Human Rights Law Commons^™

Open Connectivity, Open Data: Two Dimensions Of The Freedom To Seek, Receive And Impart Information In The New Zealand Bill Of Rights, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Recently, ideas about "rights" to Internet access or connectivity have received growing recognition from governments, legal institutions, and other political actors in several countries, including New Zealand Despite this emerging political and legal recognition, there are few, if any, systematic studies exploring such ideas. This paper aims to change this. First, it offers a theoretical exploration of the idea of a "right" to Internet access, including the diferent versions of such rights talk. Secondly, it examines whether there is any legal basis for such rights claims in New Zealand and ultimately argues that section 14 of the New Zealand Bill …

Communications Disruption And Censorship Under International Law: History Lessons, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

With Internet censorship on the rise around the world, a variety of tools have proliferated to assist Internet users to circumvent such censorship. However, there are few studies examining the implications of censorship circumvention under international law, and its related politics. This paper aims to help fill some of that void, with an examination of case studies wherein global communications technologies have been disrupted or censored — telegram cable cutting and censorship, high frequency radio jamming, and direct broadcast satellite blocking — and how the world community responded to that disruption or censorship through international law and law making. In …

The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities: Beginning To Examine The Implications For Canadian Lawyers' Professional Responsiblities, H Archibald Kaiser

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (hereafter the CRPD or the Convention) should herald a new epoch in the way persons with disabilities are treated throughout the world community. The entire panoply of ramifications of this Convention, the purpose of which is “to promote, protect and ensure the full enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity”, (Article 1) is as yet unascertainable. However, States Parties must “take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination by any person, organization or private enterprise” (Article …

Prosecutorial Discretion In Assisted Dying In Canada: A Proposal For Charging Guidelines, Jocelyn Downie, Ben White

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

English Abstract: An Expert Panel of the Royal Society of Canada and a Select Committee of the Québec National Assembly both recently recommended the issuance of permissive guidelines for the exercise of prosecutorial discretion on voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide and “medical aid in dying” respectively. It seems timely, therefore, to propose a set of offence-specific guidelines for how prosecutorial discretion should be exercised in cases of voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canadian provinces and territories. We take as our starting point the only existing guidelines of this sort currently in force in the world (i.e. the British Columbia …

Insecure Refugees: The Narrowing Of Asylum-Seeker Rights To Freedom Of Movement And Claims Determination Post-9/11 In Canada, Constance Macintosh

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This chapter has a modest goal: to track some legislative changes since 9/11 which impact on two rights of asylum-seekers where those changes are linked to or justified by security concerns. These are the rights of asylum-seekers to have their claim determined, and to not be detained. This article identifies how legislation restricting these key rights of asylum-seekers has largely been promoted as necessary for Canada to be able to protect its public from criminality and security threats. The article thus queries whether measures, especially those introduced under Bill C-11, The Balanced Refugee Reform Act and those proposed under Bill …

A Functional Approach To Targeting And Detention, Monica Hakimi

Articles

The international law governing when states may target to kill or preventively detain nonstate actors is in disarray. This Article puts much of the blame on the method that international law uses to answer that question. The method establishes different standards in four regulatory domains: (1) law enforcement, (2) emergency, (3) armed conflict for civilians, and (4) armed conflict for combatants. Because the legal standards vary, so too may substantive outcomes; decisionmakers must select the correct domain before determining whether targeting or detention is lawful. This Article argues that the "domain method" is practically unworkable and theoretically dubious. Practically, the …

When Federal And State Systems Converge: Foreign National Human Trafficking Victims Within Juvenile And Family Courts, Bridgette A. Carr

Articles

This article highlights the concerns facing foreign national children who are both victims of human trafficking and under the jurisdiction of juvenile and family courts. Human trafficking is modern day slavery in which individuals, including children, are compelled into service and exploited. Foreign national human trafficking victims in juvenile and family court systems must navigate both the state system and a complex federal immigration system. This article explains the federal benefits available to these children and identifies the best practice approaches for juvenile and family court systems to increase identification of and support for foreign national child trafficking victims.jfcj_1073

Drone Strike Casualty Estimates Likely Understated, Human Rights Clinic

Human Rights Institute

NEW YORK — The U.S. government should provide an official accounting on who is being killed by drone strikes, said a new report released today by Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Clinic.

Annual Report 2011-2012, Human Rights Institute

Human Rights Institute

Greetings from Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute We are proud to share our first annual report and our remarkable accomplishments from the past year.

The Human Rights Institute sits at the heart of human rights teaching, practice and scholarship at the Law School Founded in 1998 by the late Professor Louis Henkin, the Institute draws on the Law School’s deep human rights tradition to support and influence human rights practice in the United States and throughout the world In the past several years, the Institute and the Human Rights Clinic have become increasingly integrated, enabling us to multiply our …

The Civilian Impact Of Drones: Unexamined Costs, Unanswered Questions, Human Rights Clinic, Center For Civilians In Conflict (Civic)

Human Rights Institute

Since 2008, the US has dramatically increased its lethal targeting of alleged militants through the use of weaponized drones—formally called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or remotely piloted aircraft (RPA). Novel technologies always raise new ethical, legal, and practical chal- lenges, but concerns about drone strikes have been heightened by their role in what might colloquially be termed “covert drone strikes” outside the established combat theater of Af- ghanistan. Airstrike campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia are conducted with a degree of government secrecy enabled by the fact that there are few supporting US ground troops and/or CIA agents in these …

"By Some Other Means": Considering The Executive Role In Fostering Subnational Human Rights Compliance, Risa E. Kaufman

Human Rights Institute

The broad realization of human rights domestically requires strong partnership among all levels of government. Indeed, international and domestic law support an important role for state and local governments in implementing the United States’ human rights treaty commitments, with the federal government retaining ultimate responsibility. While the federal government’s responsibility is clear, its options for fostering and facilitating subnational compliance have not been fully explicated. United States’ human rights treaty ratification practices and recent Supreme Court jurisprudence primarily constrain the Executive’s ability to compel state and local compliance without congressional authorization. In the absence of such congressional action, the Executive …

Dating The State: The Moral Hazards Of Winning Gay Rights, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

On August 1, 2009, a masked man dressed in black carrying an automatic weapon stormed into Beit Pazi in Tel Aviv, the home of the Aguda, the National Association of GLBT in Israel. He opened fire on a group of gay and lesbian teenagers who were meeting in the basement for "Bar-Noar," or "Youth Bar," killing two people and wounding at least ten others. This terrible act of violence attracted immediate national and international attention and condemnation. President Simon Peres declared the next day:

[T]he shocking murder carried out in Tel Aviv yesterday against youths and young people is a …

The Burdens And Benefits Of Brighton, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

From Multiculturalism To Technique: Feminism, Culture And The Conflict Of Laws Style, Karen Knop, Ralf Michaels, Annelise Riles

Faculty Scholarship

The German chancellor, the French president and the British prime minister have each grabbed world headlines with pronouncements that their state’s policy of multiculturalism has failed. As so often, domestic debates about multiculturalism, as well as foreign policy debates about human rights in non-Western countries, revolve around the treatment of women. Yet there is also a widely noted brain drain from feminism. Feminists are no longer even certain how to frame, let alone resolve, the issues raised by veiling, polygamy and other cultural practices oppressive to women by Western standards. Feminism has become perplexed by the very concept of “culture.” …

Competing Paradigms? The Use Of Dna Powers In Youth Justice, Liz Campbell

Faculty Scholarship

Collecting deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from crime scenes and individuals is now regarded as a critical element of effective criminal investigation and prosecution. Numerous benefits are said to accrue from the gathering and comparison of DNA evidence: suspects may be speedily identified, innocent parties ruled out, the wrongfully convicted exonerated and some would-be criminal actors deterred. Retention of DNA in state controlled databases allows for speculative searching to identify subsequent offending and to provide leads for unsolved crimes. The collection and retention of convicted adults’ DNA has been held by European and US courts to be a proportionate incursion on human …

The Bush-Cheney Legacy: Serial Torture And Forced Disappearance In Manifest Violation Of Global Human Rights Law, Jordan J. Paust

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

The United States' Enhanced Impunity For Its International Obligations: The Continued Unlawful Treatment Of Captives And Detainees Following The Attack Of September 11, 2001, David Brennan

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Humanitarian Intervention And Syria, Eric Engle

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Rule Of Law: A Help Or Hindrance To International Business, The Honourable Mr. Justice M. Burton

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

Human Trafficking, The Rule Of Law, And Corporate Social Responsibility, Anna W. Shavers

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.