Human Rights Law Commons^™

China’S Human Rights Footprint In Africa, Timothy Webster

Faculty Publications

A significant amount of recent scholarship and commentary accuses China of plundering the African continent, coddling its dictators, and flouting labor and environmental standards. This paper makes the counterintuitive claim that, despite irrefutable cases of abuse, China’s engagement with Africa has actually improved the human rights conditions of millions of Africans. First, it places China’s abuses in context, showing that they differ little from the abuses and patronage politics of the major Western powers. Second, it examines the evolution of international relations between China and various African countries, from the exportation of political revolution in the 1950s and 1960s, to …

Jurisdiction And Human Rights Accountability In Indian Country, Kristen Matoy Carlson

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Of Civil Wrongs And Rights: Kiyemba V. Obama And The Meaning Of Freedom, Separation Of Powers, And The Rule Of Law Ten Years After 9/11, Katherine L. Vaughns, Heather L. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

This article is about the rise and fall of continued adherence to the rule of law, proper application of the separation of powers doctrine, and the meaning of freedom for a group of seventeen Uighurs—a Turkic Muslim ethnic minority whose members reside in the Xinjiang province of China—who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base since 2002. Most scholars regard the trilogy of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, and Boumediene v. Bush as demonstrating the Supreme Court’s willingness to uphold the rule of law during the war on terror. The recent experience of the Uighurs …

Human Rights And The Evolution Of Global Environmental Law, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

Environmental problems that jeopardize the health of humans increasingly implicate concerns that have played an important role in the development of international human rights. While some have questioned the wisdom or effectiveness of focusing human rights concerns on environmental problems, it seems an inevitable response to the failure of many countries to protect their citizens adequately from harm caused by environmental degradation. This paper reviews efforts to apply human rights concerns to environmental problems. It describes how these developments illustrate the growth of a kind of “global environmental law” that blurs traditional distinctions between domestic and international law and public …

Corporate Law Tools And The Guiding Principles For Business And Human Rights, Sara Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper, written in 2012, provides a summary of the corporate law tools project undertaken as part of the mandate of Professor John Ruggie as Special Representative for Business and Human Rights. The author was one of the co-convenors of a multi-stakeholder consultation on corporate law tools held in 2009 and designed to inform the Ruggie mandate. This paper provides her assessment of the scope and limitations of this project, the extent to which it may have informed aspects of the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and an agenda for future research.

Transnational Judicial And Non-Judicial Remedies For Corporate Human Rights Harms: Challenges Of And For Law, Sara Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper will consider whether the polycentric governance approach of the 2011 United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights has the potential to achieve the goal of transnational corporate compliance with human rights responsibilities including, importantly, the goal of access to remedy and justice for those who have been harmed. The paper was initially written as a contribution to a conference at the University of Windsor entitled Justice Beyond the State: Transnationalism and Law. First, the paper examines understandings of “citizenship” and “non-citizenship” in relation to transnational corporate [TNC] accountability in the human rights context. Two distinct perspectives …

Corporate Law Tools And The Guiding Principles For Business And Human Rights, Sara L. Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper, written in 2012, provides a summary of the corporate law tools project undertaken as part of the mandate of Professor John Ruggie as Special Representative for Business and Human Rights. The author was one of the co-convenors of a multi-stakeholder consultation on corporate law tools held in 2009 and designed to inform the Ruggie mandate. This paper provides her assessment of the scope and limitations of this project, the extent to which it may have informed aspects of the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and an agenda for future research.

Protecting Rights And Building Capacities: Challenges To Global Mental Health Policy In Light Of The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, Sheila Wildeman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The World Health Organization (WHO) has in the last decade identified mental health as a priority for global health promotion and international development, to be targeted through promulgation of evidence-based medical practices, health systems reform, and respect for human rights. Yet these overlapping strategies are marked by tensions as the historical primacy of expert-led initiatives is increasingly subject to challenge by new social movements – in particular, disabled persons’ organizations (DPOs). These tensions come into focus upon situating the WHO’s contributions to the analysis of global mental health in light of the negotiation and early stages of implementation of the …

Reading (Into) Windsor: Presidential Leadership, Marriage Equality, And Immigration Policy, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

Following the demise of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor, the Obama Administration directed a bold, equality-based reading of Windsor to immigration law, treating bi-national same-sex couples the same as opposite-sex couples. This Essay argues that the President's interpretation is both constitutionally and politically sound: Constitutionally, because it comports with the Executive's power to enforce immigration law and to guarantee equal protection under the law; and politically, because it reflects the current, increasingly tolerant view of marriage equality. Though still in its infancy, President Obama's policy of treating same-sex beneficiary petitions generally the same as …

Prison Segregation: Symposium Introduction And Preliminary Data On Racial Disparities, Margo Schlanger

Articles

For this Introduction, I undertake to look a bit more broadly at recent data. The best sources of demographic information about prisoners are the various surveys and censuses conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). While no BJS publication directly addresses the issue, and no BJS dataset allows its full analysis, it is possible to glean something from the most recent BJS prison census, the 2005 Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities.

The Long-Term International Law Implications Of Targeted Killings Practices, Christof Heyns, Sarah Knuckey

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most crucial and enduring questions about “targeted killings” is: How will the currently expanding practices of singling out individuals in advance and eliminating them in other countries without accountability impact the established international legal system?

International law, since at least World War II, has developed various mechanisms to limit killing in general, including targeted killings. These take the form of vigorous protections for the right to life under human rights law; safeguards against the interstate use of force while permitting states to protect themselves where necessary; and aiming to strike a balance between the principles of humanity …

Gender And New Wars, Christine M. Chinkin, Mary Kaldor

Articles

War plays an important role in the construction of gender, or the social roles of men and women. This article analyzes the gendered experience of what Kaldor calls "new wars." It shows that new wars are largely fought by men in the name of a political identity that usually has a significant gender dimension. They use tactics that involve deliberate attacks on civilians, including systematic rape as a weapon of war, and are financed by predatory economic activities that tend to affect women more than men. The article describes the ways in which laws relating to gendered violence have been …

Owning Justice And Reckoning With Its Complexity, Diane Orentlicher

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

A series of developments, both doctrinal and political, seem to signify a retreat from earlier innovations in the law and practice of international justice. On closer examination, however, recent developments in international justice cannot be reduced to a single trend line. Even as various actors and processes continue to work out the ground rules for exercising jurisdiction in respect of human rights violations that international law condemns as criminal, and as international and national courts work through the inherently challenging project of redressing mass atrocities, states have increasingly internalized, owned and acted on the principle that they should ensure accountability …

Crashing The Misdemeanor System, Jenny M. Roberts

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

With “minor crimes” making up more than 75% of state criminal caseloads, the United States faces a misdemeanor crisis. Although mass incarceration continues to plague the nation, the current criminal justice system is faltering under the weight of misdemeanor processing.

Operating under the “broken windows theory,” which claims that public order law enforcement prevents more serious crime, the police send many petty offenses to criminal court. This is so even though the original authors of the theory noted that “[o]rdinarily, no judge or jury ever sees the persons caught up in a dispute over the appropriate level of neighborhood order” …

We Are All Here To Stay? Indigeneity, Migration, And ‘Decolonizing’ The Treaty Right To Be Here, Amar Bhatia

Articles & Book Chapters

This article examines issues of transnational migration in the settler-colonial context of Canada. First, I review some of the recent debates about foregrounding Indigeneity and decolonization in anti-racist thought and work, especially in relation to critical and anti-racist approaches to migration. The article then moves from this debate to the question of ‘our right to be here’, the relationship of this right to the treaties, and how migrant rights and treaty relations perspectives might interact in a context that must be informed by Indigenous laws and legal traditions.

A New International Human Rights Court For West Africa: The Ecowas Community Court Of Justice, Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, Jacqueline R. Mcallister

Faculty Scholarship

The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (ECCJ) is an increasingly active and bold international adjudicator of human rights violations in West Africa. Since acquiring jurisdiction over human rights issues in 2005, the ECCJ has issued several path-breaking judgments, including against the Gambia for the torture of journalists, against Niger for condoning modern forms of slavery, and against Nigeria for failing to regulate the multinational oil companies that polluted the Niger Delta. This article explains why ECOWAS member states authorized the ECCJ to review human rights suits by individuals but did not allow private actors to complain about violations of regional …

Al Shimari V. Caci International, Inc.: The Application Of Extraterritorial Jurisdiction In The Wake Of Kiobel, Ellen Katuska

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

Mission Creep Or A Search For Relevance: The East African Court Of Justice’S Human Rights Strategy, James T. Gathii

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Beyond China’S Human Rights Exceptionalism In Africa: Leveraging Science, Technology And Engineering For Long-Term Growth, James T. Gathii

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Sex Trafficking: The Influence Of Cultures, Socio-Economic Structures And Law & Order On Sex Trade In Asia, Saanya Dua

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Sex trafficking and prostitution are both matters of concern in today’s world. Trafficking of human beings is a global phenomenon and has been a topic of increased discussion and attention. It is believed that the sex trade industry is considered to be the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, currently it is second to drug trafficking in terms of profits through an illegal industry. Several initiatives have been made to prevent trafficking, through significant legislative and other actions provided to aid victims and those vulnerable in the world. However, the lack of systematic research is a big issue. Asia …