution: A Global Study Of Constitutions, Human Rights, And The Environment, Bradford Mank, Suzanne Smith

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

David R. Boyd’s book entitled, The Environmental Rights Revolution: A Global Study of Constitutions, Human Rights, and the Environment, provides a comprehensive overview of nations that have incorporated the right to a healthy environment in their constitutions. Throughout his research, Boyd analyzes the effectiveness of environmental protection provisions in national constitutions and seeks to determine whether constitutional provisions guaranteeing the right to a healthy environment have measurable, positive effects on the environment. His wide-ranging compilation and analysis of environmental rights provisions in numerous countries is an important contribution to international human rights literature. Although Boyd explains that treating the right …

A Janus Look At International Criminal Justice, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Invoking the name of Janus, the Roman god who looked simultaneously at the past and the future, this article examines international criminal justice at a watershed moment, when a number of 20-year-old ad hoc tribunals were winding down even as the International Criminal Court was entering its teen years. First explored are challenges posed by politics – that is, the need to secure cooperation from states and from the U.N. Security Council – and economics – that is, the need to work within budgetary constraints. The article then surveys significant developments in each of a half-dozen international criminal courts and …

Food: A Human Rights Issue Ignored In Sociology, Kathryn Strother Ratcliff, Trisha Tiamzon

Societies Without Borders

Mainstream sociology, including the sociology of health, has been remiss by ignoring food as an important human right both in the United States and globally. This article documents the neglect of food as a topic of sociological inquiry and argues for the centrality of a sociological lens in understanding food as a human right. Sociological ideas are important in understanding forces which have encouraged the globalization of food production and distribution, decreased the equality of access to nutritious food, and threatened core human rights. Sociologists as teachers and researchers need to become academic activists on this important human rights topic.

Owning Justice And Reckoning With Its Complexity, Diane Orentlicher

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

A series of developments, both doctrinal and political, seem to signify a retreat from earlier innovations in the law and practice of international justice. On closer examination, however, recent developments in international justice cannot be reduced to a single trend line. Even as various actors and processes continue to work out the ground rules for exercising jurisdiction in respect of human rights violations that international law condemns as criminal, and as international and national courts work through the inherently challenging project of redressing mass atrocities, states have increasingly internalized, owned and acted on the principle that they should ensure accountability …

Pornography And The Connection To Commerical Sexual Exploitation, Cheryl Page

Journal Publications

Human Trafficking is a violation against humanity and a contradiction to the notion that all people are born free and have rights that are equal. 1 This global crime is a part of practically every country in the world. No nation is immune from its reaches. Every year thousands of women, men and children fall prey to human commercial exploitation and are trapped in a criminal enterprise that profits in the billions. Human trafficking is defined as, “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of …

United States V. Alvarez-Machain: Kidnapping In The "War On Drugs" - A Matter Of Executive Discretion Or Lawlessness?, Michael G. Mckinnon

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

An End To The Violence: Justifying Gender As A "Particular Social Group", Suzanne Sidun

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Interest-Balancing Vs. Fiduciary Duty: Two Models For National Security Law, Evan Fox-Decent, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of A New International System Of Justice In The United Nations: The First Sessions Of The United Nations Appeals Tribunal, Tamara A. Shockley

San Diego International Law Journal

In this overview of the new U.N. administration of justice system, a review has been undertaken of the evolution of the process from the former internal justice system to the development of the new administration of justice system. The Appeals Tribunal had a partially blank slate upon which to begin a new jurisprudence in international administrative law. In the first two sessions, the Appeals Tribunal decided upon a wide range of issues ranging from receivability, case management, disciplinary measures and pension cases. As the U.N. attempts to reform and streamline its bureaucratic structure for the 21st century, the judicial tribunals …

"El Agua No Se Vende: Water Is Not For Sale!" The Latin American Water Tribunal As A Model For Advancing Access To Water, Mikita A. Weaver

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

At the international level, water is now understood to be a basic human right. However, conflict continues to intensify surrounding indigenous people's access to water as the resource becomes scarcer. In particular, this paper will examine the struggle of indigenous people in Latin America and the creation of the Latin American Water Tribunal (LAWT) as a solution. Section II will describe the LAWT, including the formation of the tribunal, case selection, and the structure of the public hearing. Section III will discuss both how the LAWT overcomes problems with the current legal system and the success of the tribunal as …

Proportionality In Counterinsurgency: A Relational Theory, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

At a time when the United States has undertaken high-stakes counterinsurgency campaigns in at least three countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan) while offering support to insurgents in a fourth (Libya), it is striking that the international legal standards governing the use of force in counterinsurgency remain unsettled and deeply controversial. Some authorities have endorsed norms from international humanitarian law as lex specialis, while others have emphasized international human rights as minimum standards of care for counterinsurgency operations. This Article addresses the growing friction between international human rights and humanitarian law in counterinsurgency by developing a relational theory of the use …

What Does A Sociology Without Borders Look Like?, Tanya Golash-Boza

Societies Without Borders

In this essay, I consider what a sociology without borders would look like through an exploration of two questions: 1) How can sociology be mobilized to make the world a better place? and 2) What does a sociology of human rights look like? To answer these questions, I take the reader through a discussion of the history of Sociologists without Borders, the influence of Professor Judith Blau, and my own excursions into the sociology of human rights in the United States and abroad.

The Failures And Possibilities Of A Human Rights Approach To Secure Native American Women’S Reproductive Justice, Barbara Gurr

Societies Without Borders

This article has three purposes: the first is to bring to light current violations of Native American women’s basic right to health as these violations are produced by the federal government and imposed through the Indian Health Service. The second is to articulate the challenges of current human rights discourse in articulating and providing for Native Americans’ human rights within the United States. Third, this article offers a potential strategy for understanding and redressing the violation of Native women’s right to health through the rubric of reproductive justice. Drawing from over ten years of participant observation as well as semi-structured …

Challenges In Localizing Global Human Rights, Ranita Ray, Badana Purkayastha

Societies Without Borders

Drawing from ethnographic and historical data combined with document analysis, this article addresses two issues related to the mechanisms involved in localizing global human rights ideas: 1) the disharmony that may results when global ideas are concretized in the form of domestic laws and come in conflict with the ever shifting local rights consciousness and 2) the role of habitus in determining how human rights advocates respond to changing local rights consciousness. By examining the ways in which violence against women is addressed by a human rights commission in an Indian state, the disjuncture between local appropriations of global human …

Indirect Violence And Legitimation: Torture, Surrogacy, And The U.S. War On Terror, Eric Bonds

Societies Without Borders

This paper contributes to the sociological study of legitimation, specifically focusing on the state legitimation of torture and other forms of violence that violate international normative standards. While sociologists have identified important discursive techniques of legitimation, this paper suggests that researchers should also look at state practices where concerns regarding legitimacy are “built in” to the very practice of certain forms of violence. Specifically, the paper focuses on surrogacy, through which powerful states may direct or benefit from the violence carried out by client states or other armed groups while at the same time attempting to appear separate from and …

“American Exceptionalism”—On What End Of The Continuum?, Assem Hasnain, Josh King, Judith Blau

Societies Without Borders

This paper draws from global understandings about Human Rights, recasting them in terms of a sociological conception of the dimensions of a Decent Society. We pose our questions within the framework of American Exceptionalism, because the assumptions that underlie that term have never been empirically examined. Can we conclude on the basis of this analysis that America, when compared with other countries, advances human rights? No. Can we conclude on the basis of this analysis that America, when compared with other countries, is a Decent Society? No. Can we conclude on the basis of this empirical analysis that America, when …

Of Tools And Houses: Sociologists Without Borders And The Aaas Science And Human Rights Coalition, Bruce K. Friesen, Mark Frezzo, Brian K. Gran

Societies Without Borders

Sociologists Without Borders (SSF) has played a key role in the Science and Human Rights Coalition (SHRC) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This Coalition, which consists of nearly fifty scientific organizations, seeks to advance the human right to benefit from scientific progress and its application. This article critically evaluates SSF’s role in the SHRC. After providing background on the work, organization, and objectives of the Coalition, this article then elaborates on how sociologists, particularly representatives of the American Sociological Association and SSF, have collaborated with other scientists on various projects designed to implement this human right. …

To Be A Sociologist Without Borders, Judith Blau, Keri E. Iyall Smith

Societies Without Borders

In a conversation with Keri E. Iyall Smith, Judith R. Blau shares her thoughts on the early days of Sociologists Without Borders/Sociólogos Sin Fronteras (SSF). She explains the impetus for the organization and some of its early victories. She then describes her work today with the Human Rights Center (HRC), where members of Carrboro and Chapel Hill are working together to live the dream of human rights.

Communications Disruption And Censorship Under International Law: History Lessons, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

With Internet censorship on the rise around the world, a variety of tools have proliferated to assist Internet users to circumvent such censorship. However, there are few studies examining the implications of censorship circumvention under international law, and its related politics. This paper aims to help fill some of that void, with an examination of case studies wherein global communications technologies have been disrupted or censored — telegram cable cutting and censorship, high frequency radio jamming, and direct broadcast satellite blocking — and how the world community responded to that disruption or censorship through international law and law making. In …

Disposable Workers: Applying A Human Rights Framework To Analyze Duties Owed To Seriously Injured Or Ill Migrants, Lori A. Nessel

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The practice of medical repatriation, or the extrajudicial deportation of seriously ill immigrants directly by hospitals, was largely unknown and under-theorized until recently. In the past few years, a number of scholars have focused on the legal and ethical issues raised by this practice. However, medical repatriation has most often been analyzed in isolation as an example of an anomalous unlawful or unethical action undertaken by hospitals, rather than as a predictable, if horrifying, extension of a legal regime that treats migrant labor as disposable. In contrast, this Article contextualizes the private deportation of migrant workers by hospitals within broader …

Human Rights And The Elusive Universal Subject: Immigration Detention Under International Human Rights And Eu Law, Cathryn Costello

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The right to liberty is ubiquitous in human rights instruments, in essence protecting all individuals from arbitrary arrest and detention. Yet, in practice, immigration detention is increasingly routine, even automatic, across Europe. Asylum seekers in particular have been targeted for detention. While international human rights law limits detention, its protections against immigration detention are weaker than in other contexts, as the state's immigration control prerogatives are given sway. In spite of the overlapping authority of international and regional human rights bodies, the caselaw in this field is diverse. Focusing on the U.N. Human Rights Committee, the European Court of Human …

"The End Of The Beginning?": A Comprehensive Look At The U.N.'S Business And Human Rights Agenda From A Bystander Perspective, Jena Martin Amerson

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

With the endorsement of the Guiding Principles regarding the issue of business and human rights, an important chapter has come to a close. Beginning with the then U.N. Secretary-General’s “global compact” speech in 1999, the international legal framework for business and human rights has undergone tremendous change and progress. Yet, for all these developments, there has been no exhaustive examination in the legal academy of all of these events; certainly there is no one piece that discusses or analyzes all the major instruments that have been proposed and endorsed by the U.N. on the subject of business and its relationship …

How The Internet Is Used To Facilitate The Trafficking Of Humans As Sex Slaves, Cheryl Page

Journal Publications

Human trafficking is, sadly, a part of the fabric of the 21st century global community, but it has different goals than those of sex trafficking. One expert defines human trafficking as “‘an opportunistic response’ to the tension between the economic necessity to migrate . . . and the politically motivated restrictions on migration”. To give an idea of how widespread sex trafficking is, understand that it is now more profitable for criminals to sell women for sex than it is to sell drugs. Drugs are disposable and finite. Women can be resold over and over and over again. These “commodities” …

Jailing The Johns: The Issue Of Demand In Sex Trafficking, Cheryl Page

Journal Publications

Slavery is an institution that many people believe no longer exists. Slavery has not ended and there are millions of innocent victims caught in this system. This is not the slavery that was fought over in the U.S. Civil War. This form of slavery is not very different from colonial slavery-innocent people caught and trapped in this web of sex for service. Today, this form of slavery is better known as human trafficking. This is a brutal, heinous, and damaging situation that many women and children find themselves in as unwilling participants.' Most victims have little to no hope of …

Human Rights In The United States: Legal Aid Alleges That Denying Access To Migrant Labor Camps Is A Violation Of The Human Right To Access Justice, Reena Shah, Lauren Bartlett

All Faculty Scholarship

It is estimated that there are more than 86 million migrant workers worldwide, the vast majority of whom suffer poor living and working conditions. In the United States, more than 3 million migrant farmworkers, including at least 100,000 children, are estimated to labor in fields every year, many of whom lack access to justice, earn sub-living wages, and exist in dehumanizing circumstances. Farmworkers are among the most exploited and vulnerable populations in the United States; yet, distressingly, they are also the least protected by U.S. law and law enforcement.

Legal aid advocates in the United States attempt to raise awareness …

Divided We Stand: The Haudenosaunee, Their Passport And Legal Implications Of Their Recognition In Canada And The United States, Nicole Terese Capton Marques

San Diego International Law Journal

There are several indigenous nations divided by the international border between the U.S. and Canada (hereinafter, border tribes). Part II will provide historical background on the Haudenosaunee and the Haudenosaunee passport, as well as on the Jay Treaty's free passage right as recognition that the international border was not to affect border tribes. Part III of this comment will examine the trust-like duty both federal governments owe to indigenous populations in general, briefly describe benefits and services offered, and then discuss the legal effects of current legislation and regulations by the American and Canadian governments on Haudenosaunee tribal members living …

One Step Forward, But Two Steps Back: Why Gacaca In Rwanda Is Jeopardizing The Good Effect Of Akayesu On Women's Rights, Brittany A. Olwine

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

No abstract provided.

The District Of Columbia V. The 50 States: A 21st Century Lawsuit To Remedy An 18th Century Injustice, Timothy Cooper

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

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.