Human Rights Law Commons^™

Atkins V. Virginia At Twenty: Still Adaptive Deficits, Still In The Developmental Period, Sheri Lynn Johnson, John H. Blume, Brendan Van Winkle

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Twenty years ago, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Eighth Amendment prohibited states from executing persons with intellectual disability. While the Court’s decision is laudable and has saved many of the most vulnerable persons from the executioner, its effect has been undermined by recalcitrant states attempting to exploit language in the opinion permitting states to create procedures to implement the (then) new categorical prohibition. In this article, we examine how some states have adopted procedures which are fundamentally inconsistent with the clinical consensus understanding of the disability and how one state, …

Revisiting The Ox-Bow Incident: The Almost Forgotten Western Classic About The Lynching Of Three Innocent Men Is As Relevant As Ever, Marc Bookman

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The concept of lynching, several hundred years old and unclear in its origins, has never really left the lexicon. The word itself, however, has taken on different meanings over the years, from a mob’s taking the law into its own hands, to an organized utilization of racial violence as a means of societal control and intimidation; and finally to the more casual and defensive use of the word (“high tech lynching”) by current Supreme Court justices Thomas and Kavanaugh and others after being questioned about their past behaviors. Many academics have opined that the modern system of capital punishment is …

Wiretapping The Internet: Analyzing The Application Of The Federal Wiretap Act’S Party Exception Online, Hayden Driscoll

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The federal Wiretap Act—originally enacted to curtail the government’s unbridled use of wiretaps to monitor telephonic communications—was amended in 1986 to provide a private right of action, extending the Act’s Fourth Amendment-like protections to private intrusions. Since the advent of the internet, plaintiffs have attempted to predicate claims of unauthorized online privacy intrusions on the Wiretap Act. In response, defendants claim they are parties to the communications at issue and should be absolved of liability under the Act’s party exception. The federal circuit courts of appeal disagree on how the party exception applies in the internet context. This Note evaluates …

It Just Makes Sense: An Argument For A Uniform Objective Standard For Incarcerated Individuals Bringing Claims Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Pearce Thomson Embrey

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In July 2020, the New York Times published an article on a Department of Justice report detailing the systematic abuse of incarcerated individuals by prison guards within the State of Alabama’s Department of Corrections. This report evidences the challenges faced by incarcerated individuals seeking to vindicate their Eighth Amendment rights. In a legal sense, those individuals who turn to the court system for relief face an almost insurmountable burden of proof. This Note begins by surveying the history of excessive force claims under the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as deliberate indifference claims under the Eighth and Fourteenth …

A Destabilized World: The Effects Of Climate Change On Armed Conflict And International Humanitarian Law, Chase Doctor

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The effects of climate change are becoming more pronounced, and they will have an increasingly destabilizing effect on societies around the globe. This research paper utilizes primary source material (e.g. interviews with field experts) and secondary source material to analyze the relationship between climate change and armed conflict, and the response of international humanitarian law. The consequences of climate change, like changing weather patterns, will increase global migration and strain the resources of host communities. This phenomenon, in addition to other climate-induced factors, may increase the likelihood of armed conflict breaking out. The case studies of the Darfur conflict in …

Checking Out Indefinitely: Supporting Survivors Of Sex Trafficking Alongside Training And Education For Lodging Employees, Alyssa M. Grzesiak

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

There are roughly five million victims of sex trafficking in the United States. Over the course of a decade, over 3,500 instances of human trafficking involved a hotel or motel. Traffickers are relying on unaware lodging establishment employees, as well as complicit employees and managers, to successfully carry out their crimes. Despite the vital role the lodging industry plays in human trafficking, only seven states have implemented mandatory training for hotel and motel employees. This Note posits that the implementation of mandatory training and education programs for employees of lodging establishments could increase awareness and responsiveness to human trafficking, thus …

Voices From Below—Africa’S Contribution To The Development Of The Norm Of Corporate Responsibility To Respect Human Rights, Akinwumi Olawuyi Ogunranti

PhD Dissertations

The long conversations about corporate responsibility predominantly take place in forums and conferences in the Global North. Yet, the majority of the human rights abuses and their impacts are felt by peasants, farmers, children, and women in local communities in the Global South who do not have a voice in the institutionalized governance systems that animate global affairs. This thesis answers the question of how norms and human rights institutions in Africa can influence the corporate responsibility to respect (CR2R) norm as embedded in pillar II of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Through the theory …

Colorblind Capture, Jonathan Feingold

Faculty Scholarship

We are facing two converging waves of racial retrenchment. The first, which arose following the Civil Rights Movement, is nearing a legal milestone. This term or the next, the Supreme Court will prohibit affirmative action in higher education. When it does, the Court will cement decades of conservative jurisprudence that has systematically eroded the right to remedy racial inequality.

The second wave is more recent but no less significant. Following 2020’s global uprising for racial justice, rightwing forces launched a coordinated assault on antiracism itself. The campaign has enjoyed early success. As one measure, GOP officials have passed, proposed or …

The Law And Finance Of Infrastructure Investment, Daisuke Asaoka

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Institutional design facilitates the investment of private capital in infrastructure. The Article deals with concessions, which have been a major format for infrastructure privatization in Japan since their legislation in 2011. It argues that the Japanese government, faced with mounting public debt, walks a thin line between attracting private capital and securing public interest in infrastructure under private operation. By comparing concessions with stock sales, the mainstream form of privatization until the legislation, the Article shows that while concessions have advantages in terms of economics and public interest control, they may hinder the strategic growth of private enterprises by limiting …

Prohibiting Slavery & The Slave Trade, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Articles

Slavery and the slave trade stubbornly persist in our time, but they receive insufficient attention in international human rights law. Even when courts adjudicate slavery violations, they often fail to characterize slave trade conduct that nearly always precedes slavery. Courts also characterize acts that meet the definition of slavery or the slave trade only as other human rights harms, such as forced labor or human trafficking. This failure to accurately characterize violations also as slavery and the slave trade perpetuates impunity and denies victims full expressive justice. This Article argues for reviving international human rights law’s prohibitions of slavery and …

Weekly Pop-Up Class: Understanding The Lgbtq+ Civil Rights Movement And Why It Matters, Dmytro Vovk, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

2022 Event Invitations

Dmytro Vovk, Cardozo Visiting Associate Professor will cover Religious Freedom and LGBTQ+ Rights: The European Court of Human Right's Perspective.

Dmytro Vovk runs the Center for Rule of Law and Religion Studies at Yaroslav the Wise National Law University in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He was an expert on human rights and rule of law for USAID, OSCE/ODIHR, Council of Europe and Constitutional Commission of Ukraine.

Free Yezidi Foundation Public Memo – Lafarge Case, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Patricia Viseur Sellers

Online Publications

This memorandum supports the Free Yezidi Foundation’s (FYF) filing in the Lafarge Case concerning allegations of complicity in crimes against humanity, including genocide. The Lafarge Corporation continuously operated its factory and, moreover, financially contributed to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (IS, ISIS, Daesh) between 2013 and 2014, inclusive of the period between 3 August 2014 and 19 September 2014. During those weeks, and represented in a timeline annexed to this memorandum, international and French media, international organizations, and governments extensively reported on and condemned IS acts committed against the Yezidi population that could constitute crimes against humanity under …

Weekly Pop-Up Class: Understanding The Lgbtq+ Civil Rights Movement And Why It Matters: Professor Edward Stein, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

2022 Event Invitations

The first class will cover the evolution of LGBTQ+ family law in the United States and will be presented by LGBTQ+ legal expert and Cardozo Professor and former Vice Dean Edward Stein, author of The Mismeasure of Desire, The Science, Theory, and Ethics of Sexual Orientation and other scholarly works on sexual identity and the law.

Braille Literacy As A Human Right: A Challenge To The “Inefficiency” Argument Against Braille Instruction, Lindsay N. Harris, Allison Gladfelter, Alecia M. Santuzzi, Iwona Barbara Lech, Rocío Rodriguez, Luis E. Lopez, Dawn Soto, Ailing Li

CISLL Publications

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) affirms a right to education for disabled persons and aims to ensure braille instruction for blind individuals. However, there is evidence that braille instruction is often circumvented or abandoned early in CRPD nations because it is perceived as an inefficient learning medium for blind students. This perception persists despite insufficient empirical evidence and a lack of understanding of the efficiency of reading versus listening for learning in sighted individuals. We therefore investigated the efficiency of learning written versus spoken words in blind and sighted samples. Participants (23 blind, …

Florida Governor Desantis’ Transport Of Migrants To Massachusetts Is A “Crude Political Tactic…Playing With People’S Lives,” Law Expert Says, Rich Barlow, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

Shorter Faculty Works

Massachusetts officials say Florida may have broken the law by transporting 50 Venezuelan immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard on September 14.

Rachel Rollins, US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, says she’s reviewing whether the unannounced transport violated laws against human trafficking, coercion, or other crimes. Lawyers and aid workers on the Vineyard report that the immigrants were lied to about jobs and housing awaiting them in Massachusetts, about landing in Boston, and about having to register their new addresses with federal citizenship and immigration officials.

Loving Truly: An Epistemic Approach To The Doxastic Norms Of Love

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

If you love someone, is it good to believe better of her than epistemic norms allow? The partiality view says that it is: love, on this view, issues norms of belief that clash with epistemic norms. The partiality view is supposedly supported by an analogy between beliefs and actions, by the phenomenology of love, and by the idea that love commits us to the loved one’s good character. I argue that the partiality view is false, and defend what I call the epistemic view. On the epistemic view, love also issues norms of belief. But these say simply (and …

Teitiota V New Zealand, Climate Migration And Non-Refoulement: A Case Study Of Canada’S Obligations Under The Charter And The Iccpr, Mari Galloway

Dalhousie Law Journal

Climate change is expected to have an unprecedented impact on human migration and displacement over the next decade. Individuals forced to migrate on the basis of climate change or natural disasters remain, however, on the periphery of international and domestic environmental and refugee protections. Teitiota, a landmark decision by the UN Human Rights Committee (the Committee) in 2020 could, however, point the way toward filling these legal gaps by using the principle of non-refoulement under human rights law to prevent the deportation of those whose lives are at risk. As such, this paper seeks to explore the application of Teitiota …

Testimony, Free Speech Under Attack: The Legal Assault On Environmental Activists And The First Amendment, Anita Ramasastry

Presentations

No abstract provided.

#Includetheirstories: Rethinking, Reimagining, And Reshaping Legal Education, Leslie P. Culver, Elizabeth A. Kronk Warner

Utah Law Review

This symposium gathered scholars and practitioners who have been deeply engaged in the work to examine historical roots of the legal profession and discuss best practices for exploring ethnic, gender, and related inequities alongside our law students. It is well established that the legal profession and legal education neither reflect the community they serve nor swiftly respond to the social shifts within the broader society.3 As 2020 grossly revealed, ethnic partiality and division are aches we have yet to really confront and bear. For example, the casebook method format of legal education continues to model Christopher Langdell’s Gilded Age curriculum, …

Issue Brief: Impact Assessment And Responsible Business Guidance Tools In The Extractive Sector: An Environmental Human Rights Toolbox For Government, Business, Civil Society & Indigenous Groups, Sara L. Seck, Penelope Simmons, Charlotte Connolly

Responsible Business Conduct and Impact Assessment Law

This issue brief provides an overview of the impact assessment and responsible business conduct toolbox for the extractive sector. The toolbox provides guidance on how governments, businesses, civil society, and Indigenous groups may encourage and adopt a human rights approach to impact assessment (IA). It forms part of a broader research project aimed at highlighting the interrelationship between IA laws and Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) tools, funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Knowledge Synthesis Grant: Informing Best Practices in Environmental & Impact Assessments (the “KSG”).

Antiracist Lawyering In Practice Begins With The Practice Of Teaching And Learning Antiracism In Law School, Danielle M. Conway

Utah Law Review

I was honored by the invitation to deliver the 2021 Lee E. Teitelbaum keynote address. Dean Teitelbaum was a gentleman and a titan for justice. I am confident the antiracism work ongoing at the S.J. Quinney College of Law would have deeply resonated with him, especially knowing the challenges we are currently facing within and outside of legal education, the legal academy, and the legal profession. I am fortified in this work by Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner’s commitment to antiracism and associated diversity, equity, and inclusion work. Finally, I applaud the students who serve on the Utah Law Review for …

Creating Broadband Equity In Rural Wisconsin, Brian T. Coe

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

Over 430,000 people throughout the state of Wisconsin cur-rently do not have access to the internet. This "digital divide" is even more prominent in rural communities where broadband is either too slow, too expensive, or simply not available. Wisconsin state law cur-rently restricts local governments from providing this vital utility to their residents. The purpose of this Comment is to help readers un-derstand the impact of Wisconsin law surrounding local government public broadband programs, and how they can be changed to offer a more equitable menu of internet access to rural communities. This Comment will discuss the restrictive statutes that …

Minds Circumscribed By Fear. A Review Of Garrisoned Minds: Women And Armed Conflicts In South Asia, Edited By Lazmi Murthy And Mitu Varma, Kushal Srivastava

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Can Affordable Homes Be Healthy? Legal Strategy, Socio-Legal Studies And Activism In Indonesia, Santy Kouwagam

The Indonesian Journal of Socio-Legal Studies

This article uses two Constitutional Court decisions in Indonesia to exemplify the importance of analysing legal strategies. These decisions declared a rule barring developers from building and selling tiny houses to be unconstitutional and invalid. The article shows that ‘justice’ in legal procedures still needs further definition, and that judges’ elaboration of decisions and their legal reasoning still needs improvement. The article will first discuss the cases, using Legal Strategy analysis. It will then highlight problems with the commoditisation of houses. Finally, it will argue that the problem of unhealthy and unaffordable housing in Indonesia can be resolved, by bringing …

Sanctioning Ideas: Alternative International Law Argument In Defence Of Indonesia’S Ideological Curtailment On Societal Organization, Billy Esratian

Indonesia Law Review

Engulfed in a constant ideological challenge from various societal organizations, Indonesia inflicts an ideological curtailment measure as an attempt to defend the reign of its state ideology, Pancasila. To this end, societal organization is barred to actively adopt, develop, and spread any teaching or idea which contradicts Pancasila. From international law standpoint, assertion over the measure’s incompatibility with human rights norms emerges. Although, a portion of the justification conveyed by the Government of Indonesia did stipulate a reference to international human rights law regime by virtue of the invocation of state of emergency and a presumably regional norm, such defence …

Beyond Bostock: Title Ix Protections For Transgender Athletes, Joseph Brucker

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

International Human Rights, Shekinah Apedo, Daniel L. Appelman, Elena Ateva, Arzu Rana Deuba, Mark Du, Claudia Feldkamp, Federica Dell'orto Hadar, Corinne Lewis, Tschika Mcbean, Sophie Pouget, Caroline Renner, Judith Wood, Constance Z. Wagner

The Year in Review

No abstract provided.

Let Them Eat Rights: Re-Framing The Food Insecurity Problem Using A Rights-Based Approach, Benedict Sheehy, Ying Chen

Michigan Journal of International Law

Food insecurity is a global issue. Large parts of the global population are unable to feed themselves adequately with hundreds of millions of people suffering from hunger and malnutrition. This problem is recognized widely by governments, industry and civil society and is usually understood using one of three approaches or frames: a basic production problem solved by technology and increased industrialization of agricultural, and an economic problem solved by economic growth and a commercial problem resolved by expanding markets. Much of the discussion and policy advice is based on the premise that hunger is primarily a wealth issue and, that …

Russia's Utilization Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Lockdowns, Re-Sovereignization, And Disengagement From The West, Alexandra Orlova

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article discusses the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic poses to the current concepts of globalization, universality of human rights, and the rules-based international order. This article discusses how Russia has used the COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate its move away from Western ideas and institutions so as to solidify the power of its executive branch. In particular, this article examines the Russian Constitutional Court in its dealings with both the 2020 Russian constitutional amendments and the government's lockdown measures. This article concludes that the Russian Constitutional Court which is supposed to serve as a key guarantor of fundamental rights of …

Feminism And The Birth Of Sexual Crime As International Crime And The Challenge Of Its Implementation In The Future, Zunnuraeni Zunnuraeni, Rehulina Tarigan, Erlies Septiana Nurbani, Aisyah Wardatul Jannah

Indonesian Journal of International Law

The existence of international sexual crimes in international court jurisprudence and the international law instruments have evolve as an extensive crime from the abundance crime of outrages upon personal dignity, yet still have to front some challenges to attain triumph in its enforcement. This article aims to observe the sexual crimes as international crime in some aspect, namely, its development and the contribution of feminism, the challenges on the law enforcement against international criminal law and the position of feminism in addressing those challenges. In every stage of sexual crimes evolution as international crimes, feminism hold important contribution. Their impact …