Human Rights Law Commons^™

Asylum Update: Ninth Circuit Deals Two Defeats To The Trump Administration, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Collective Criminality And Sexual Violence: Fixing A Failed Approach, Susana Sacouto

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

International criminal tribunals have developed a number of legal theories designed to hold individuals responsible for their role in collective criminal conduct. These doctrines of criminal participation, known as modes of liability, are the subject of significant scholarly commentary. Yet missing from much of this debate, particularly as regards the International Criminal Court, has been an analysis of how current doctrine on modes of liability responds to the need to hold collective perpetrators criminally responsible for crimes of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Indeed, many writings in this area of the law address perceived shortcomings in the theoretical underpinnings of …

The Trauma Of Trump's Family Separation And Child Detention Actions: A Children's Rights Perspective, Jonathan Todres, Daniela Villamizar Fink

Washington Law Review

In April 2018, the Trump Administration publicly announced a new zero-tolerance policy for illegal entries at the U.S. border. This action kicked off a wave of family separations that made headlines and drew criticism from around the globe. Despite resounding condemnation of these actions, the Trump Administration defended its family separation policy as a “tough deterrent.” At least 2,600 families were torn apart in the ensuing months. And subsequent reports—from both the government and others—have detailed widespread abuses of and substandard conditions for children held in detention centers. The consequences of these separations and the maltreatment of children in detention …

A Review Of Sierra Leone’S Mines And Minerals Act, Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye, Perrine Toledano, Sophie Thomashausen

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

With the support of Oxfam, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment reviewed select provisions in the Mines and Minerals Act 2009 and corresponding policy statements from the Minerals Policy 2018 to provide recommendations for how to best align the anticipated new mining law with international best practice. The 2009 law was reviewed with a focus on the following topics:

• Fiscal regime;
• Climate change;
• Access to and use of land;
• Community consultations and participation;
• Human rights; and
• Community development agreements.

The policy brief aims to support the Government of Sierra Leone in the ongoing law reform process.

Sexual Violence And Future Harm: Lessons From Asylum Law, Shawn E. Fields

Utah Law Review

Sexual violence victims face unique and enduring safety risks following an assault. The legal system’s gradual shift from solely punishing offenders for past acts to protecting survivors from future harm reflects a recognition of this fact. But so-called “sexual assault protection order” statutes impose onerous “future harm” requirements – including proof by clear and convincing evidence that another sexual assault is imminent – that belies the realities of ongoing injury for victims and creates barriers to protection similar to the criminal justice approach to rape.

This Article suggests a different approach, one justified by a novel analogy to the refugee …

Series Editor's Preface, James C. Hathaway

Other Publications

Could we – should we – think differently about the ways in which refugees are assisted and protected? Is it possible to turn traditional thinking on its head by seeing refugees not as the objects of protection and assistance, but instead as the architects and managers of solutions?

The Right To Access To Justice: Its Conceptual Architecture, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The aim of this article is descriptive and analytical, rather than normative. This article aims to contribute to the current understanding of the ways in which modern legal consciousness builds, and is built by, the concept of access to justice. This concept, as part of the web of meanings that structures modern legal culture, provides the context in which modern subjects make sense of who they are and how they should interact with the world around them. This article examines the subjectivities, conceptual geographies, and interpretations of history created by the right to access to justice. It also examines a …

Introduction, Colin Crawford, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The papers gathered in this volume analyze access to justice in Latin America, Europe, and North America from a philosophical, legal, and sociological perspective. In these three regions of the world, as in the rest of the globe, liberal democracies face a troubling gap between the normative and the descriptive: the access to justice promises made by the legal and political system are not fully realized in practice. The studies collected here, therefore, share two baseline assumptions. First, the right of access to justice is fundamental in a liberal state. Access to justice ensures that citizens are able to defend …

Public Defenders' Offices In Brazil: Access To Justice, Courts, And Public Defenders, Alexandre Dos Santos Cunha

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This essay discusses the impact of public defenders' offices in promoting equality through the enforcement of the right to access to justice in Brazil. To achieve this goal, this note is divided into two parts.

Part I presents the Brazilian public defenders' offices, their history, institutional design, rights, and prerogatives. Part II discusses the role played by public defenders in the enforcement of the right to access to justice in Brazil, as well as the relations established between public defenders and courts. The Conclusion attempts to assess the sustainability of the Brazilian model, in order to determine if there is …

Movement Lawyering, Scott L. Cummings

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article examines the relation between movement lawyering and American legal theory, explores the meaning and content of movement lawyering in the contemporary American context, and reflects on the implications of movement lawyering for the theory and practice of access to justice around the globe. It suggests that the rise of movement lawyering signals frustration with process-oriented solutions to fundamental problems of inequality and discrimination in the legal system, and challenges access to justice proponents to frame their work in connection with a political strategy that builds on movements for progressive legal change. In this sense, the article suggests that …

Access To Justice For Collective And Diffuse Rights: Theoretical Challenges And Opportunities For Social Contract Theory, Colin Crawford

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This analysis consists of three principal parts. First, it briefly reviews the classical contract account that explains how and why individuals enter civil society, found in the writings of both Hobbes and Locke. The analysis then examines the limited extent to which classical contract theory treats questions of rights vindication or, in more modern terms, with questions of access to justice. Second, the analysis examines the nature of collective and diffuse rights claims and will make a case for their importance in the modern world. Third, the analysis seeks to identify arguments from the classical account that might be useful …

Public Law, Precarity, And Access To Justice, Amnon Lev

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In the first part, I examine Thomas Hobbes' theory of commonwealth to see how it situates subjects in relation to justice. Hobbes famously founds his commonwealth on the equal subjection of all to the Leviathan, which is the equal subjection of all to law. We need to understand why he nevertheless needs to accommodate the diversity of society-the basic fact that some are weak while others are not-into the operation of the public law machine. As we shall see, the accommodation of social diversity is tied to a proto-liberal distinction between social spheres that relegates much of human life to …

The Mandarins Of The Law: Pro Bono Legal Work From A Comparative Perspective, Daniel Bonilla Maldonado

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In Part I, I present the elements that form the standard global concept of pro bono work. Pro bono work is a global phenomenon defined by, and based on, a transnational discourse. In the first section of Part I, I argue that this transnational discourse conceptualizes pro bono work as a set of institutionalized free legal services that lawyers voluntarily provide to people with few financial resources or to protect the public interest. In the three following sections, I specify and analyze the concepts of subject, time, and space that this understanding of pro bono work creates, to present the …

Pro Bono Work In Colombia: How Can It Help Broaden, Equalize, And Ensure Access To Justice, Ana Bejarano Ricaurte

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article does not discuss whether pro bono programs should exist in Colombia, or whether they cause positive transformation in the legal profession. These issues are examined in other types of legal literature, and this author departs from the standpoint of viewing this type of work as a positive practice within the legal culture. The main thesis of this article is that pro bono work is still developing in Colombia, both in its numbers of participating attorneys and clients, as well as in the ways it is affecting the legal culture. As important as it might be, the work of …

The Legal Fiction Of The Right To Defense In The Colombian Criminal Justice System, Manuel Iturralde

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In the first section of the article, I will discuss Omar's case to show why he did not have a fair trial, and particularly how his rights to access to justice and to defense were infringed, both by the public defense he was provided and by the judges that decided his case.

In the second section, I will show that Omar's case is a tellingillustration of the features of the Colombian criminal justice system, which systematically and disproportionately sentences and imprisons marginalized and poor people-in great measure because they lack the financial resources to pay for better and more motivated …

Access To Justice And Legal Clinics: Developing A Reflective Lawyering Space Some Insights From The Italian Experience, Marzia Barbera, Venera Protopapa

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper first provides a brief description of the genesis of legal clinics in Italy, and highlights the motivations and expectations lying behind the emergence of the legal clinic movement in this context. Second, the paper gives a brief description of the institutional context of legal aid in Italy, and assesses its effectiveness in terms of granting legal assistance to those unable to afford a lawyer. The third and fourth parts then offer an account of court enforcement mechanisms that aim to ensure effective access to justice. Part three gives this account through the lens of court enforcement of the …

Silencing Xinjiang: The Chinese Government's Campaign Against The Uyghurs, Connor W. Dooley

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

First Responders, Second Priority: Georgia's Inmate Firefighter Program And International Human Rights Standards, Erin Paige Mcgonigle

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Implementing The United Nations Declaration On The Rights Of Indigenous Peoples In The United States: A Call To Action For Inspired Advocacy In Indian Country., Kristen Carpenter, Edyael Casaperalta, Danielle Lazore-Thompson

University of Colorado Law Review Forum

No abstract provided.

Electric Utility Alignment With The Sdgs & The Paris Climate Agreement, Perrine Toledano, Aniket Shah, Nicolas Maennling, Ryan J. Lasnick

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda poses a unique and critical challenge to the energy sector: how to scale access to clean energy to power sustainable, economic development for a growing population, while simultaneously decarbonizing global energy supply. Expanding access to clean energy will play a crucial role in achieving nearly every one of the Sustainable Development Goals, including those related to agricultural production, health outcomes, educational performance, water systems, access to infrastructure, and reducing inequalities. However, practices by some actors in the energy sector, and continued over-reliance on greenhouse gas-intensive fossil fuels also undermine global efforts to mitigate climate change …