International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

A Trade/Human Rights Linkage By The United States: Is Enforcing Human Rights By Use Of Trade Sanctions Effective?, Blaise Omondi Odhiambo

LLM Theses and Essays

Universally held basic human rights must remain separate from political rights. Such basic human rights are those that are so universal that all societies, systems, nations, and ideology could, and do espouse them. Conversely, political rights are those that are dependent upon compatibility with the system of government in place and arc therefore far less likely to gamer universal support. An effective multilateral enforcement mechanism can only succeed if there are universal agreement and acceptance of the protected rights. Accordingly, at the outset of such a mechanism, only basic human rights may be enforced through trade sanctions. Once such a …

Justice In Africa: Rwanda's Genocide, Its Courts, And The Un Criminal Tribunal, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

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 …

Anticipatory Humanitarian Intervention In Kosovo, Jonathan I. Charney

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Kosovo during the spring of 1999 aroused controversy at the time and still provokes questions about the legality of the action, its precedential effect, and procedures for developing new international law. The participants faced a legal and moral dilemma between international law prohibitions on the use of force and the goal of preventing or stopping widespread grave violations of international human rights. This commentary seeks to chart a course for the future in light of the current legal and moral environment.

Many individuals on all sides of the Kosovo crisis …

Sovereignty, Judicial Assistance And Protection Of Human Rights In International Criminal Tribunals, Kenneth S. Gallant

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

... And Justice For All: Normative Descriptive Frameworks For The Implementation Of Tribunals To Try Human Rights Violators, Gautam Rana

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

With the formation of the Bosnian and Rwandan War Crimes Tribunals, the international community has created a mechanism for the enforcement of human rights law for the first time since the Nuremburg and Tokyo War Trials. The efficacy of these tribunals, however, is in doubt. This Note proposes that only a few human rights are truly universal in nature and can be guaranteed by the international community. Furthermore, the political realities of the international system precludes the use of international tribunals against the more powerful nations of the international community. The Note concludes that by focusing on the human rights …

Will Hong Kong Be Successfully Integrated Into China? A Human Rights Perspective, Yu Ping

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article explores the human rights forecast following Hong Kong's reintegration into China. The Article first reviews the British human rights record in Hong Kong, and explains why China was angered by last-ditch British political reform. It then explores the legal framework of Hong Kong, including the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law of Hong Kong, and concludes that neither offers significant protection for human rights in Hong Kong. In particular, Chinese state security and state secrets laws are likely to be used to suppress political dissidents, journalists, international organizations, and other "foreign elements" in Hong Kong. The Article …

The World Bank, The Imf, And Human Rights, Daniel D. Bradlow

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This paper explores the type of human rights obligations of the World Bank and the IMF. It argues that their human rights obligations can be divided into two sets of issues. First is operational issues, which relate to both the promotion and protection of human rights. Second is institutional issues, which deal with the internal rules and procedures of the World Bank and the IMF. The paper concludes that these organizations need to develop a coherent and explicit human rights policy.

Humanitarian Intervention In Southeast Asia In The Post-Cold War World: Dilemmas In The Definition And Design Of International Law, Bruce Pruitt-Hamm

Washington International Law Journal

Human rights abuse is a significant problem in Southeast Asia. The end of the Cold War has led to trends toward greater use of international interventionary force for humanitarian objectives. This Comment proposes that rather than defining or re-interpreting international law to allow military intervention for humanitarian purposes, a Southeast Asian regional human rights regime should be formed, involving greater development and acceptance of non-military forms of intervention.

In The Wrong Place, At The Wrong Time: Problems With The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights Use Of Contentious Jurisdiction, Michael J. Corbera

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Inter-American region has a history of widespread human rights abuse. To combat this problem the Organization of American States has developed a regional system for the protection of human rights. The system's adjudicatory body is the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the Court). In recent years the Court has expanded its power through its exercise of contentious jurisdiction. Certain factors, however, that are unique to the Inter-American region weigh against the Court's use of contentious jurisdiction.

Tracing the development of the Inter-American human rights system in general and the Court in particular, this Note evaluates the Court's powers and …

The United States Supreme Court And The Protection Of Refugees, Lung-Chu Chen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Panel Discussion, Professor Jonathan Charney, Professor Thomas Franck, Professor Jordan Paust, Professor John Murphy, Geoffrey Levitt, Professor Kenneth Abbott, Professor Robert Friedlander, Professor Alberto Coll, Professor Jerome Reichman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Kelsen, in his writings, took the position that in law, particularly international law, there are superior and inferior limits to the law; that is, when a norm is articulated and the society behaves in conformance with the norm, and it would do so even in the absence of the norm, the norm is not serving a legal function; it is not serving a normative function of encouraging behavior because the behavior would be in conformance with that norm in any event. There's also the inferior limit to the law; that is, a situation where a rule is articulated but the …

United States Compliance With The Helsinki Final Act: The Treatment Of Aliens, David Carliner

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

A casualty, sorely if not fatally wounded, of the Soviet armed intervention in Afghanistan is the once widely-touted Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe concluded in Helsinki on August 1, 1975. The Conference was originally proposed by the Soviet Union in the 1950's in order to promote its perceived security interest in Europe and to legitimize its territorial boundaries in Eastern Europe. Though initially opposed to the idea, the United States finally supported it in 1972 as a means of promoting the "security that would come from an expansion of cooperation between East and West …

Prisoners Of War And The Code Of Conduct, William P. Lyons

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

International Law And Basic Human Rights, Louis B. Sohn

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Yamashita, Nuremberg And Vietnam: Command Responsibility Reappraised, Franklin A. Hart

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

International Law, The Oas And The Dominican Crisis, Charles G. Fenwick

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Introduction, William W. Bishop, Jr.

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This issue of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law is a symposium devoted to human rights aspects of the Helsinki Final Act. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was convened in Helsinki July 3, 1973. After sessions there and in Geneva, all European states, both Western and Eastern (except Albania), took part, as did also the United States and Canada. On August 1, 1975, the Final Act of the Conference was signed at Helsinki by thirty-five nations. Its provisions had been laboriously arrived at by consensus rather than by voting. Early pressures for such a conference had come …

Table Of Contents Volume 60 Documents On Prisoners Of War

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Human Rights And World Public Order: Human Rights In Comprehensive Context, Myres S. Mcdougal, Harold D. Lasswell, Lung-Chu Chen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Genocide Convention And The Constitution, Myres S. Mcdougal, Richard Arens

Vanderbilt Law Review

What is traditional for common crimes can scarcely be oppressive innovation for mass-murder. Even freedom of communication is not, furthermore, an absolute in democratic preference: security and human decency must likewise have their place.

It is no little irony that argument must be made in support of a convention to suppress genocide. "The spectacle," writes a contemporary journal of opinion, "of modern man explaining his right to existence is an odd one." The Genocide Convention is but one of many interrelated measures in a world-wide program to secure peace and respect for the dignity of the individual human being. Rational …