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#BlackLivesMatter: From Protest to Policy
Get PDFWe find that the protests of 2020 did indeed begin a paradigm shift in the social awareness of racialized police violence, and this important and significant social change has in turn already inspired political change and some degree of legal and policy change. However, the movement remains in a precarious position and it is uncertain how enduring these changes will be. While many state legislators and local officials have responded to the protests with policy reforms, policy action at the federal level is mostly stalled. In addition, it is unclear whether the state and local policy changes will lead to the deeper and lasting structural changes sought by the movement. We are also observing substantial backlash policy that threatens to not only derail current racial justice efforts, but also exacerbate the underlying inequalities that the movement opposes.
This abstract has been taken from the authors\u27 introduction
Initiative for Strategic Litigation Africa in Johannesburg, South Africa
No full textThis summer, I will assist in advancing women’s human and sexual rights through research and strategic litigation of cases. I will work with domestic courts in South Africa, international courts across the African continent and UN treaty bodies to challenge legal discourses on women’s rights and sexual rights
Winrock Countering Trafficking of Persons Project in Kingston, Jamaica
No full textThis summer, I will work with Jamaican NGOs to assist in eliminating child trafficking, including commercial sexual exploitation and hazardous forced labor. I will map data and produce reports that will help develop human trafficking screening tools, identify areas of needed improvement in the protection of vulnerable children, and direct resources to NGOs and government services that directly benefit Jamaican children and those who care for them
AdvocAid Sierra Leone in Freetown, Sierra Leone
No full textThis summer, I will be assisting with efforts to provide legal assistance and support to women and girls caught up in a legal system that is often unjust and further impacted by poverty. The combination of poverty and limited education often results in women admitting to crimes they did not commit
Legal Liability for Corporations Doing Business in the West Bank: An Analysis of Corporate Liability and a Shareholder Proposal Solution for Mitigating Risky Business Activity
Get PDFFor over half a century, Israeli Settlements in the occupied West Bank have expanded significantly in both land and economic activity. While this expansion has not been without criticism from the international community over fear of humanitarian law violations, global businesses have not shied away from the profitability of this region. This engagement in corporate activity within any disputed territory comes with its fair share of business risk, including legal liability for complicity in purported human rights violations.
This Note will examine the hypothetical liability for corporations doing business in the West Bank and explain how international law and the Alien Tort Statute have both proved to be ineffective systems of accountability. Because of this, companies have continued to engage in internationally condemned conduct without legal repercussions. However, as this operation is not free of financial and social risk to a company and subsequently its shareholders, this Note will suggest that socially responsible shareholder proposals are a viable solution to address the risky decision to conduct business in the West Bank and other disputed territories
Article III Standing, the Sword and the Shield: Resolving a Circuit Split in Favor of Data Breach Plaintiffs
Get PDFThe recent proliferation of data breaches is one such event requiring a rethreading of standing doctrine. The Courts of Appeal are currently split on whether to allow or deny standing for data breach plaintiffs—those persons seeking recourse from the entities that fell victim to the breach and therein lost plaintiffs’ data to an unknown third party. Standing requires plaintiffs to show some injury, and how courts approach the concept of injury in these data breach cases determines whether plaintiffs will survive the standing analysis. Despite the disparate treatment of litigants across the circuits, the Supreme Court has repeatedly punted when asked to resolve the issue. Because of the grave importance of data breach plaintiffs’ lost and stolen data, the Court must relinquish its standing shield and hand these litigants a sword to pursue remedy
The Authority of International Refugee Law
Get PDFAs COVID-19 has spread around the world, many states have suspended their compliance with a core requirement of international refugee law: the duty to refrain from returning refugees to territories where they face a serious risk of persecution (the duty of non-refoulement). These measures have prompted some observers to question whether non-refoulement will survive the pandemic as a nonderogable legal duty. This Article explains why the international community should embrace non-refoulement as a peremptory norm of general international law (jus cogens) that applies even during public emergencies, such as the coronavirus pandemic. Viewed from a global justice perspective, the authority that international law entrusts to states—including the sovereign power to regulate migration across national borders—can be legitimate only if states refrain from refoulement. For the international legal order to claim to possess legitimate authority over exiled outsiders, it must treat non-refoulement as a jus cogens norm. A failure to regard non-refoulement as a peremptory norm would thus strip the international legal system of its claim to legality vis-à-vis asylum seekers, supplanting the rule of international law in this context with mere coercive force. To test this account of the authority of international refugee law, the Article surveys closed-border policies that states have adopted in response to COVID-19 and explains why the associated restrictions on non-refoulement are unjustifiable and incompatible with the rule of law. Even during a genuine national emergency, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, receiving states cannot return refugees to persecution without subverting their own claims to legal authority
Under the River and Through the Common Law: Analyzing the Impacts and Propensity of State Adoption of the PPL Montana Navigability-for-Title Standard
Get PDFRevolving Doors of Hospitalization and Incarceration: How Perceptions of Procedural Justice Affect Treatment Outcomes
Get PDFThis Article compares the levels of procedural justice afforded to persons with severe mental illness in the civil and criminal systems, either via involuntary commitment in state psychiatric hospitals in the civil system or via mental health court as an alternative to incarceration in the criminal system. Using Virginia’s mental health courts and civil commitment systems as case studies, this Article compares the procedures by which a person can be involuntary committed in the civil system with those afforded to persons who are funneled into mental health treatment courts in the criminal system, analyzing how levels of procedural justice—both actual and perceived—affect treatment outcomes. The underlying premise of this Article is that the higher the level of perceived procedural fairness, the higher the likelihood that a person with acute mental illness will comply with treatment. This Article ultimately suggests that certain aspects of procedural due process in the mental health court model should be utilized in the civil commitment system in order to effect positive treatment outcomes by increasing perceived levels of procedural fairness and resultant buy-in to treatment