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Two Stories About Skin Color and International Human Rights Advocacy
Get PDFColor is an important but underdeveloped designation in international law. It is identified as a protected category in several human rights documents. Despite its status as a protected category, there is no definition of color in these documents.
In the absence of an established definition, race is often used as a proxy for color. Yet, there is growing skepticism within the human rights community about the legitimacy of using racial categories to distinguish human beings. While race and color are often used interchangeably, it is important to treat color as a distinct category. Race and color do not always match. This distinction is also significant in light of growing concerns about the legitimacy of racial categories and the continuing impact of skin color on human behavior. In this country and throughout the world, the difference between life and death can often be measured by degrees of pigmentation.
This Article offers two stories about skin color and international human rights advocacy. The first story is well known while the second story is not. Both stories are unique because each story marks a distinct life. And, yet, these stories mirror the experiences of countless people around the world. Both stories address international law and the role of international human rights mechanisms in protecting individuals from discrimination and persecution based on skin color. And, both stories highlight the benefits of international human rights advocacy
Drone Technology and the Fourth Amendment: Aerial Surveillance Precedent and Kyllo Do Not Account for Current Technology
Get PDFA Political Embarrassment: Jurisdiction and the Alien Tort Statute, Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, and Political Question Doctrine
Get PDFLinking Patent Reform and Civil Litigation Reform
Get PDFPatent reform increasingly focuses on discovery. Discovery is perceived as disproportionately expensive and burdensome in patent cases. Excessive discovery is said to fuel so-called “patent trolls” and impose an unhealthy tax on innovation and competition. These supposedly exceptional problems have led to exceptional patent-only reform proposals, such as delaying most discovery for over a year and reversing the seventy-five-year-old allocation of discovery costs.
Treating patent litigation as exceptional has a siloing effect. Patent reform debates ignore parallel debates over general civil litigation reform that raise the same arguments about disproportionately expensive and burdensome discovery and propose their own set of reforms. This Article links patent reform to civil litigation reform, arguing that patent discovery is not exceptional in its costs, supposed effects, or causes. Instead, patent discovery is representative of a subset of discovery-intensive civil cases. The main problem with discovery in patent cases is not abusive tactics of “patent trolls” or inherent technical complexity but rather complex and open-ended remedial doctrines. Doctrinal complexity is not unique to patent litigation.
Pinpointing the source of patent discovery problems also suggests a solution—delaying costly and burdensome remedial discovery until after liability is established. This solution need not be limited to patent cases. Greater use of staged litigation—litigating and resolving some potentially case-dispositive issues before any discovery or other litigation occurs on more discovery-intensive issues—is a potentially valuable tool for reforming general civil litigation. Notably, staged litigation preserves the plaintiff’s access to information and right to a jury trial, overcoming objections to other efforts to reduce civil litigation costs, like Twombly/Iqbal plausibility pleading
Timing Brady
No full textCriminal discovery reform has accelerated in recent years, triggered in part by the prosecution’s widely perceived failure to abide by its constitutional obligation, articulated in Brady v. Maryland, to disclose exculpatory evidence. Practitioners and academics, disillusioned by the Supreme Court’s hands-off approach, have sought reform along three axes: legislatively expanding criminal discovery’s scope, increasing the degree and likelihood of prosecutorial sanctions, and altering the organizational dynamics that encourage prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence.
None of these approaches, however, addresses the issue of timing and its effect on prosecutors. Over the course of a prosecution, incentives to withhold evidence develop, and temptations to withhold it recur. Accordingly, popular reform efforts such as mandatory “open-file” discovery remain incomplete. Just like Brady itself, these well-intentioned reforms are destined to fall short of their goals so long as they fail to address criminal discovery’s temporal dimension.
This Article inquires how timing affects the prosecutor’s decision to disclose or withhold exculpatory evidence in advance of a criminal trial. After laying out timing’s importance, the Article then explores its policy and design implications for criminal discovery reform. By consciously addressing timing, reformers across state and federal jurisdictions can better guarantee the defendant’s access to exculpatory evidence
Heien v. North Carolina and Police Mistakes of Law: The Supreme Court Adds Another Ingredient to Its “Freedom-Destroying Cocktail”
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United States v. George Tenet: A Federal Indictment for Torture
Get PDFThis Article addresses the absence of accountability for torture in the War on Terror. Part II examines the U.S. obligation under international law to investigate and prosecute acts of torture regardless of where such acts occurred. It also reviews the domestic legislation that implements this international obligation. Adopted by Congress to implement the Convention against Torture, the Torture Statute (18 U.S.C. § 2340A) establishes criminal liability for torture committed outside the United States. Part III then reviews the first and only case ever brought under the Torture Statute. Roy Belfast, Jr., a U.S. citizen, was prosecuted and subsequently convicted in 2008 for committing torture in Liberia. The Belfast case addressed several issues relating to the Torture Statute, including the definition of torture, the extraterritorial application of U.S. law, and the viability of potential defenses.
Using the Belfast prosecution as a model, Part IV examines the criminal liability of George Tenet, who served as the Director of Central Intelligence during the time when several detainees listed in the SSCI Report were tortured. Tenet was responsible for the development and implementation of the CIA\u27s Detention and Interrogation Program. He personally authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on high value detainees who were held at CIA black sites around the world. Finally, Part V provides a criminal indictment of Tenet based on the treatment of four detainees: Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Abd al-Rahim al- Nashiri, and Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh. These detainees were held by the CIA at various facilities around the world during Tenet\u27s tenure as the Director of Central Intelligence. Under the guise of enhanced interrogation techniques, the CIA subjected each detainee to horrific treatment. They were, in fact, tortured