Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Obstetric Violence In The Case Law Of The Universal And Inter-American Human Rights Systems, Carmen Cecilia Martínez López

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

This Article explores how obstetric violence is treated within two major international human rights systems: the Inter-American System of Human Rights and the United Nations treaty body system. While obstetric violence has been increasingly recognized as a form of gender-based violence and a violation of fundamental rights, the articulation of its scope, state obligations, and standards of redress has varied across institutions.

Building on this analysis, the Article argues that a comparative approach to these systems not only illuminates key similarities and differences in legal standards, but also reveals concrete gaps and opportunities to advance the protection of reproductive autonomy. …

Legislating With An Expiration Date & The Duty To Reevaluate: Sunset Provisions As A Safeguard In Self-Defense Laws, Samantha Morales

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

Self-defense laws have a long history in the jurisprudence of many countries around the world, reflecting the essential right to protect oneself from harm. At their core, self-defense laws seek to balance the rights of individuals against one another in threatening, violent, or high-risk scenarios, presenting a classic legal dilemma—one person’s rights end where another’s begin.

Through a comparative and analytical lens, this Note explores the origins, current state, and impact of self-defense laws, focusing specifically on the United States and the United Kingdom. Tracing the development of self-defense doctrine from its roots in the common law, the analysis highlights …

Expanding “We The People”: Constitutional Language And Gender (In)Equality In The United States, France, Germany, And Sweden, Sophia Elaine Ward

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

While the U.S. Constitution opens with the inclusive promise of representing “We the People,” it remains silent on gender equality. That silence leaves gender-based rights dependent on judicial interpretation rather than constitutional command, producing uneven, unstable protections that shift with changing courts and political regimes. Although the U.S. Supreme Court addresses sex discrimination through the Equal Protection Clause, its jurisprudence relies on a formal equality framework that fails to confront structural and systemic gender inequality and offers no durable constitutional guarantee.

This Note argues that the U.S. can no longer rely on judicial interpretation alone to secure gender equality. Instead, …

Human Rights In The Americas Symposium: An Examination Of Past, Present, And Future, Caroline Bettinger-López, Tamar Ezer, Shantanice Vaxter, Hannah Garry, Alexzandrea Bartle, Austin Brewster, Brittany Findley, Ana Garcia-Velez, Andrew Kiliment, Christian Kruger, Ana Luiza Potgornik Ferreira, Abigail Matherne, Genice Nadal, Lucia Niño Junyent, Yasmin Rizvi, Amanda Sarmientos, Megan Schutzen, Roberta Spehl, Sara White, Meg Williams

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

Human Rights in the Americas Symposium: An Examination of Past, Present, and Future documents a week-long convening hosted by the University of Miami School of Law in November 2025, held in conjunctions with the 194th Period of Sessions of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The Symposium brought together scholars, advocates, policymakers, students, artists, and community members to assess the evolution, current challenges, and future trajectory of human rights in the Americas.

Through interdisciplinary panels, thematic hearings, artistic exhibitions, and community-based engagements, participants examined pressing regional issues, including democratic backsliding, migration, housing justice, racial and gender inequality, environmental harm, and …

Protection Of The Human Rights Of Older Persons In The Americas And The Caribbean, Gloria Monique De Mees

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

The Americas and the Caribbean are undergoing rapid demographic aging amid structural inequality, widespread informality, and fragile social protection, exposing older persons to heightened risks of disease, poverty, exclusion, and abuse while reinforcing their construction as dependents rather than autonomous rights-holders. Grounded in the Inter-American Human Rights System, and complemented by empirical evidence, the analysis situates demographic aging as a structural human rights priority and traces the evolution of regional standards culminating in the Inter-American Convention on Protecting the Human Rights of Older Persons. It then examines advances and gaps in national protection systems in Latin America and the Caribbean …

Homelessness In The Caribbean: From Colonial Roots To Rights-Based Responses, Wilmy Dessalines, Tamar Ezer, Gabriela Valentín Diaz

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

This Article provides an analysis of homelessness across four Caribbean localities—the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Each locality brings a diverse history connected to colonial legacies and realities from Spain, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They capture a cross-section of the Caribbean and reveal that homelessness is shaped by legal and governance systems rooted in colonial inheritance that promote exclusion over social protection: from vagrancy laws that regulate presence in public space to land systems that legalize dispossession and facilitate displacement. Laws punishing vagrancy and life-sustaining activities serve as instruments of social control that systematically …

Police Accountability For Racial Justice And Equality: A Human Rights Analysis Of Perceptions Of Police Legitimacy In Orlando, Florida, Katherine Wilson Mccoy, R. Denisse Córdova Montes

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

The murder of George Floyd marked a watershed moment in the global fight against racism. In response, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 43/1, calling for a comprehensive report on systemic racism and human rights violations against Africans and people of African descent by law enforcement. Despite this increased scrutiny, legislators have increasingly used laws to police poverty. Florida House Bill 1365 went into effect on October 1, 2024, prohibiting public camping and sleeping on public property without authorization. Critics argue that such measures disproportionately target marginalized groups by criminalizing life-sustaining activities. Research suggests that repeated interactions, especially …

Peace Agreements, Provisions, And Profit: How Peace Agreement Provisions Impact Foreign Direct Investment Inflows, Wendi M. Sheehan

Honors Theses

There are many provisions that post-civil war states may include in peace treaties. This paper seeks to analyze the inclusion of three specific provisions– political power sharing and political institutions, rule of law/property rights, and infrastructure and reconstruction– and their impact on the resulting foreign direct investment inflows into a post-conflict nation over the course of ten years. I hypothesize that states that include one or more of these provisions will subsequently experience higher FDI inflows. To test this theory, I used the peace agreement information from the PA-X Peace Agreements dataset and FDI inflow information from the United Nations’ …

Pembeli Beritikad Baik Dalam Konteks Jual Beli Menurut Ketentuan Hukum Indonesia, Arie S. Hutagalung, Suparjo Sujadi

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Abstract

Foreign Judgments In U.S. Courts, Yanbai Andrea Wang

Fordham Law Review

American law on foreign judgments is at an inflection point. For over a century, the doctrine has been shaped by concerns about outgoing U.S. judgments seeking asset collection in the civil law countries of continental Europe. But shifting trade flows and changing litigation tactics have carved a new landscape, demanding a return to foreign judgments law’s conceptual and doctrinal underpinnings. This Article first maps the new landscape, in which China is rapidly rising as a foremost foreign judgments interlocutor. Meanwhile, litigants are increasingly pursuing parallel litigation in multiple countries. The impact of incoming judgments and the interactions between related litigations …

Nonmarriage? Rethinking Religious Marriage In Modern States, Shahar Lifshitz

Cardozo Law Review

This Article examines the civil regulation of religious marriage in liberal democracies. While legal scholarship has extensively explored nonmarital intimate relationships, it has paid comparatively little attention to couples who regard themselves as married under religious law without corresponding civil status, as well as couples who remain religiously married following a civil divorce. These arrangements, prevalent among religious minorities such as Orthodox Jews and Muslims, often generate significant legal and personal harms, including exclusion from civil protections, economic vulnerability, and constrained exit from intimate relationships.

This Article develops a structured analytical framework grounded in three liberal perspectives. The individual-rights perspective …

Adjudicating Fake News, Filippo Lancieri, Caio Mario Da Silva Pereira Neto, Rodrigo Moura Karolczak, Barbara Marchiori De Assis

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On July 30, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on imports from Brazil and sanctioned a sitting Brazilian Supreme Court Justice, both partially because of Brazil’s online content moderation decisions. This is an extreme, but not an isolated event: worldwide, legislators and regulators struggle to craft public policies that address problems of disinformation and online harassment while protecting the freedom of expression—leading to increasing international confrontations. One key question in content moderation is content adjudication—or who is responsible for deciding what type of speech violates the law and should be taken down (or not). This article contributes to …

Supreme Court And Presidentialism: When Judges Stand In The President’S Way, Michael Procopio Avelar

LL.M. Essays & Theses

This article examines the conditions under which constitutional courts are able to resist executive attempts at institutional capture during periods of democratic erosion. Instead of concentrating on the mechanisms through which courts are attacked, it focuses on how courts effectively behave in the long term when operating under sustained political pressure. The central claim is that judicial resistance cannot be explained solely by formal institutional design or by a general commitment to constitutional principles. It depends on the interaction of three variables: judicial replaceability, external support, and enforcement capacity.

The article develops a typology of judicial responses to executive aggrandizement, …

Men’S Courts Or Women’S Laws? Domestic Violence, Men’S Rights Activism, And The Specter Of False Cases, Arushi Gupta

LL.M. Essays & Theses

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Indian newspapers and magazines began reporting stories of domestic abuse in matrimonial homes ranging from women subjected to dowry demands, beatings, everyday mistreatment, financial control, expulsion from the home, and even being burnt to death. Feminists recognized this as an urgent issue to respond to as these reports highlighted that domestic violence is endemic. Everybody knew a victim. Their own mothers, sisters, friends and, in some cases, they themselves were facing violence within marriage. The lobbying of women’s groups helped prompt the passage of Section 498A in 1983, which criminalized cruelty against women …

Insolvency Law In The Global South: Lessons For The Global North, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Despite the influence of the Global North in many insolvency laws and practices in the Global South, this article shows that the Global South has innovated in many aspects of insolvency law. In some cases, these innovations consist of solutions that, with certain adjustments, have been imported from the Global North. In others, they are really ‘autochthonous innovations’ from the Global South. This article identifies both types of innovations, providing examples from jurisdictions such as Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Peru, Philippines, Thailand and Uruguay. More importantly, it will be shown how those innovations from …

U.S. Shareholder Activism: Convergence With Japan, Nobuhisa Ishizuka

Faculty Scholarship

To many observers long accustomed to slow, incremental change, the current boom in shareholder activism in Japan comes as a surprise. The opening for U.S.-style activists was created by market conditions that eventually resulted in policy changes that attracted significant numbers of foreign investors. However, even the current market would not have emerged without a parallel evolution in U.S. hedge-fund tactics, which gradually shifted over a number of years to a sophisticated and more nuanced approach, one based on partnership and dialogue with target companies, in contrast to adversarial relationships and public campaigns. This article attempts to place current trends …

Ex Aequo Et Bono In Indonesian Legal Practice: An Explorative Study And Critique Against Current Understanding Of The Term, Tristam Pascal Moeliono

Padjadjaran Jurnal Ilmu Hukum (Journal of Law)

Doctrinal uncertainty persists regarding the extent to which judges in Indonesia may adjudicate on the basis of equity and fairness, particularly in relation to requests for decisions grounded in ex aequo et bono. This issue is especially evident in civil proceedings, where such requests are frequently articulated in pleadings and closing statements. Drawing on an analysis of regulatory frameworks and judicial practice, and employing normative and comparative legal approaches, it is argued that adjudication grounded in equity—conceptually linked to fairness, propriety, and broader considerations of justice—constitutes an inherent component of judicial obligation in Indonesia. At the same time, requests …

The Role Of Music Publishers In Managing Copyright In Musical Works In Indonesia: A Legal Analysis, Diana Silfiani

Padjadjaran Jurnal Ilmu Hukum (Journal of Law)

This study aims to examine music publishers as managers of song and music copyrights in Indonesia. Although music publishers are legally recognized as part of the rights holders, in practice they demonstrate distinct and broader characteristics, functions, and roles compared to other rights holders. Due to the absence of clear and comprehensive regulations under Indonesian law, this study compares the legal framework governing music publishers in Indonesia with those in the United States and South Korea to seek comparable regulations. The analysis adopts a qualitative approach, using normative juridical research and a prescriptive typology to propose alternative solutions to the …

The Legal Status Of Indonesia-China Joint Statement 2024 And Its Legal Implications For Unclos Under The Law Of Treaties, Amanda Christie, Diajeng Wulan Christianti

Padjadjaran Jurnal Ilmu Hukum (Journal of Law)

The legal standing of joint statements in international law remains contested, particularly with respect to their qualification as treaties under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. This issue has become increasingly relevant following the 2024 Joint Statement between Indonesia and China on Advancing the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and the China-Indonesia Community with a Shared Future. Despite its political framing, item nine, which contains a provision on joint development in areas described as overlapping claims in the South China Sea, raises critical legal concerns that the implications may constitute a legally binding treaty. This article employs a doctrinal legal …

Implementation Of The Administrative Dispute Resolution System For Citizens' Legal Protection In Indonesia After The Enactment Of Law Number 30 Of 2014 On Government Administration, Ayi Solehudin, Zainal Muttaqin, Dewi Kania Sugiharti

Padjadjaran Jurnal Ilmu Hukum (Journal of Law)

The integrated administrative dispute resolution system in Indonesia positions Administrative Proceedings as the primum remedium and the State Administrative Court as the ultimum remedium. This system is intended to provide comprehensive legal protection for citizens. However, in practice, it can lead to prolonged and ineffective dispute resolution processes, thereby limiting citizens' access to defend their rights before the the Administrative Court. This study analyses an effective integrated state administrative dispute resolution system that ensures legal protection for citizens. The legal issues addressed include the regulation of Administrative Proceedings within the integrated state administrative dispute resolution system following the enactment …