Human Rights Law Commons^™

Reimagining Justice: Caste, Indigeneity, And Collective Resistance, Cardozo Law Institute In Holocaust And Human Rights (Clihhr), Caroline Laporte, Christina Dhanuja, Ramya Kudekallu

2026 Event Invitations

Please join the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights for a public panel in honor of Dalit History Month and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues exploring the intertwined experiences of caste-oppressed and Indigenous communities. Drawing on diverse global contexts, including South Asia and its diasporas, as well as the Americas, the discussion will highlight challenges these communities face under their respective regimes and entrenched social hierarchies.

Revolutionizing Corporate Accountability: The La Oroya Case And The Right To A Healthy Environment In The Inter-American System, Teresa Jacques Valenzuela

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

La Oroya v. Perú marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of Business and Human Rights and the Right to a Healthy Environment (R2HE) under the Inter-American legal framework. This paper examines the groundbreaking judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which established new standards for state responsibility in regulating and supervising corporate activities to prevent environmental harm. By integrating principles of environmental law with human rights obligations, the case highlights the transformative potential of judicial action in addressing corporate accountability. While the judgment sets a precedent for advancing corporate responsibility, it exposes enduring challenges, including jurisdictional limitations, corporate …

Censorship And Human Rights Violations: The Suppression Of Freedom Of Expression, Press, And Assembly In Cuba, Nicaragua, And Venezuela, Elisabell Laura Velázquez

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

As the days, months, and years go by, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela continue to violate the fundamental human rights of their citizens. Despite worldwide technological advancements and increased access to the digital world, these regimes continuously monitor and censor their citizens, depriving them of the fundamental rights to freedom of expression, press, and assembly. This article explores how censorship can represent a systemic violation of human rights. This article argues that strengthening cooperation between different international organizations is necessary because censorship in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela is a human rights crisis that impacts civil society. Furthermore, this article explains the …

The Right Of Nature: Lessons From Panama For Mangrove Protection In Miami, Jayson Fry

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

Mangrove ecosystems are indispensable to climate resilience, yet traditional environmental governance has repeatedly failed to prevent their decline. This Note employs a comparative framework to examine Panama and Miami, two rapidly developing coastal regions facing parallel pressures of urbanization and sea-level rise, to demonstrate that mangrove loss persists not because law is absent, but because existing frameworks structurally authorize regulated degradation. Panama’s 2022 Rights of Nature Law, which grants ecosystems legal personhood and enforceable rights, represents a departure from anthropocentric environmental regulation. Its early judicial application in the Cobré Panamá mine case shows how rights-based protections can override extractive economic …

Who Will Hear My Case?: The Backdrop Of Hameed V. Canada And Its Impact On Canada’S Judicial Vacancy Crisis, Adrian T. Peraza

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

In 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a landmark ruling in R v. Jordan, requiring prosecutors to try their case within eighteen months in provincial courts and thirty months in the superior courts. Through its holding, the Court sought to protect a defendant’s right to be tried within a reasonable time, a privilege enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, at the time of the decision, the Canadian judicial system faced a vacancy crisis. A total of forty-three judicial vacancies existed in the federal courts, a figure that would later rise to eighty-six in August 2023. …

What Bombs Cannot Occupy: Memory, Heritage, And War In Ukraine, Dalton D. Conden

The Penguin Review

Air-raid sirens have become part of the daily soundscape in Ukrainian cities. They interrupt meals, classes, conversations, and sleep. When they blare, people gather what they can and move quickly sometimes to shelters, sometimes to basements, sometimes nowhere at all. Families lock their doors without knowing whether they will ever turn the key again. Children carry backpacks filled with whatever seemed important in the moment: a photograph, a stuffed animal, a book pulled hastily from a shelf. Around them, buildings that once anchored everyday life—churches, museums, historic neighborhoods— have been damaged or destroyed.

Individualized Cannabis Reparations, Scott Bloomberg

Texas A&M Law Review

This Article makes an argument that should be obvious. The best way for governments to right the wrongs of cannabis prohibition is to give money to people with cannabis offenses. Nonetheless, this straightforward reform has been consistently overlooked, dismissed, or minimized by policymakers and scholars alike, eschewed in favor of other social equity programs that do not right those wrongs nearly as effectively. Governments have indeed invested hundreds of millions of cannabis tax dollars in social equity licensing programs and community reinvestment initiatives. These programs—while often worthwhile—do not benefit the vast majority of people with past cannabis offenses.

Governments should …

Evaluasi Terhadap Undang-Undang Pemilu Dan Peraturan Pelaksanaannya Kearah Penyempurnaan Sistim Pemilu, M. Riza Sihbudi

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Abstract

A Tale Of Two Credits: The Post-Nestlé Alien Tort Statute And Carbon Credit Externalities, Stephanie Mao

Northwestern University Law Review

As companies increasingly embrace carbon-neutrality commitments, many rely on the voluntary carbon market to offset their emissions rather than reduce them directly. Regulatory and consumer scrutiny has focused on the widespread use of “phantom” carbon credits, i.e., credits that fail to produce meaningful climate benefits. But less attention has been paid to what this Note terms “colonial” carbon credits: those that may technically reduce emissions but do so at the expense of communities abroad. These projects may contribute to land dispossession, human rights abuses, and threats to public and environmental health. Yet, current regulatory and legal frameworks, with their focus …

Aspek Yuridis Pemutusan Hubungan Kerja Di Perusahaan Swasta, Abdul Bari Azed

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Abstract

Battlefield Uncertainties And The Use Of Ai, Tsvetelina Van Benthem

International Law Studies

This article explores the relationship between uncertainty in armed conflict, the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and the content of international law. It first provides a review of different types of conflict-related uncertainty, both internal to the party to conflict and external, and considers the interaction between these existing uncertainties and the use of AI. In so doing, it also explores the new uncertainties that can be introduced through AI. Second, it analyzes national submissions on military uses of AI and autonomous weapons to outline the uncertainties raised by States and their relevance for regulatory approaches to the use of …

The Analytical Routes Of Aiding And Abetting Under The Alien Tort Statute, Amelia Cochran

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This paper examines whether aiding and abetting liability for corporate involvement in human rights abuses is a cognizable claim under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). Though the ATS has potential to serve as a powerful mechanism of civil redress for violations of international law, the Supreme Court has increasingly narrowed its scope in recent decades. As a result, critical questions remain unresolved regarding the cognizability of certain claims under the statute. This paper focuses primarily on Doe I et al. v. Cisco Systems, Inc. et al.,, a case emerging from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In January 2026, following …

The Varieties Of Substantive Due Process Experience: Obergefell, Dobbs And A State Constitutional Alternative, Lawrence Friedman

Mercer Law Review

As a guide to understanding—and applying—the doctrine of substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment, Obergefell v. Hodges seems to have enjoyed a relatively short reign. Less than ten years after the Supreme Court of the United States held that individuals enjoy a fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment to marry a person of the same sex, the Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization turned to a different approach to the task of identifying and enforcing unenumerated constitutional rights. Dobbs, like Obergefell, is not without its problems: where the substantive due process analysis articulated in Obergefell lacks rigor, …

Head Shot, Joanmarie Ilaria Davoli

Mercer Law Review

The prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires that execution methods avoid “superadding pain.” The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the imposition of a death sentence should include no additional pain beyond that needed to kill. That means, for example, that while pain may be inherent in the method of killing, torture is prohibited. As concerns about the pain involved in lethal injections has increased, states have begun executions by shooting inmates in the heart and by suffocation through gas mask. These methods have been used despite evidence that they superadd …

Still Uncertain After All Of These Years: Constitutional Rights Of Guantanamo Detainees Tried By Military Commission, Michael D. Ross

Mercer Law Review

This article explores whether Guantanamo detainees are entitled to constitutional protections at military commission trials. In 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act (“MCA”). Its goal was to establish a fair system to try foreign detainees accused of war crimes. The ensuing nineteen years have revealed that the system needs reform. The most important cases, such as the 9/11 and U.S.S. Cole prosecutions, are still bogged down in pre-trial litigation that has lasted over a decade. But before policy makers consider reforms, they should know what constitutional protections apply at a military commission. Federal courts have not answered that question. …

Globalne Łańcuchy Wartości – Perspektywa Publicznego Regulatora, Karol Gustaw Kopczyński

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

Fenomen globalnych łańcuchów wartości skupia coraz większą uwagę regulatorów i prawników, a przepisy prawne coraz częściej zaczynają kształtować globalną produkcję. W ostatnich latach można zauważyć dynamicznie rozwijającą się tendencję uchwalania przepisów regulujących transgraniczną zrównoważoną produkcję. Niniejszy artykuł ma na celu przedstawienie zjawiska globalnych łańcuchów wartości z perspektywy publicznych regulatorów. Na wstępie artykułu przedstawiono podstawy teoretyczne koncepcji eksterytorialności lokalnego prawa, tj. teorii Efektu Kalifornii/Brukseli. Następnie opisano rozwój regulacji dotyczących globalnych łańcuchów wartości, zaczynając od mechanizmów soft law aż do wiążących regulacji państw o najsilniejszej pozycji. Aby ukazać w jaki sposób prawodawca widzi globalny łańcuch wartości, dokonano analizy prawnej wybranych aktów prawa …

Gender-Based Violence And Botswana's Constitutional Failure To Protect Women's Rights, Cameron Mcdonald

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

Gender-based violence (“GBV”) remains a pervasive human rights issue throughout Botswana. When it comes to gender equality, Botswana’s dual constitutional and customary legal system is a paradox. Despite its commitment to equality and nondiscrimination, Botswana’s Constitution allows customary courts to discriminate freely to preserve traditional practices that disadvantage women. These traditional practices affect women’s right to property, inheritance, marriage, legal representation, and personal safety. Customary law continues to constrain women’s right to economic autonomy and access to justice, leaving many women dependent on the men who abuse them. As a result, many Batswana women experience structural discrimination in both their …

The International And Comparative Aspects Of United States V. Skrmetti: The Detrimental Rise Of Anti-Trans Sentiment In The United States, Julia Parrey

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

In recent years, anti-trans sentiment has significantly increased in the United States. This Article examines the legal advocacy by the LGBTQ+ community that laid key legal groundwork for basic protections through landmark US Supreme Court decisions like Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges and analyzes how recent judicial and legislative actions signal a dangerous reversal of that progress.

The central analysis focuses on the consequences of United States v. Skrmetti, where the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors by applying rational-basis review, concluding that the law classified based on age or medical diagnosis, rather …

Silencing Liberty: Why Curtailing Noncitizens' Speech Is Un-American, Erin Gray

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

Since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel thousands of students across the world protested Israel’s involvement in the war on Gaza. Many of these protests occurred at American universities. When President Trump returned to the White House in 2025, he publicly threatened to and deport noncitizen students who participated in these protests. Following through with his promise, President Trump revoked multiple students’ visas after they participated in some form of Pro-Palestine advocacy. This Article explores whether President Trump’s actions are constitutional under the First Amendment. Ultimately, this Article concludes that President Trump violated the First Amendment by targeting noncitizen …

The Myth Of The Immigrant As A Criminal: Rhetoric, Otherness, And The Legal Construction Of Danger, Katerina Fernandez

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

The figure of the “criminal immigrant” occupies a central place in contemporary U.S. immigration discourse, shaping public perception, enforcement priorities, and legal doctrine. Yet a substantial body of empirical research consistently demonstrates that immigrants—both documented and undocumented—commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. This Note examines why the narrative of immigrant criminality persists despite this evidence and how it influences the development and operation of immigration law. It argues that “immigrant” functions not only as a legal category but also as a socially constructed marker of Otherness, encompassing perceived differences in race, language, culture, and religion. Through this lens, …