Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Legal Mechanization Of Corporate Social Responsibility Through Alien Tort Statute Litigation: A Response To Professor Branson With Some Supplemental Thoughts, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Response argues that as ATS jurisprudence “matures” or becomes more sophisticated, the legitimate limits of the law regress. The further expansion within the corporate defendant pool – attempting to pin liability on parent, great grandparent corporations and up to the top – raises the stakes and complexity of ATS litigation. The corporate social responsibility discussion raises three principal issues about how a moral corporation lives its life: how a corporation chooses its self-interest versus the interests of others, when and how it should help others if control decisions may harm the shareholder owners, and how far the corporation must …

The Twitter Effect, Caitlin Byrne

Caitlin Byrne

Extract: In its short history, Twitter-the latest social networking phenomenon-has emerged from within the boundaries of political oppression as a potential enabler of human rights. A product of Western culture. Twitter's relevance to human rights rests in liberal political theory. In particular, Twitter gives effect to first generation human rights, articulated by the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) in 1948, and subsequently codified in international law by the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1966. The potential of Twitter presents both serious challenges and opportunities for advancing human rights, which this case explores in …

With Reckless Abandon: Haneef And Ul-Haque In Australia's 'War On Terror', Mark Rix

Mark Rix

This brief paper considers the political and social implications of the manner in which Australia has prosecuted the so-called ‘war on terror’. It does this by investigating relevant aspects of Australia’s anti-terrorism legislation and the performance of Australian security and law enforcement agencies, namely, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Focusing on the Haneef and Ul-Haque cases, the paper will consider how the political climate created by the former Federal Government’s legislative approach to the war on terror has influenced the performance of these organisations. By focusing on these two cases, the paper …

Human Rights In Camera, Sharon Sliwinski

Sharon Sliwinski

Superfluousness, Human Rights And The State: Applying Arendt To Questions Of Femicide, Narco Violence And Illegal Immigration In A Globalized World, Emma Norman

Emma R. Norman

This paper shows how Hannah Arendt’s disturbing notion of superfluousness and her critique of human rights are highly applicable to the problems globalization has brought to the U.S.-Mexico border region and beyond, with worrying consequences. In theory, ‘inalienable’ human rights form a safety net to catch those whose governments fail to afford them political rights. But, as Arendt pointed out, such minimum rights only function if one’s state is willing and able to guarantee them. For her, stateless persons are deprived of both a territory and of occupying a ‘niche in the framework of the general law.’ They are thus …

Global Comparison Of Warring Groups In 2002-2007: Fatalities From Targeting Civilians Vs. Fighting Battles., M Hicks, U Lee, R Sundberg, M Spagat

Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks

BACKGROUND:

Warring groups that compete to dominate a civilian population confront contending behavioral options: target civilians or battle the enemy. We aimed to describe degrees to which combatant groups concentrated lethal behavior into intentionally targeting civilians as opposed to engaging in battle with opponents in contemporary armed conflict.

METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:

We identified all 226 formally organized state and non-state groups (i.e. actors) that engaged in lethal armed conflict during 2002-2007: 43 state and 183 non-state. We summed civilians killed by an actor's intentional targeting with civilians and combatants killed in battles in which the actor was involved for total fatalities …