Human Rights Law Commons^™

The New-Breed, “Die-Hard” Chinese Lawyer: A Comparison With American Civil Rights Cause Lawyers, James E. Moliterno, Rongjie Lan

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In times of social upheaval, lawyers can mark the way toward social change. In particular, when lawyers become more aggressive than traditional lawyers in the cause of fighting injustice, they face backlash from multiple sources, including government and their own profession. Such was the case during the U.S. civil rights movement. Unusually aggressive behavior by cause lawyers was met with hostility from their own profession and from government action. Those lawyers, while battered at times with physical violence, bar ethics charges, contempt of court, and state hostility, survived and changed social conditions at the same time they altered the culture …

Cycles Of Failure: The War On Family, The War On Drugs, And The War On Schools Through Hbo’S The Wire, Zachary E. Shapiro, Elizabeth Curran, Rachel C.K. Hutchinson

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Freamon, Bodie, and Zenobia’s statements cut straight to the heart of The Wire’s overarching theme: Individuals are trapped in a complex “cycle of harm” where social problems of inequality, crime, and violence are constantly reinforced. The Wire was a television drama that ran on HBO from 2002 through 2008, created by David Simon. The show focuses on the narcotics scene in Baltimore through the perspective of different stakeholders and residents of the city. The Wire highlights how self-perpetuating, interconnected, and broken social institutions act in concert to limit individual opportunity. These institutions squash attempts at reform by punishing good ideas …

Bytes Bite: Why Corporate Data Breaches Should Give Standing To Affected Individuals, Caden Hayes

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

High-profile data hacks are not uncommon. In fact, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, there have been at least 7,961 data breaches, exposing over 10,000,000,000 accounts in total, since 2005. These shocking numbers are not particularly surprising when taking into account the value of information stolen. For example, cell phone numbers, as exposed in a Yahoo! hack, are worth $10 a piece on the black market, meaning the hackers stood to make $30,000,000,000 from that one hack. That dollar amount does not even consider copies the hackers could make and later resell. Yet while these hackers make astronomical payoffs, the …

Healthtech: How Blockchain Can Simplify Healthcare Compliance, Kathryn M. Bennett

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note broadly explores solutions to modern-day accessibility and security problems latent in electronic health records. Specifically, this Note discusses HIPAA and HITECH, the current law in place, and how blockchain technology can be used to fix the accessibility and security problems of current electronic health records. This Note proposes that blockchain technology can help a healthcare industry struggling to adhere to the current rule of law in an era of Big Data. Further, Blockchain technology can help individual consumers, particularly those with significant health issues, obtain the best possible medical care while simultaneously keeping their private and sensitive information …

Punishing Poverty: Robinson & The Criminal Cash Bond System, Lauren Bennett

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The current cash bail system works in a way that punishes poverty. In Robinson v. California, the Supreme Court held that it is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment to punish an individual for a status or condition. Poverty is a status. The cash bail system is unconstitutional under Robinson and the Eighth Amendment because it punishes the status of poverty. Similar to drug addiction, poverty “may be contracted innocently or involuntarily or it might even take hold from the moment of a person’s birth.” Kalief Browder had no control over his family’s financial position. Yet, this financial position kept him …

Dogs Of War Get A New Lease On Life: Why The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act Violates The Eighth Amendment In Light Of United States V. Slatten, Michael D. Stinnett-Kassoff

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The United States has relied on Private Military Firms (PMFs) extensively to carry out its numerous overseas military missions since the end of the Cold War. Civilians and contractors have always had a place in American wars, even during the American Revolution and beyond. But the recent American incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq brought an unprecedented number of private contractors into the forefront of these conflict zones, the discussions surrounding them, and the legal questions arising from their ashes. Particularly, private contractors in Iraq seemed to be operating in a legal grey area—they clearly were not soldiers, and they clearly …

Gender And Religious Dress At The European Court Of Human Rights: A Comparison Of Șahin V. Turkey And Arslan V. Turkey, Bronwyn Roantree

Fordham Law Review Online

This paper examines the regulation of the religious dress of men and women in two decisions by the European Court of Human Rights: Şahin v. Turkey and Arslan v. Turkey. In Şahin, the Court upheld a ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf, an article of clothing worn exclusively by women, at a public university. In Arslan, the Court rejected a ban on the wearing of a type of religious uniform worn only by men who were members of a politically subversive Islamic group. In both cases, the Court asserted that its decision was necessary to …

Comparative Perspectives Of Adult Content Filtering: Legal Challenges And Implications, Adam Szafranski, Piotr Szwedo And Malgorzata Klein

Catholic University Law Review

The internet is virtually ubiquitous and is becoming more accessible to young people all over the world. Along with the many benefits it brings, the internet poses serious risks to the human rights of its most vulnerable users, viz. children. The United Kingdom, Poland and the U.S. State of Utah have already started to mitigate this risk through a variety of regulatory mechanisms. A priori, both self-regulation and hard law can satisfy international requirements on freedom of services and freedom of expression, but each requires careful scrutiny. Neither self-regulation nor soft law appear to be sufficient. It would seem, …

Easing “[T]He Burden Of The Brutalized”: Applying Bystander Intervention Training To Corporate Conduct, Jena Martin

Catholic University Law Review

The last few years have borne witness to a shift regarding how to address issues of oppression and social injustice. Across many different advocacy points—from police brutality to sexual violence—there seems to be a consensus that simply engaging the oppressor or the victim is not enough to effect real social change. The consensus itself is not new: it has been at the heart of many social justice movements over the years. However, what is new is the explicit evocation of the bystander within this framework. Too often, in conversations on conflicts generally (and negative human rights impact specifically), bystanders have …

Respect Existence Or Expect Resistance: Fundraising For Trans Law Center, Lara Martz, Sage Kramer-Urner

Student Engagement Posters

Lara Martz and Sage Kramer-Urner discuss student engagement at Linfield College with regard to a fundraising campaign to benefit the Trans Law Center.

Bloody Hell: How Insufficient Access To Menstrual Hygiene Products Creates Inhumane Conditions For Incarcerated Women, Lauren Shaw

Texas A&M Law Review

For thousands of incarcerated women in the United States, dealing with menstruation is a nightmare. Across the country, many female prisoners lack sufficient access to feminine hygiene products, which negatively affects their health and rehabilitation. Although the international standards for the care of female prisoners have been raised in attempt to eliminate this issue, these stan- dards are often not followed in the United States. This Comment argues that denial of feminine hygiene products to female prisoners violates human de- cency. Additionally, this Comment considers possible constitutional violations caused by this denial, reviews current efforts to correct this problem, and …

Unequal Enforcement Of The Law: Targeting Aggressors For Mass Atrocity Prosecutions, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

It is a central tenet of the laws of war that they apply equally to all parties to a conflict. For this reason, a party that illegally launches a war benefits from all the same rights as a party that must defend against the illegal aggression. Countless philosophers have shown that this so-called equal application doctrine is morally indefensible and that defenders should have more rights and fewer responsibilities than aggressors. The equal application doctrine retains the support of legal scholars, however, because they reasonably fear that applying different rules to different warring parties will substantially reduce overall compliance with …

Innovative Financing Solutions For Community Support In The Context Of Land Investments, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Communities affected by agricultural, forestry, and other resource investments urgently need increased funding for legal and technical support. Without support, communities risk losing access to critical land and resources, suffering human rights violations, or missing opportunities to benefit from investments. A lack of community support can also lead to conflict and challenges that are damaging for companies and host governments.

Donors and support providers have found ways to finance support for communities, but such efforts can only extend so far. Promising new opportunities exist for filling the financing gap, yet they will require sustained efforts by a range of actors. …

Popular Versus Elite Democracies And Human Rights: Inclusion Makes A Difference, Devin K. Joshi, J. S. Maloy, Timothy M. Peterson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Scholarly research generally finds that democratic governments are more likely to respect human rights than other types of regimes. Different human rights practices among long-standing and affluent democracies therefore present a puzzle. Drawing from democratic theory and comparative institutional studies, we argue more inclusive or "popular" democracies should enforce human rights better than more exclusive or "elite" democracies, even in the face of security threats from armed conflict. Instead of relying on the Freedom House or Polity indexes to distinguish levels of democracy, we adopt a more focused approach to measuring structures of inclusion, the Institutional Democracy Index (IDI), which …

Assigning Protection: Can Refugee Rights And State Preferences Be Reconciled?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

The theoretically global responsibility to protect refugees is today heavily skewed, with just ten countries – predominantly very poor – hosting more than half of the world’s refugee population. Refugee protection has moreover become tantamount to warehousing for most refugees, with roughly half of the world’s refugees stuck in “protracted refugee situations” for decades with their lives on hold. Both concerns – the unprincipled allocation of responsibility based on accidents of geography and the desperate need for greater attention to resettlement as a core protection response – cry out for a global, managed system to protect refugees.

Cost-Benefit Analysis And Human Rights, William J. Aceves

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article considers whether cost-benefit analysis can provide the human rights movement with the answers it seeks. It offers an instrumentalist and empirical approach to complement the normative arguments that are most often used by the human rights movement. If human rights could be fully monetized, states could consider the full range of benefits that arise from protecting rights and the costs that occur when rights are violated. This approach could provide states with a more accurate methodology for making decisions that affect human rights. In fact, protecting human rights may prove to be costeffective, particularly when second order …

The Constitutional Rights Of Advanced Robots (And Of Human Beings), R. George Wright

Arkansas Law Review

Constitutional rights create and destroy otherwise available options for the rights-bearer, for governments, and for affected third parties. Thus, conferring a constitutional right always requires at least some minimal defense. But conferring a constitutional right can certainly be appropriate if the recipient of the right seems to deserve or otherwise qualify for the right in question, or if conferring the right makes sense on other, perhaps partly pragmatic, grounds.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Christian Invention Of Human Dignity (Research Materials), Holy Cross Libraries

Library Resources for Campus Events

A bibliography of resources available through the Holy Cross Libraries which provide additional information related to "The Christian Invention of Human Dignity" a lecture by Samuel Moyn, professor of law and history at Yale University, who argues that human dignity has to be linked to the invention of Christian democracy. The lecture is sponsored by the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, and was held at the College of the Holy Cross on February 26, 2019.

Gendering Islamophobia To Better Understand Immigration Laws, Catherine Dauvergne

All Faculty Publications

This paper examines two recent developments in immigration law in Western liberal democracies: security exclusions and forced marriage provisions. It aims to consider how both of these settings are influenced by a pernicious Islamophobia and by gender. And, of course, by the intersection that creates a gendered version of Islamophobia. The overarching aim of the work is to consider whether and how human rights arguments are likely to be effective in immigration law. The work proceeds by developing the ideas of ‘unknowability’ and ‘unintelligibility’ as two ways to describe how Western law responds to Islam, and in so doing, contributes …

Medical Care In Urban Conflict, Kenneth Watkin

International Law Studies

The potential for urban violence is increasing as the world population continues to migrate towards cities. Recent examples of urban warfare with insurgent groups has occurred in Damascus, Mosul, Raqqa, Marawi, Ramadi, and Fallujah, although non-State actor conflict covers a wide range of violence from ordinary crime, to terrorism and transnational crime, to near conventional conflict. Further, transnational terrorist groups have sought to extend the conflict into countries seen as the “far enemy.” A key issue is determining if an armed conflict is in existence so that the protective focus of international humanitarian law regarding the provision of medical care …

Conflict Minerals And Crimes Against Humanity In The Drc: How To Hold Individual Corporate Officers Criminally Liable, Emily Mankowski

Notre Dame Law Review

International criminal law is concerned with holding perpetrators responsible for the gravest crimes committed by humanity. The larger and more heinous the crime, however, the more complicated the prosecution. Identifying the relevant actors, producing sufficient evidence to impose liability, and bringing criminals to justice is a challenging endeavor. This complex process becomes even more daunting when factoring in complicit actors. This Note discusses the different legal mechanisms to hold individual corporate officers criminally liable for complicity in committing crimes against humanity and other human rights atrocities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (“DRC”) as a result of their participation …

Constraint And Control, Patricia Ayres

Theses and Dissertations

I have long considered themes of the body. Drawing on my knowledge as a fashion designer, I bring materials and hardware from the fashion industry into my artwork transforming and rendering them non-functional. My sculptures relate to stories of isolation, separation, and confinement. The following pages will analyze how the United States penal system controls, constrains and restricts the body through physical and psychological wounds. Furthermore, they will examine how the Catholic Church controls people’s minds and behavior through a ritualistic belief system.

Advancing Racial Justice And Human Rights: Rights-Based Strategies For The Current Era, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

On June 1, 2018, the Human Rights Institute convened its 15th annual CLE Symposium on Human Rights in the United States, a signature event of the Human Rights Institute’s Bringing Human Rights Lawyers’ Network. The day-long event brought together more than 150 leading U.S. lawyers, activists, and academics, along with federal and local government representatives to share strategies to advance racial justice within a domestic and global context increasingly hostile to human rights.

This report highlights key takeaways and themes from the Symposium, drawing from speakers’ remarks and their advocacy. It also serves as a basic human rights primer, describing …

Red Mining: Mining And The Right To Water In Porgera, Papua New Guinea, Human Rights Clinic, Advanced Consortium On Cooperation, Conflict And Complexity (Ac4)

Human Rights Institute

The Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) gold mine in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) has been one of the world’s highest producing gold mines over the course of its quarter-century history, and has accounted for a considerable percentage of PNG’s economic income. Yet many Porgeran residents live in deplorable conditions and feel trapped by the mine. Where they once farmed vegetables and collected fresh water from natural streams, they now see ever-expanding waste dumps. For years, security guards at the mine physically abused many residents, including sexually assaulting and gang-raping Porgeran women. 3 Residents feel the earth shake with …

The Post-9/11 Lgbtq Human Rights Struggle In Egypt, Donna K. Huaman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the struggle for LGBTQ human rights has become a leading standard that depicts whether or not a state can be considered modern and progressive. Yet, while this new criterion seems to be supported by Global North states, other nations in other regions, like Egypt from the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) has criticized the international pressure to implement this standard as neo-imperialist and inauthentic to its Muslim-Arab culture. Egypt claims to be the universal Arab-Muslim voice for the MENA region and has become one of the greatest challengers to the international campaign for …

Rethinking Social Media: An Expert Panel Discussion, Howard M. Squadron Program In Law, Media And Society, Bonavero Institute Of Human Rights, Cardozo Law Moot Court Honor Society

2018–2019 Flyers

This expert panel discussion, moderated by Professor Monroe Price, explored the evolving challenges and regulatory efforts related to social media. Held on Thursday, January 31st, from 6–8pm in the Moot Court Room at Cardozo School of Law, the event addressed pressing issues such as child pornography, cyberstalking, hate speech, terrorist content, and the impact of social media on U.S. elections. Panelists included Robyn Caplan (Data and Society), Jessa Lingel (University of Pennsylvania), and Cardozo Professor Felix Wu, whose work focuses on freedom of expression and cybersecurity. Presented by the Howard M. Squadron Program in Law, Media and Society in partnership …

Code Mixing As A Form Of Indonesian Identity Based On The Motto Of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, Fajar Muhammad Nugraha

International Review of Humanities Studies

In 2018, the Language Comission of the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud) of the Republic of Indonesia has made verification towards all the languages that exists in Indonesia. The verification conducted from 1991 to 2017 resulted in 652 languages to be found. That number still does not include the dialects and their sub-divisions of the 652 languages. Meanwhile, UNESCO recorded 143 languages based on their vitality status. Identity can be interpreted as similarity or unity with others in a certain area or other things (Rummens, 1993: 157-159). "The identity possessed by an individual can be in the form of …

Finding A Home In America: Cardozo Law Screening Of Refuge “Hombres Nuevos”, Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic, Cardozo Outlaw

2018–2019 Flyers

Promotional flyer for a Cardozo School of Law screening of Hombres Nuevos, episode six of the AT&T original series REFUGE. The episode tells the story of Luis Mancheno, a former Cardozo Law instructor and immigration attorney, who fled persecution in Ecuador and now advocates for the rights of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers in the U.S. The event included a screening and a Q&A moderated by Professor Kate Shaw, and was co-hosted by the Immigration Justice Clinic and OUTLaw.

Slogans Appropriate To The Legacy Of Martin Luther King Jr., Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

For printing signs, banners, posters, tee shirts, and bumper stickers (and for preaching sermons) that are appropriate to the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., please consider the following slogans: ABOLISH WAR, ABOLISH POVERTY, AMEND THE CONSTITUTION, SUPPORT AN ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS, JOBS FOR ALL, GUARANTEED INCOME FOR ALL, SUPPORT UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME, and GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR - Luke 4:14-19.