Human Rights Law Commons^™

The Ndaa, Aumf, And Citizens Detained Away From The Theater Of War: Sounding A Clarion Call For A Clear Statement Rule, Diana Cho

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In the armed conflict resulting from the September 11 attacks, the executive authority to order the indefinite detention of citizens captured away from the theater of war is an issue of foreign and domestic significance. The relevant law of armed conflict provisions relevant to conflicts that are international or non-international in nature, however, do not fully address this issue. Congress also intentionally left the question of administrative orders of citizen detainment unresolved in a controversial provision of the 2012 version of the annually-enacted National Defense Authorization Act. While plaintiffs in Hedges v. Obama sought to challenge the enforceability of NDAA’s …

Beginning To Learn How To End: Lessons On Completion Strategies, Residual Mechanisms, And Legacy Considerations From Ad Hoc International Criminal Tribunals To The International Criminal Court, Dafna Gozani

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Advancing Climate Justice In International Law: Evaluating The United Nations Human Rights Based Approach, Dr. Damilola S. Olawuyi

Environmental and Animal Law

The Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University College of Law's Center for International Law & Justice and the Environment, Development & Justice Program presented the First Annual Climate and Energy Justice Lecture featuring Dr. Damilola S. Olawuyi. Dr. Olawuyi teaches and conducts research in the area of public international law, specializing in natural resources, energy and environment, oil and gas law and international human rights law.

The Responsibility To Protect: Emerging Norm Or Failed Doctrine?, Camila Pupparo

Global Tides

This paper seeks to investigate the current shift from the non-intervention norm towards the “Responsibility to Protect,” commonly abbreviated as “RtoP,” which actually mandates intervention in cases of humanitarian intervention disasters. I will look at the May 2011 application of the R2P doctrine to the humanitarian crisis in Libya and assess whether it was a success or a failure. Many critics of the “Responsibility to Protect” norm consider it to be yet another imperial tool used by the West to pursue national interests, so this paper analyzes this argument in detail, referring to case study examples, particularly in the Middle …

Agricultural Biotechnology: Drawing On International Law To Promote Progress, J. Janewa Oseitutu

Faculty Publications

In Bowman v. Monsanto, the Supreme Court declined to apply the principle of exhaustion to limit the patentee’s ability to control the reproduction of self-replicating inventions. This decision was justified from a patent law perspective on the basis that patent holder has a right to prevent others from making the invention. But what happens when we take other perspectives into account? For instance, a farmer might have human rights or other rights that may need to be balanced against the patentee’s right. Since globalized intellectual property standards were established through international agreements and much of the resistance to intellectual property …

Corporate "Human Rights" To Intellectual Property Protection?, J. Janewa Oseitutu

Faculty Publications

The global intellectual property system protects the interests of intellectual property owners, sometimes to the detriment of competing interests like public health or access to knowledge. Some scholars have proposed a human rights framework for intellectual property as a way to inject balance into the current system. However, the assertion that human rights will bring balance is often coupled with the assumption that corporations are, by definition, excluded from human rights-based intellectual property claims. Yet, corporations have used, and are likely to continue to use, human rights law to ground their intellectual property claims. Since multinational corporations were a major …

The Post-Postcolonial Woman Or Child, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This essay is based on remarks given as Distinguished Discussant for the 16th annual Grotius Lecture at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law/Biennial Conference of the International Law Association. The essay examines the international law status of women, on the one hand, and children, on the other, through the contemporary lens of the post-postcolonial world and the historical lens of Hugo Grotius and the colonialist era. In so doing, the essay responds to the principal Grotius Lecture, "Women and Children: The Cutting Edge of International Law," which was delivered by Radhika Coomarswamy, NYU Global Professor …

A Standard Of Global Justice, Steven R. Ratner

Book Chapters

This chapter presents the standard of justice that is used in this book to appraise international law. That standard is based on two core principles, or what the book calls pillars—the promotion of international and intrastate peace, on the one hand, and respect for the basic human rights of all individuals, on the other. The justice of international norms is determined by the extent to which they lead to a state of affairs involving peace and human rights, with some room for deontological considerations in limited situations. The chapter defends the choice of these two pillars. It elaborates on the …

Functions Of Freedom: Privacy, Autonomy, Dignity, And The Transnational Legal Process, Frederic G. Sourgens

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

What is the function of freedom for the transnational legal process? This Article answers this question through the lens of the ongoing Ukrainian crisis and the deeply inconsistent international legal arguments presented by each side of the conflict. These inconsistencies suggest that criticism of international law as purely political pretense has merits. The Article shows that transnational legal process theory can account for and incorporate these facial inconsistencies and thus address the criticism leveled at international law. The Article proceeds to develop a theory of freedom as a value that is internal to, and necessary for, transnational legal process. This …

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 …

The Impact Of Law On The Right To Water And Adding Normative Change To The Global Agenda, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

A resolution was passed at the United Nations Water Conference in 1977 to achieve universal access to sufficient water by 1990. This bar was lowered significantly as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, as the MDGs come to an end this year, even this reduced benchmark will not be reached. Water is inescapably intertwined with every other MDG, as well as the ability to exercise any human right. Consequently, the failure to achieve this goal implores an exploration of its causes. As the global community embarks on setting a new post-MDG agenda, one currently overlooked aspect is the …

Brief For Foreign And Comparative Law Experts Harold Hongju Koh Et Al. As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioners, Harold Hongju Koh, Thomas Buergenthal, Sarah H. Cleveland, Laurence R. Helfer, Ryan Goodman, Sujit Choudhry

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Roper V. Simmons - Supreme Court's Reliance On International Law In Constitutional Decision-Making, Jessica Mishali

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Growing Importance Of Customary International Human Rights Law, Richard B. Lillich

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Kosovar Declaration Of Independence: "Botching The Balkans" Or Respecting International Law?, Milena Sterio

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Rights And Responsibilities: What Are The Prospects For The Responsibility To Protect In The International/Transnational Arena?, Carolyn Helen Filteau

PhD Dissertations

The dissertation involves a study of the emerging international norm of ‘The Responsibility to Protect’ which states that citizens must be protected in cases of human atrocities, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide where states have failed or are unable to do so. According to the work of the International Commission on the Responsibility to Protect (ICISS), this response can and should span a continuum involving prevention, a response to the violence, when and if necessary, and ultimately rebuilding shattered societies. The most controversial aspect, however, is that of forceful intervention and much of the thesis focuses on this aspect. …

King Tut And Tahrir Square: The Egyptian Revolution Of 2011 And The Advantage Of Viewing Cultural Heritage Destruction Through A Right To Culture Lens, Zoe Niesel

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Indigenous Peoples And The Jurisgenerative Moment In Human Rights, Kristen A. Carpenter, Angela R. Riley

Publications

As indigenous peoples have become actively engaged in the human rights movement around the world, the sphere of international law, once deployed as a tool of imperial power and conquest, has begun to change shape. Increasingly, international human rights law serves as a basis for indigenous peoples' claims against states and even influences indigenous groups' internal processes of decolonization and revitalization. Empowered by a growing body of human rights instruments, some as embryonic as the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), indigenous peoples are embracing a global "human rights culture" to articulate rights ranging from …

Introduction To Intervention Under International Law, Mortimer N.S. Sellers

All Faculty Scholarship

The lawfulness or legitimacy of "external" intervention in the "internal" affairs of sovereign states is one of the most basic controversies in modern international law. The question arises in three separate but related forms: When is intervention lawful? When is intervention legitimate? And when should intervention occur? Discussion here will focus on the legal question, but legitimacy, morality, and brutal reality all form and sometimes trump the law. They dictate the parameters within which all legal determinations take place, including the legality of cross-border interventions. By "intervention" I mean any activity by one state or its agents that influences the …

Introductory Remarks, James Anaya

Publications

These remarks were delivered at a Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights panel held on Wednesday, April 9, 2014.

Undocumented Migrants And The Failures Of Universal Individualism, Jaya Ramji-Nogales

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In recent years, advocates and scholars have made increasing efforts to situate undocumented migrants within the human rights framework. Few have examined international human rights law closely enough to discover just how limited it is in its protections of the undocumented. This Article takes that failure as a starting point to launch a critique of the universal individualist project that characterizes the current human rights system. It then catalogues in detail the protections available to undocumented migrants in international human rights law, which are far fewer than often assumed. The Article demonstrates through a close analysis of relevant law that …

The Judge And The Drone, Justin Deystone

Publications

Among the most characteristic issues in modern jurisprudence is the distinction between adjudication and legislation. In the some accounts, a judge's role in deciding a particular controversy is highly constrained and limited to the application of preexisting law. Whereas legislation is inescapably political, adjudication requires at least some form of impersonal neutrality. In various ways over the past century, theorists have pressed this conventional account, complicating the conceptual underpinnings of the distinction between law-application and lawmaking. This Article contributes to this literature on the nature of adjudication through the resuscitation of a structuralist mode of legal interpretation. In the structuralist …

Agenda: Free, Prior And Informed Consent: Pathways For A New Millennium, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment, University Of Colorado Boulder. School Of Law. American Indian Law Program

Free, Prior and Informed Consent: Pathways for a New Millennium (November 1)

Presented by the University of Colorado's American Indian Law Program and the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy & the Environment.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), along with treaties, instruments, and decisions of international law, recognizes that indigenous peoples have the right to give "free, prior, and informed consent" to legislation and development affecting their lands, natural resources, and other interests, and to receive remedies for losses of property taken without such consent. With approximately 150 nations, including the United States, endorsing the UNDRIP, this requirement gives rise to emerging standards, obligations, and opportunities …

Principles Of International Law For Multilateral Development Banks: The Obligation To Respect Human Rights, Robert T. Coulter, Leonardo A. Crippa, Emily Wann

Free, Prior and Informed Consent: Pathways for a New Millennium (November 1)

41 pages.

"January, 2009"

www.indianlaw.org

Panel Discussion: International, National, And Local Perspectives On Civil Right To Counsel, Andrew Scherer, Martha F. Davis, Debra Gardner, Rosie Mendez, Juanita B. Newton, Adriene Holder, Laura K. Abel

Touro Law Review

The following is based on a transcript of a panel discussion which took place at An Obvious Truth: Creating an Action Blueprint for a Civil Right to Counsel in New York State, held at Touro Law Center, Central Islip, New York, in March, 2008.

The Dilemma Of Piratical Ransoms: Should They Be Paid Or Not: On The Human Rights Of Kidnapped Seamen And Their Families, Barry H. Dubner, Kimberly Chavers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Children And The First Verdict Of The International Criminal Court, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Child soldiers were a central concern in the first decade of the International Criminal Court; indeed, the court’s first trial, Prosecutor v. Lubanga, dealt exclusively with the war crimes of conscripting, enlisting, and using child soldiers. This article compares the attention that the court has paid to children – an attention that serves the express terms of the ICC Statute – with the relative inattention in post-World War II international instruments such as the statutes of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. The article then analyzes the Lubanga conviction, sentence, and reparations rulings. It recommends that the ICC focus attention on …

Of Civil Wrongs And Rights: Kiyemba V. Obama And The Meaning Of Freedom, Separation Of Powers, And The Rule Of Law Ten Years After 9/11, Katherine L. Vaughns, Heather L. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

This article is about the rise and fall of continued adherence to the rule of law, proper application of the separation of powers doctrine, and the meaning of freedom for a group of seventeen Uighurs—a Turkic Muslim ethnic minority whose members reside in the Xinjiang province of China—who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base since 2002. Most scholars regard the trilogy of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, and Boumediene v. Bush as demonstrating the Supreme Court’s willingness to uphold the rule of law during the war on terror. The recent experience of the Uighurs …

Human Rights And The Evolution Of Global Environmental Law, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

Environmental problems that jeopardize the health of humans increasingly implicate concerns that have played an important role in the development of international human rights. While some have questioned the wisdom or effectiveness of focusing human rights concerns on environmental problems, it seems an inevitable response to the failure of many countries to protect their citizens adequately from harm caused by environmental degradation. This paper reviews efforts to apply human rights concerns to environmental problems. It describes how these developments illustrate the growth of a kind of “global environmental law” that blurs traditional distinctions between domestic and international law and public …

The Role Of Foreign Authorities In U.S. Asylum Adjudication, Fatma E. Marouf

Scholarly Works

U.S. asylum law is based on a domestic statute that incorporates an international treaty, the U.N. Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. While Supreme Court cases indicate that the rules of treaty interpretation apply to an incorporative statute, courts analyzing the statutory asylum provisions fail to give weight to the interpretations of our sister signatories, which is one of the distinctive and uncontroversial principles of treaty interpretation. This Article highlights this significant omission and urges courts to examine the interpretations of other States Parties to the Protocol in asylum cases. Using as an example the current debate over social …