International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

Legal Issues In Coalition Warfare: A U.S. Perspective, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Wrong-Sizing International Justice? The Hybrid Tribunal In Sierra Leone, Chandra Lekha Sriram

Faculty Scholarship

As institutions of international justice proliferate, so do disputes about their legitimacy, and about what shape they ought to take. As truly international tools such as the International Criminal Court and the exercise of universal jurisdiction face political and practical challenges, some scholars and practitioners have advocated a distinct institutional solution: the hybrid court. These are courts that are neither purely national nor international, but rather that pursue accountability in the country where abuses and crimes occurred, but with both national and international staff, and utilizing a mixture of national and international law. Many have suggested that these tribunals represent …

Agora: Icj Advisory Opinion On Construction Of A Wall In The Occupied Palestinian Territory: Editors' Introduction, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Bernard H. Oxman

Faculty Scholarship

Only rarely does an international judicial opinion attract attention on the front pages of newspapers around the world, and spur activism-or condemnation-from diverse segments of global civil society. The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is such a case. As the Court recognized in addressing the question put to it by the United Nations General Assembly, the choice of the term "wall" to designate the subject matter of the proceeding already opens up an area of debate, since not all of the contested structure is …

Balancing Acts: The Rights Of Women And Cultural Minorities In Kenyan Marital Law, Catherine A. Hardee

Faculty Scholarship

In the postcolonial world, many developing nations struggle to manage significant populations of different ethnic groups, religions, and nationalities within their borders. There has been a concentrated effort on the part of many nations to provide protection for cultural groups, even to the extent of allowing cultural and religious groups to define the personal law that will govern their members. Often, however, the effort to provide freedom for cultural groups to practice their beliefs conflicts with the ideals of equality and choice for women that are central to the liberal feminist movement. In this Note, Catherine Hardee surveys the theoretical …

Proposals To Expel Palestinians From The Occupied Territories As Catalyst For A Civil Adjudication Campaign, Catherine A. Rogers

Faculty Scholarship

I begin in Part II with a brief sketch of the history of stated policies to expel Palestinians from what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories, and then examine recent proposals that have been made and actions that have been taken to implement modern re-articulations of those historic policies. In Part III, I then review the grounds on which international law proscribes mass expulsions of indigenous and occupied peoples. While international law governing this issue is clear in its application and has been overwhelmingly endorsed by the larger international community, international law seems to have little influence on Israel's …

The Aftermath Of September 11, 2001: The Targeting Of Arabs And Muslims In America, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

THE DEMONIZING OF ARABS AND Muslims in America began well before the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001. It can be traced to deliberate mythmaking by film and media,² stereotyping as part of conscious strategy of 'experts' and polemicists on the Middle East,³ the selling of a foreign policy agenda by US government officials and groups seeking to affect that agenda,⁴ and a public susceptible to images identifying the unwelcome 'other* in its midst.⁵ Bearing the brunt of these factors are Arab and Muslim non-citizens in this country. A series of government laws and policies since …

Palestinian Refugees And Their Legal Status: Rights, Politics, And Implications For A Just Solution, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

The Palestinian refugee problem is one of the longest-lasting refugee crises in the world——now exceeding fifty-three years——without a real solution in sight. Although at its core a political problem, the Palestinian refugee crisis is also a problem of legal distortion: Palestinian refugees fall into a legal lacuna that sets them outside minimal international protections available for all other refugee groups in the world. This paper provides background to the legal anomaly that sets Palestinian refugees apart; discusses the legal, practical, and political implications of that status; and proposes a framework and mechanisms aimed at promoting a rights-based solution for the …

Conjoining International Human Rights Law With Enterprise Liability For Accidents, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law And Military Interventions: Preserving Humanitarian Values In 21st Conflicts, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reinterpreting Palestinian Refugee Rights Under International Law, And A Framework For Durable Solutions, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

Background

The paper presented here is based on a much larger brief produced by two experts in international refugee law, Susan Akram and Guy Goodwin-Gill assisted by a team of law students at Boston University. Both the larger brief and the paper presented here argue for a re-interpretation of the current international refugee law which adequately expresses the principle of heightened protection for Palestinian refugees, a principle which had guided the drafting and consequent approval of international law and UN resolutions.

The author argues that the current lack of legal protection of Palestinian refugees derives from the misinterpretation of the …

Fora Available For Palestinian Refugee Restitution, Compensation And Related Claims, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

This summary focuses on where Palestinian refugees can bring individual restitution and compensation claims. It does not discuss fora where claims for realizing the right of return might be made, although such claims will be mentioned as appropriate in the context of the discussions of restitution/compensation fora. Palestinian refugees do not at present have any forum immediately available in which they can file individual claims for restitution and/or compensation for losses sustained as a result of their expulsion from their lands and homes in 1948. The forum in which such claims would ordinarily be made is the place where the …

Orientalism Revisited In Asylum And Refugee Claims, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the stereotyping of Islam both by advocates and academics in refugee rights advocacy. The article looks at a particular aspect of this stereotyping, which can be seen as ‘neo-Orientalism’ occurring in the asylum and refugee context, particularly affecting women, and the damage that it does to refugee rights both in and outside the Arab and Muslim world. The article points out the dangers of neo-orientalism in framing refugee law issues and asks for a more thoughtful and analytical approach by Western refugee advocates and academics on the panoply of Muslim attitudes and Islamic thought affecting applicants for …

The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights At 50 And The Challenge Of Global Markets: Themes And Variations, Samuel K. Murumba

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The World Refugee Regime In Crisis: A Failure To Fulfill The Burden-Sharing And Humanitarian Requirements Of The 1951 Refugee Convention, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Musarat-Akram provided several examples which illustrate the crisis of the international refugee regime. Specifically, they illustrate, first, that the protections offered so generously in the language and purpose of the 1951 Refugee Convention⁷ are more European and-Western-centered than ever before.

Second, they illustrate some of the restrictionist policies by which Western and industrialized states have succeeded in confining huge refugee flows to the most impoverished and least developed states in the world.

Third, they illustrate that the initial limitations inherent in the 1951 Refugee Convention have now been exacerbated by state practice which interprets the Convention language and …

Provisional Relief In Transnational Litigation, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, Professor Bermann identifies and analyzes the principal problems raised by the rapidly growing phenomenon of transnational provisional relief National courts are facing serious challenges in organizing such interventions, but as yet lack a sufficiently comprehensive framework of analysis. The author begins with the clarifying distinction that provisional relief may be transnational either because of its significant effects abroad or because it lends support to protective measures ordered by foreign courts, and draws on the experiences of U.S. and foreign courts in determining the costs of both granting and withholding provisional relief He concludes that, despite the very …

The Command And Control Of United Nations Forces In The Era Of "Peace Enforcement", James W. Houck

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores how concerns regarding the United Nations' authority to make political, strategic, and operational decisions that comprise the right to command and control UN forces might be reconciled within the framework of the United Nations Charter to create a contemporary and more enduring regime for the command and control of United Nations forces. As Part II demonstrates, command and control issues are not new to the United Nations; indeed, in 1945 the signatories to the United Nations Charter created a model for the command and control of United Nations forces.

While the cold war ensured that this model …

The Eichmann Trial, The Jewish Question, And The American-Jewish Intelligentsia, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

The abduction, trial, and execution of Adolf Karl Eichmann by the state of Israel, fifteen years after the shutdown of the crematoria at Auschwitz, challenged the American Jewish intelligentsia to confront the Jewish question.4 What does it mean to be a Jew in America and who is an American Jew? Is the Jewish history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust also a part of American-Jewish history? Is there a lesson in the destruction of European Jewry-the triumph of anti-Semitism, the failure of assimilation-relevant to American Jews? Is there a national component to being Jewish? Are Jews a people? If so, is …

International Human Rights Law In Soviet And American Courts, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

To what extent should domestic courts apply international law – specifically the international law of human rights? I would like to examine this question with reference to two very different states: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States. For quite distinct reasons, neither of the two has yet fully embraced the idea of direct application in national tribunals of the body of international law that regulates the relationship between human beings and their own governments. As the post-Cold War era unfolds, it is time to ask whether either or both of these erstwhile adversaries might finally be …

New Frontiers: The Expansion Of International Criminal Law, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Law Of Humanitarian Intervention: U.S. Policy In Cuba (1898) And In The Dominican Republic (1965), David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.