International Law Commons^™

Outcome Report On The Climate Crisis, Global Land Use And Human Rights Conference, Mateusz Kasprowicz, Sam Szoke-Burke, Kaitlin Y. Cordes

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

On September 27^th, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Landesa, the New York City Bar Association International Environmental Law Committee, and Wake Forest Law School hosted a day-long conference on the intersection between land use, the climate crisis and clean energy transition, and human rights.

Held at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, the conference brought together individuals from civil society organizations, governments, and academia, as well as lawyers, climate scientists, land-rights experts, indigenous representatives and other stakeholder groups. The panelists analyzed the critical role that land plays in …

Securing Adequate Legal Defense In Proceedings Under International Investment Agreements: A Scoping Study, Lise Johnson, Brooke Guven

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

CCSI prepared a Scoping Study for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Also available are:

• A summary version of the study (33 pages)
• A webinar (March 24, 2020), hosted by CCSI and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, discussed the Scoping Study and its findings (see also accompanying slides with speaking notes).
• A webinar organized by UNCITRAL (April 21, 2020). CCSI presented the Scoping Study. A video link of the webinar along with CCSI’s slides are available in English (with speaking notes) and French at that link. CCSI Senior Fellow Karl Sauvant also presented his UNCITRAL …

Environmental Injustice: How Treaties Undermine The Right To A Healthy Environment, Lisa E. Sachs, Lise Johnson, Ella Merrill

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Our planet faces unprecedented threats, including irreversible global warming, loss in biodiversity, and water pollution and water scarcity. The impacts of these environmental crises also threaten human rights and exacerbate inequality. Slowing these worsening environmental trends – and addressing the impacts of environmental change on populations – will require cumulative policy responses at the national and international level.

Enter At Your Own Risk: Criminalizing Asylum-Seekers, Thomas M. Mcdonnell, Vanessa H. Merton

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In nearly three years in office, President Donald J. Trump’s war against immigrants and the foreign-born seems only to have intensified. Through a series of Executive Branch actions and policies rather than legislation, the Trump Administration has targeted immigrants and visitors from Muslim-majority countries, imposed quotas on and drastically reduced the independence of Immigration Court Judges, cut the number of refugees admitted by more than 80%, cancelled DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), and stationed Immigration Customs and Enforcement (“ICE”) agents at state courtrooms to arrest unauthorized immigrants, intimidating them from participating as witnesses and litigants. Although initially saying that …

The Due Process And Other Constitutional Rights Of Foreign Nations, Ingrid Wuerth

Fordham Law Review

The rights of foreign states under the U.S. Constitution are becoming more important as the actions of foreign states and foreign state-owned enterprises expand in scope and the legislative protections to which they are entitled contract. Conventional wisdom and lower court cases hold that foreign states are outside our constitutional order and that they are protected neither by separation of powers nor by due process. As a matter of policy, however, it makes little sense to afford litigation-related constitutional protections to foreign corporations and individuals but to deny categorically such protections to foreign states. Careful analysis shows that the conventional …

The Effects Of Criminal Embeddedness On School Violence In Brazil, Braulio Figueiredo Alves Da Silva, Silvio Segundo Salej Higgins, Elenice Desouza Oliveira

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study examines the influence of criminal embeddedness on the intensity of criminal behavior among primary and secondary school students in a large Brazilian city. A database conceived by the Center for the Study of Crime and Public Security at the Federal University in Minas Gerais is used to analyze the involvement of youths displaying delinquent behavior at home or at school and how school performance and peer relationships are effected. Based on differential association and learning theories, the main hypotheses are (1) the greater the criminal embeddedness, the lower the degree of school satisfaction as well as future expectation …

Accountability Of Google And Other Businesses In Colombia: Personal Data Protection In The Digital Age, Maria P. Angel, Vivian Newman-Pont

Scholarly Works

In this document we analyze the privacy policies of 30 companies with data-driven business models that collect data in Colombia and identify practices that have not been sufficiently contemplated by the personal data protection regime currently applicable in our country. But what has been done in Colombia to guarantee these rights in the digital economy framework? In this document, we explore the degree of preparedness of our legal personal data protection regime and data protection authorities for tackling the risks that the digital era poses to different values and rights, thereby holding accountable the companies with data-driven business models (DDBM). …

The Occupation Of Maritime Territory Under International Humanitarian Law, Marco Longobardo

International Law Studies

This article explores whether it is possible to apply the law of occupation beyond land territory, to maritime areas characterized here as “maritime territory.” The article argues that the definition of territory under Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations comprises internal waters, territorial sea, and archipelagic waters, whereas other areas such as the continental shelf, the exclusive economic zone, and high seas fall outside the scope of Article 42. Accordingly, internal waters, the territorial sea, and archipelagic waters may be placed under occupation if a hostile force exercises actual authority over them without valid legal title. The article describes …

Udhr: Our North Star For Global Social Justice Or An Imperial And Settler-Colonial Tool To Limit Our Conception Of Freedom?, Jeena Shah

Pace International Law Review

On April 5, 2019, PILR held their triennial symposium titled: Revisiting Human Rights: The Universal Declaration at 70. As a reflection of the event, a few panelists composed contribution pieces reflecting on the topic.

Human Rights, Economic Justice And U.S. Exceptionalism, Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan

Pace International Law Review

On April 5, 2019, PILR held their triennial symposium titled: Revisiting Human Rights: The Universal Declaration at 70. As a reflection of the event, a few panelists composed contribution pieces reflecting on the topic.

Reclaiming Refugee Rights As Human Rights, Roni Amit

Pace International Law Review

On April 5, 2019, PILR held their triennial symposium titled: Revisiting Human Rights: The Universal Declaration at 70. As a reflection of the event, a few panelists composed contribution pieces reflecting on the topic.

Leahy—Sharpening The Blade, Nandor F.R. Kiss

Pace International Law Review

Over the course of the last 20 years, the Leahy Law has become one of the cornerstones of foreign and human rights policy. Yet, despite its largely unchallenged importance, field practitioners and other stakeholders have identified a number of substantive and practical deficiencies that greatly diminish the law’s ability to achieve the desired effect, and worse, may pose a risk to the United States’ interests. In reflecting on these deficiencies, and armed with decades of data and anecdotal evidence, this Article proposes adjustments focused on better aligning the law’s intent and effect. These recommendations range from semantic edits to substantive …

The Fatal Leviathan: A Hayekian Perspective Of Lex Mercatoria In Civil Law Countries, Fabio Núñez Del Prado Ch.

Pace International Law Review

Who should create default commercial rules? Should they be created in a constructivist way or should they be created rather through a spontaneous order? Should Kelsen’s positivism prevail in commercial law? Drawing on diverse libertarian literature, I will argue that, since courts do not play a dominant role in civil law countries and, more importantly, do not set precedents, default commercial rules should not be created by the legislator, but through the Lex Mercatoria.

Regulating Through Trade: The Contestation And Recalibration Of Eu ‘Deep And Comprehensive’ Ftas, Billy Melo Araujo

Pace International Law Review

Contemporary international trade politics is primarily focused on deep integration – that is, the removal of regulatory barriers to trade. The EU, in particular, has long been one of the main proponents of the use of trade agreements to promote regulatory disciplines on issues such as intellectual property regulation, procurement, services, competition and investment protection. This so-called ‘EU regulatory agenda’ has rapidly gathered pace over the past decade and culminated, more recently, in attempts to conclude mega-regional trade agreements such as the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Such agreements have, however, proved highly contentious and are being fiercely contested …

Federalism: Necessary Legal Foundation For The Central Middle Eastern States, Issa Al-Aweel

Pace International Law Review

The Central Middle East—comprising of Syria, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan—is in need of a legal foundation defined by a constitutional umbrella that governs it as a whole. This is a proposed broad structure of such legal foundation that serves regional legal and economic needs and includes recognition of human rights.

The need for such restructuring is evident from the persistence of regional conflict and instability. Conflict and instability have been constants in the region in general and certainly in the listed five states. The issues include political instability, terrorism, continuous threats of fundamentalism, and pervasive disregard to human life …

The Supreme Court And Refugees At The Southern Border: 5 Questions Answered, Karla M. Mckanders

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

I sat in a small room in Tijuana, Mexico with a 13-year-old indigenous Mayan Guatemalan girl.

She left Guatemala after a cartel murdered her friend and threatened to rape her. Her mother wanted her to live and believed the only way for her to survive was to send her daughter alone to the U.S., to apply for asylum Now she was alone and stuck in Mexico. Every morning, the Guatemalan girl, along with other asylum seekers, would frantically gather at the Tijuana-U.S. border where they waited to hear their name or their number called so the Mexican government could escort …

Ethics And Methods Of Human Rights Work: Exploring Both Theoretical And Practical Approaches, Shayna Plaut, Maritza Felices Luna, Christina Clark Kazak, Neil Bilotta, Lara Rosenoff Gauvin

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This workshop will explore both theoretical and practical approaches to methodologies and ethics as it relates to human rights work.

The goal of the workshop is to create a dynamic space that encourages participants to share and learn from our own experiences navigating the messiness of human rights ethics and methods. We specifically address formal education and systems and structures so that we may all design, do and teach research and practice related to human rights in a more critical and sustainable manner. We recognize the tensions of creating research, programs and advocacy that is seen as “legitimate” to educational …

Contesting Human Rights Defenders At The Un Human Rights Council, M. Joel Voss

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights defenders are being increasingly targeted across the globe. The rise of nationalist, populist regimes is of great concern to both human rights defenders and those that advocate for the rights of defenders. The problem is not only of domestic concern. The UN Human Rights Council, the UN’s preeminent human rights institution, is also seeing an increasing number of attacks on defenders, both in formal settings like discussions on resolutions and the Universal Periodic Review process and informally, through threats to participants at the Council.

This paper attempts to better understand and predict which states will both try to …

International Surrogacy Arrangements: A Human Rights Case, Marisa Araújo

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The scientific development in Artificial Reproductive Technology (ART), especially IFV solutions, are promoting the development of our reproductive options. Surrogacy is now one of these solutions and new ethical and legal problems arise.

Domestic Laws have the most different positions. If there are countries that admit surrogacy arrangements, even commercial ones like the Florida State in the USA (and the particular case of India); others criminalize these procedures and others, like the UK (and Portugal), have a middle term position.

Considering the frontier zone in which surrogacy takes its place, the debate is more exuberant since the concrete legal solution …

The Rise Of ‘Right-Wing’ Human Rights Rhetoric: A Palestinian & Israeli Case Study, Leah Wilson

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights are historically understood as ‘liberal’ rhetoric, yet the following study will present an unprecedented turn by an Israeli ‘right-wing’ organization to human rights language and methodologies as a means to advance their goals. For context, the study will review how ‘liberal’ organizations in the region have employed rights-based frameworks, dating back to the rise of the first intifada in the late 1980’s. Specifically, the study focuses on three organizations that utilize the Israeli court system for their work: ACRI (Association for Civil Rights in Israel), Adalah (The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel), and HaMoked. Human …

The Human Right To A Healthy Environment: Pushing The Boundaries In The Inter-American System, Sarah Dávila-Ruhaak

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The connection between the environment and human rights is not a surprising one. The enjoyment of human rights depends on a person’s ability to live free from interference and to have his or her rights protected. The interdependence of human rights and the protection of the environment is manifested in the full and effective enjoyment of the rights to life, highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, adequate standard of living, adequate food, clean water and sanitation, housing, culture, freedom of expression and association, information and education, participation, effective remedies, and the rights of indigenous peoples. Without adequate access …

Decolonizing Human Rights: Sovereignty. Disruption. Tactics., A. Kayum Ahmed

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Despite its emancipatory potential, human rights remains locked in a form of epistemic coloniality that defers to Euro-American knowledge and reinforces anthropocentric exceptionalism. In order to employ human rights as a source of emancipation, human rights must itself be emancipated—it must be decolonized. Drawing on the notion of 'decoloniality' as a framework that advances radical possibilities by delinking from structural racism, patriarchy and class embedded in capitalism and Western modernity, a typology of human rights as sovereignty, disruption, and tactics is developed as a way of understanding human rights from the position of the colonized.

Transnational Perspectives On The Paris Climate Agreement Beyond Paris: Redressing American Defaults In Caring For Earth’S Biosphere, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Anxiety about the fate of human civilization is rising. International Law has an essential role to play in sustaining community of nations. Without enhancing International Environmental Law, the biosphere that sustains all nations is imperiled. Laws in the United States can either impede or advance global environmental stewardship. What is entailed in such a choice?

The biosphere is changing. At a time when extraordinary technological prowess allows governments the capacity to know how deeply they are altering Earth's biosphere, nations experience a perverse inability to cooperate together. The Arctic is melting rapidly, with knock on effects for sea level rise …

The Dialogic Aspect Of Soft Law In International Insolvency: Discord, Digression, And Development, John A. E. Pottow

Law & Economics Working Papers

Soft law is on the ascent in international insolvency, seeming now to occupy a preferred status over boring old conventions. An arguably constitutive aspect of soft law, which some contend provides a normative justification for international law generally, is its "dialogic" nature, by which I mean its intentional exposure to recursive norm contestation and iterative development: soft law starts a dialogue. The product of that dialogue, on a teleological view, may well be hard law. In the international insolvency realm, that pathway is through (soft) model domestic legislation that aspires toward enactment as municipal law. The happy story is that …

Systems Of Crime And Castigation: A Reevaluation Of The Punishment Bureaucracy, Lia Pikus

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Models of reform within the criminal justice system often operate from a top-down perspective, affecting change on surface levels to attempt to better the system. One example of such a reform is Scotland’s Presumption Against Short Sentences. These kinds of changes, as I will illustrate in this paper, both fall short of achieving genuine change and often produce negative side effects. However, a few countries have made deeper changes to the ways their systems both view and handle crime and punishment; one such system is Norway. Through rehabilitation and restorative justice, Norway has greatly decreased rates of recidivism, increased social …

Agricultural Investments: A Primer For Host Government Lawyers And Local Lawyers In Private Practice, Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Attracting investment in agriculture has been a key policy goal of governments in the global south. Development partners have supported these policies. But what do governments hope to achieve by attracting investment in the agricultural sector? Why are companies interested in investing? What is in it for local communities? And what is the role of lawyers? This primer provides an introduction to some of the key issues that arise in the negotiation of contracts linked to investments in agriculture, and practical guidance for how to approach common issues. Section 1 of this primer outlines the typical goals of three important …

Ensuring Economic Viability And Sustainability Of Coffee Production, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, James Rising, Perrine Toledano, Nicolas Maennling

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Coffee, the world’s favorite beverage, provides livelihoods for at least 60 million people across dozens of countries. Yet this beloved drink is experiencing a sustainability crisis. A sustained decline in world coffee prices has squeezed coffee producers, and thrown a tremendous number of producers below the global extreme poverty line. This report presents our research into sustainability within the coffee sector, including the results of our analytical and empirical modeling, and provides several recommendations.

Death Be Not Strange. The Montreal Convention’S Mislabeling Of Human Remains As Cargo And Its Near Unbreakable Liability Limits, Christopher Ogolla

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

This article discusses Article 22 of the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air (“The Montreal Convention”) and its impact on the transportation of human remains. The Convention limits carrier liability to a sum of 19 Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) per kilogram in the case of destruction, loss, damage or delay of part of the cargo or of any object contained therein. Transportation of human remains falls under Article 22 which forecloses any recovery for pain and suffering unaccompanied by physical injury. This Article finds fault with this liability limit. The Article notes that if …

Global Justice Vs. U.S. Global Hegemony: Rejecting Bolton’S Opposition To The Icc, Norman Swazo

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Former U.S. National Security Advisor John R. Bolton has announced that as an official Trump Administration national security policy, the USA will not support the International Criminal Court (ICC) and instead will work for its demise. At issue here is a concept of global justice versus insistence on US global hegemony and a Pax Americana. Here, the author argues against Bolton's position rejecting the legitimacy of international law and the ICC. Bolton 's appeal to a principle of consent must yield to a principle of salience, as defended by Ronald Dworkin; a concept ofjustice, as advocated by Amartya Sen; and …

Legitimacy In International Dispute Resolution In The Age Of Anti-Globalization, Nationalism, And Isolationism: How Geographical And Legal Cultural Diversity On The International Bench Can Promote Regional And International Cooperation, Alina Ng Boyte

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The article argues that implicit biases, such as availability bias, affect heuristic, and endowment effect, significantly impede international cooperation and effective problem-solving in the global legal system. By addressing these cognitive errors, international legal institutions can foster trust, promote collaboration, and achieve socially just outcomes. The analysis highlights the role of legal frameworks and distributive justice in overcoming these biases, using the example of global efforts to eliminate child labor as a successful case study.