Human Rights Law Commons^™

Gender Violence And The Human Rights Of Women In Cuba, Leila Hamouie

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Harry Potter And The Gluttonous Machine, Jason A. Beckett

Faculty Journal Articles

In this paper, I outline the colonial structure of international law, and examine the short decline or suppression of its coloniality in the so-called ‘era of decolonisation’, then illustrate its resurgence in the modern neo-colonial order. PIL has split into two separate systems. One includes, and is justified by, the heroic tales of human rights and ‘Humanity’s Law’. The other is the actualised system of International Economic Law (IEL), an order driven by the need of the over-developed states to plunder the under-developed states’ resources and labour, to subsidise the luxury to which we have grown accustomed. One purports to …

The Deceptive Dyad: How Falseness Structures International Law, Jason A. Beckett

Faculty Journal Articles

Public International Law (PIL) is portrayed as an autonomous and tolerably just legal system. A determinable system of rules and principles, deployed by professionals to evaluate and constrain the global machinations of power politics. Law as an authoritative structure through which global justice can be pursued. This entrenches a comforting, but false, progress narrative; and obscures the limitations of pursuing progressive change through international law. PIL is structured by false necessity and false contingency. These interact to create the Deceptive Dyad, which disguises the radical indeterminacy of PIL. PIL’s purported demands, however meticulously crafted, do not effect change in the …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents.

Wrongful Extradition: Reforming The Committal Phase Of Canada’S Extradition Law, Robert Currie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

There has recently been an upswing in interest around extradition in Canada, particularly in light of the high-profile and troubling case of Hassan Diab who was extradited to France on the basis of what turned out to be an ill-founded case. Diab’s case highlights some of the problems with Canada’s Extradition Act and proceedings thereunder. This paper argues that the “committal stage” of extradition proceedings, involving a judicial hearing into the basis of the requesting state’s case, is unfair and may not be compliant with the Charter and that the manner in which the Crown conducts these proceedings contributes to …

Humanity Constrains Loyalty: Fiduciary Duty, Human Rights, And The Corporate Decision Maker, Malcolm Rogge

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

This article considers whether the values contained within the idea of human rights have normative priority over economic values as they are inscribed in shareholder-oriented interpretations of the duty of loyalty in corporate law. While stakeholder theorists have sought to expand the ambit of the fiduciary duty—arguing generally that corporate fiduciary law permits managers to take into account a broad range of stakeholder interests—this article shifts the frame of analysis: It proposes that the range of corporate fiduciary loyalty is constrained by human rights as normative values that are distinct from the strictly economic values that are given primacy in …

Nature's Rights, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Do forests and rivers possess standing to sue? Do mountain ranges have substantive rights? A recent issue of The Judges’ Journal, a preeminent publication for American judges, alerts the bench, bar, and policymakers to the rapidly emerging “rights of nature,” predicting that state and federal courts will increasingly see claims asserting such rights. Within the United States, Tribal law has begun to legally recognize the rights of rivers, mountains, and other natural features. Several municipalities across the United States have also acted to recognize the rights of nature. United States courts have not yet addressed the issue, though in 2017, …

Traffickers' "F"Ing Behavior During A Pandemic: Why Pandemic Online Behavior Has Heightened The Urgency To Prevent Traffickers From Finding, Friending, And Facilitating The Exploitation Of Youth Via Social Media, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

During the trans-Atlantic slave trade, millions of native Africans were tricked into slavery. Today trans-continental deception continues, ensnaring victims from every corner of the world, many of whom are vulnerable children deceived and enslaved through violence and abuse. Ranked as the second most prevalent criminal enterprise, human trafficking is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise in the United States and across the world, with many of the victims recruited, solicited and exploited via social media. The correlation between this social media exploitation and the use of technology during the 2020 pandemic (hereinafter referred to as "Pandemic Online Behavior" or "POB") highlights the need …

Investors As International Law Intermediaries: Using Shareholder Proposals To Enforce Human Rights, Kishanthi Parella

Seattle University Law Review

One of the biggest challenges with international law remains its enforcement. This challenge grows when it comes to enforcing international law norms against corporations and other business organizations. The United Nations Guiding Principles recognizes the “corporate responsibility to respect human rights,” which includes human rights due diligence practices that are adequate for “assessing actual and potential human rights impacts, integrating and acting upon the findings, tracking responses, and communicating how impacts are addressed.” Unfortunately, many corporations around the world are failing to implement adequate human rights due diligence practices in their supply chains. This inattention leads to significant harms for …

Amicus Brief By Amnesty International And Others, Mark Gibney, Gamze Erdem Türkelli, Ashfaq Khalfan, Paula Litvachky, Ana María Suárez Franco, Sara L. Seck, Sigrun Skogly, Nicolás Carrillo-Santarelli, Jernej Letnar Černič, Tom Mulisa, Nicholas Orago, Wouter Vandenhole, Jingjing Zhang

Reports & Public Policy Documents

On September 2, 2020, six Portuguese youth filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights against 33 countries. The complaint alleges that the respondents have violated human rights by failing to take sufficient action on climate change, and seeks an order requiring them to take more ambitious action.

The complaint relies on Articles 2, 8, and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protect the right to life, right to privacy, and right to not experience discrimination. The complainants claim that their right to life is threatened by the effects of climate change in Portugal such …

Populist Nationalism Threatens Health And Human Rights In The Covid-19 Response, Caitlin R. Williams, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Benjamin Mason Meier

Articles

COVID-19 demands international cooperation, yet populist nationalism is resurgent, threatening public health, human rights, and global governance. In responding to the pandemic, populist nationalism and global solidarity represent distinct paths, with enduring consequences for health and human rights.

Human Rights And The Rule Of Law: Implications For Canada-China Relations, Pitman B. Potter

All Faculty Publications

China’s rise to prosperity has seen increased tension with international standards of human rights and the rule of law such that, after a lengthy period of tentative engagement China has more recently worked to change international standards to accommodate its interests. China’s approach to human rights and the rule of law has significant implications for Canada, not only for our bilateral relations but also in terms of the impacts on international institutions that are of vital interest to Canada. In response, Canada should pursue a program of selective engagement, that combines attention to China’s abuses of human rights and the …

Toward A Theory Of Intercountry Human Rights: Global Capitalism And The Rise And Fall Of Intercountry Adoption, Barbara Stark

Indiana Law Journal

This Article proposes another mechanism for enforcement, an alternative to self-serving domestic policing and weak international bureaucracy. “Intercountry,” as opposed to “international,” human rights would apply to specific rights in specific contexts and be enforceable through the legal mechanisms and other resources of the state parties that accepted them. Intercountry adoption is a useful context in which to consider this proposal for several reasons.

First, as a practical matter, there have probably never been more babies and children in orphanages, on the street, on the market, or on their own. Yet intercountry adoptions have declined to levels not seen for …

Revisiting Individual Rights And Personal Responsibilities Amid Covid-19, Christie S. Warren

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Authority And The Globalisation Of Inclusion And Exclusion: Author Meets Readers, Hand Lindahl, Christine Bell Prof, Friedrich Kratochwil, Hans-W. Micklitz, Carlos Thiebaut, Bert Van Roermund

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Authority is written against the background of intense resistance to globalization processes by a range of political movements and grassroots organizations. These processes are complex and have a variety of dimensions. One of these is the emergence of global legal orders, which I define, in a rough and ready manner, as relatively autonomous legal orders that claim or aspire to claim global validity for themselves. They too-most obviously the World Trade Organization (WTO)-are the butt of resistance. Whatever its forms and aspirations, resistance to globalization is fueled by their peculiar dynamic. Indeed, emergent global legal orders spawn massive exclusion when …

Finding International Law In Private Governance: How Codes Of Conduct In The Apparel Industry Refer To International Instruments, Phillip Paiement, Sophie Melchers

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Multinational enterprises increasingly use Codes of Conduct to govern the conditions of labor and production among their suppliers' operations around the globe. These Codes of Conduct, produced unilaterally by companies as well as by multi-stakeholder bodies, often include references to public international law instruments. This article takes a closer look at thirty-eight Codes of Conduct from the global apparel industry and uses social network analysis to identify the patterns in these Codes and how they refer to international legal instruments. Although some international legal instruments stipulate rules that can be directly transposed into the private context of supply chains, this …

The Political Economy Of Nigeria’S Digital Tax Experiment, Okanga Ogbu Okanga

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In January 2020 when I first read Nigeria’s Finance Act 2019, one of the instinctive questions that came to me was “is Nigeria serious about taxing digital trade now”? There were a few reasons for this skepticism. First, the Act seeks to tax nonresident companies (NRCs) that have a “significant economic presence” (SEP) in Nigeria but then delegates the definition of that pivotal phrase. Second, I questioned how Nigeria can enforce/administer this unilateral tax, which is payable by companies outside its borders. Third, I imagined that Nigeria’s unilateral attempt to tax digital trade could undermine relations with a strategic …

The Bumpy Road Of Home States’ Regulation Of Globalized Businesses—Legal And Institutional Disruptions To Supply Chain Disclosure Under The Modern Slavery Act, Shuangge Wen, Jingchen Zhao

Catholic University Law Review

In response to the paradigm shift from territorial corporations to global businesses and supply chains, states are increasingly engaging in regulating extraterritorial business activities, supply chain disclosure regulation being a primary example. Much ink has thus far spilled on the intrinsic doctrinal and conceptual aspects of this regulatory approach, with its interactions to the external regulatory and institutional environment far less considered. This article seeks to correct the scholarly imbalance by critically examining how s.54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act (MSA) – a prominent attempt among state-level initiatives designed to promote human rights protection within global supply chains – …

Taxation And Business: The Human Rights Dimension Of Corporate Tax Practices, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

If we want to narrow the North-South divide that threatens our world, some limits on tax competition are inevitable. The world faces a crucial choice in the 2020s. We can either continue retreating from globalization in favor of xenophobic nationalism, tariffs, immigration restrictions, and exchange controls. That road leads ultimately to war, as it did in the 1930s. Or we can revive globalization by investing in a robust social safety net, infrastructure, education, and job creation. While more needs to be done, we have made significant progress in curbing tax competition in the last decade. The key move now is …

Towards A Transnational Critical Race Theory In Education: Proposing Critical Race Third World Approaches To Education Policy, Steven L. Nelson

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

Scholars have applied Critical Race Theory in both domestic and international contexts; however, a theory on the transnational role of race and racism in education policy has not emerged. In this Article, I borrow from the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) to formulate Critical Race Third World Approaches to Education Policy (TWAEPCrit). In constructing this theory, I argue that Black Americans are in practice and lived experience treated as third world citizens, even as they reside in the United States. I prove the third world status of Black peoples in the …

The Right To Access To Justice: Its Conceptual Architecture, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The aim of this article is descriptive and analytical, rather than normative. This article aims to contribute to the current understanding of the ways in which modern legal consciousness builds, and is built by, the concept of access to justice. This concept, as part of the web of meanings that structures modern legal culture, provides the context in which modern subjects make sense of who they are and how they should interact with the world around them. This article examines the subjectivities, conceptual geographies, and interpretations of history created by the right to access to justice. It also examines a …

Public Law, Precarity, And Access To Justice, Amnon Lev

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In the first part, I examine Thomas Hobbes' theory of commonwealth to see how it situates subjects in relation to justice. Hobbes famously founds his commonwealth on the equal subjection of all to the Leviathan, which is the equal subjection of all to law. We need to understand why he nevertheless needs to accommodate the diversity of society-the basic fact that some are weak while others are not-into the operation of the public law machine. As we shall see, the accommodation of social diversity is tied to a proto-liberal distinction between social spheres that relegates much of human life to …

Disabling Solitary: An Anti-Carceral Critique Of Canada's Solitary Confinement Litigation, Sheila Wildeman

Research Papers, Working Papers, Conference Papers

The title of this chapter signifies at least three things. The first is the disabling effects of solitary confinement. The second is recent efforts of prison justice advocates in Canada to use law, or specifically litigation, to disable the logic of solitary confinement: to disrupt that logic through the logic of human rights. The third, most oblique reference, and one I develop here, speaks to dangers presented by the path Canada’s solitary confinement litigation has taken: a path of isolating disability-based prison justice claims from the wider ambitions of intersectional substantive equality. My thesis is that this isolation of disability …

Trade Secrets And The Right To Information: A Comparative Analysis Of E.U. And U.S. Approaches To Freedom Of Expression And Whistleblowing, Sharon Sandeen, Ulla-Maija Mylly

Faculty Scholarship

Both the EU Trade Secrets Directive and US trade secret law seek to balance the protection of trade secrets against other values, including freedom of expression, but the EU Trade Secret Directive is more explicit about the need to do so. This article examines EU and US trade secret law through the right to information, a recognized human right under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and implementing laws and conventions. In particular, it discusses how principles of freedom of expression and whistleblowing should apply in the trade secret context in the EU and U.S.

Fighting For Deinstitutionalization In Nova Scotia: Emerald Hall Human Rights Case, Sheila Wildeman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Those who have not been following the human rights complaint, MacLean v Nova Scotia, should start paying attention now. The case will be heard at the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal in November. People First Canada, CACL and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities will intervene.

At stake is whether institutionalization counts as discrimination - and what, if anything, human rights can do to respond.

Beth MacLean, Joey Delaney and Sheila Livingstone, all persons labeled with intellectual disabilities, brought the complaint to the Nova Scotia human rights commission in 2014. The Disability Rights Coalition [DRC] joined in the complaint.

MacLean, …

The Theorized Relationship Between Organizational (Non)Compliance With The United Nations Guiding Principles On Human Rights And Desired Employee Workplace Outcomes, Magda B. L. Donia, Salvador Herencia Carrasco, Sara L. Seck, Robert Mccorquodale, Sigalit Ronen

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Despite the presence of guiding legislation such as the United Nations Guiding Principles, respect for human rights is subject to the conscience of organizational actors. Given that some transnational corporations are more powerful than nation states, they play an important role in the economies in which they operate, often with far-reaching impact on the labor conditions and human rights protections within these countries. In the current global context, respect for human rights may be undermined when organizational decision-makers are tempted to ignore unethical practices due to considerations such as competition and short-term financial incentives. We propose that the higher standards …

Politics Of Adversarial Machine Learning, Kendra Albert, Jonathon Penney, Bruce Schneier, Ram Shankar Siva Kumar

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In addition to their security properties, adversarial machine-learning attacks and defenses have political dimensions. They enable or foreclose certain options for both the subjects of the machine learning systems and for those who deploy them, creating risks for civil liberties and human rights. In this paper, we draw on insights from science and technology studies, anthropology, and human rights literature, to inform how defenses against adversarial attacks can be used to suppress dissent and limit attempts to investigate machine learning systems. To make this concrete, we use real-world examples of how attacks such as perturbation, model inversion, or membership inference …

Ethical Testing In The Real World: Evaluating Physical Testing Of Adversarial Machine Learning, Kendra Albert, Maggie Delano, Jonathon Penney, Afsaneh Ragot, Ram Shankar Siva Kumar

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper critically assesses the adequacy and representativeness of physical domain testing for various adversarial machine learning (ML) attacks against computer vision systems involving human subjects. Many papers that deploy such attacks characterize themselves as “real world.” Despite this framing, however, we found the physical or real-world testing conducted was minimal, provided few details about testing subjects and was often conducted as an afterthought or demonstration. Adversarial ML research without representative trials or testing is an ethical, scientific, and health/safety issue that can cause real harms. We introduce the problem and our methodology, and then critique the physical domain testing …

The Bad, The Ugly, And The Horrible: What I Learned About Humanity By Doing Prison Research, Adelina Iftene

Dalhousie Law Journal

Every Canadian academic conducting research with humans must submit an ethics application with their university’s Research Ethics Board. One of the key questions in that application inquired into the level of vulnerability of the interviewees. Filling in that question, I had to check nearly every box: the interviewees were incarcerated, old, under-educated, poor, Indigenous or other racial minorities, and likely had mental and physical disabilities. However, it was not until I met John that I understood what all those boxes actually meant. They were signalling that I was entering a universe of extreme marginalization—the universe of the forgotten. I learned …

North Carolina's H.B.2: A Case Study In Lgbtq Rights, Preemption, And The (Un)Democratic Process, Mark Dorosin

Journal Publications

In 2014, community advocates in Charlotte, North Carolina, began organizing to press the city to amend its antidiscrimination ordinance to add several new protected classes, including sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. After a contentious hearing where opponents argued that the change-which would allow transgender people to use public restrooms according to their gender identity-would subject women and children to "sexual predators," the city council voted down the amendment. Undaunted, advocates worked over the next several months to elect new council members and a mayor who supported LGBTQ rights. The amendments to the civil rights ordinance were then brought …