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The Post-\u3cem\u3eOngwen\u3c/em\u3e Case Period and the Reconciliation Process in Northern Uganda: Local Communities as a Site of Knowledge
Get PDFBy providing victims with more space in the Ongwen case, the International Criminal Court (icc) has significantly contributed to the healing of the trauma and community reconciliation in northern Uganda. That said, this court has also raised issues that could affect local efforts to achieve peace, namely the positioning of victims of child soldiers vis-à-vis criminal child soldiers. Drawing on qualitative data collected through focus group discussions with some community members from locations under investigation by the icc, this sociolegal study examines the victims’ narratives about child soldiers and the different ideas of human rights that emerge. Then, it explores how these ideas may shape future transitional justice mechanisms designed in the global sphere. Finally, it discusses the extent to which they may impact the relevance of current justice initiatives. Overall, this paper analyzes the substantive effect of victim participation in the Ongwen case on local peacebuilding initiatives in northern Uganda
Addressing Mental Disability Head On: The Challenges of Reasonable Accommodation Requests for Virginia Housing Providers
Get PDFA person’s home should be a sanctuary of safety, security, and comfortability away from the demands of the outside world. Yet for many people living with mental illness, a home can all too easily become a sort of temporary prison. Nowhere is this more apparent than when a housing provider stands in the way of allowing someone with a mental disability the equal opportunity to use and enjoy their home. Fair housing law’s reasonable accommodation requirement works to ensure those living with mental illness receive the accommodations they need in order to live safely and comfortably in their own home. Even the most well-intentioned housing providers, however, continue to find themselves in violation of fair housing law as they struggle to decipher when and how they should grant requests for reasonable accommodation.
This Note provides a comprehensive overview of fair housing law both federally and in Virginia with a particular focus on the reasonable accommodation requirement in the context of mental disabilities. This Note not only seeks to explain why the reasonable accommodation requirement is tricky for many housing providers when the requested accommodation is made on the basis of a mental disability but also seeks to inform housing providers on how to navigate the requirement’s challenges and offer potential solutions that could help alleviate those challenges in the future
Disclosure, Greenwashing, and the Future of ESG Litigation
Get PDFThe Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”) disclosure movement is expanding both voluntarily, as businesses choose to disclose this information, and mandatorily, as government agencies impose disclosure requirements. As ESG disclosure expands, so do the litigation risks. “Greenwashing” refers to presenting false or misleading environmental or sustainability (i.e., “green”) qualities of products, services, or practices. Businesses may greenwash consumers as well as investors with false and misleading ESG disclosures in advertising, securities filings, or other public statements activating greenwashing litigation from investors and consumers. This Article addresses (1) the laws and regulations that cover consumer and securities greenwashing litigation, (2) how these forms of greenwashing litigation are evolving, and (3) the synergistic relationships that do, and should, exist between these forms of litigation
Reflections of a Non-Abolitionist Admirer of the Police Abolition Movement
Get PDFTo acknowledge that the abolition movement made reform better is not to reduce the movement to that purpose. For the non-abolitionist, the end of reform is better policing. For the abolitionist, reform is at best “a strategy or tactic toward transformation,” meaning contesting and ultimately eliminating policing. These are not compatible visions. But even if the collaboration between holders of these visions is just a tactical alliance, it is a tactical alliance that is producing good results. Perhaps those good results will lay a foundation for abolition, or perhaps they will seed in abolitionists’ fertile imaginations a positive vision of policing that, for too many people struggling in present realities, remains as yet inconceivable
‘Resisting’ while Collaboratively Informing in Communist Czechoslovakia
Get PDFInformers in the service of state secret police collaborate with authorities and thus contribute to the power of repressive regimes. Through a case-study of Communist Czechoslovakia (1945–1989)—and drawing from secret police archives– this article presents selected stories of informers who in one way or another also ‘resisted’ collaboration with the Czechoslovak State Security (StB). By doing so, we try to further complexify the notions of ’everyday resistance’, on the one hand, and ‘collaboration’ on the other. We demonstrate that resistant acts, similar to collaborative acts, can be apolitically devoid of ideology, highly idiosyncratic, and motivated by private drivers. Informing can be a tool of social navigation—namely, making the most out of one’s circumstances—in repressive times. Hence, resisting while informing also can be approached as a method for an individual to maximize opportunities within the overlapping incentives—both public and private, personal and professional—that contour decision-making and social action in repressive regimes
Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague (2024)
No full textInformers are generally reviled. After all, \u27snitches get stitches.\u27 Informers who report to repressive regimes are particularly disdained. While informers may themselves be victims enlisted by the state, their actions cause other individuals to suffer significant harm. Informers, then, are central to the proliferation of endemic human rights abuses. Yet, little is known about exactly why ordinary people end up informing on--at times betraying--other people to state authorities.
Through a case-study of Communist Czechoslovakia (1945-1989) that draws from secret police archives, oral histories, and a broad gamut of secondary sources, this book unearths what fuels informers to speak to the secret police in repressive times and considers how transitional justice should approach informers once repression ends.
This book unravels the complex drivers behind informing and the dynamics of societal reactions to informing. It explores the agency of both informers and secret police officers. By presenting informers up close, and the relationships between informers and secret police officers in high resolution, this book centres the role of emotions in informer motivations and underscores the value of dignity and reconciliation in transitional reconstruction. This book also leverages research from informing in repressive states to better understand informing in so-called liberal democratic states, which, after all, also rely on informers to maintain law and preserve order.https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/fac_books/1179/thumbnail.jp
The Vagueness of the Independent State Legislature Doctrine
Get PDFThe Independent State Legislature (ISL) Theory has been one of the hottest topics in election law, with conservative thinkers championing a strong version of the theory. In Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to turn this controversial theory into actual doctrine. The Court, though, declined to adopt a maximalist version of the theory and declined to reject it outright. Instead, it offered a vague standard that gives close to zero guidance as to where, between these two poles, the doctrine sits. Several scholars and commentators have responded to the opinion with a mix of relief, because the conservative Court rejected the most extreme version, and wariness, because the Court left room for federal courts to use the theory to undermine voting rights. This commentary challenges and adds to this narrative in a couple of ways. First, it shows that the political and policy implications of the ISL Theory are more complex and uncertain than often assumed. For example, in addition to other complicating scenarios, future cases could see liberals invoking the theory in federal court to rectify conservative state court decisions on fraudulent vote dilution. This commentary offers an explanatory theory that shows the Court may have opted for a vague doctrine in part to preserve flexibility in this uncertain decision-making environment. Second, this commentary highlights one cost of a vague ISL doctrine – an increased risk of outcomes that confuse and disenfranchise voters. Both claims are descriptive. They discuss benefits and risks that have been overlooked or insufficiently analyzed in the literature on the ISL Theory
Implied Consent in Administrative Adjudication
Get PDFArticle III of the Constitution mandates that judges exercising the federal judicial power receive life tenure and that their pay not be diminished. Nonetheless, certain forms of adjudication have always taken place outside of Article III—in state courts, military tribunals, territorial courts, and administrative tribunals. Administrative law judges, employed by various federal administrative agencies, decide thousands of cases each year. A vast majority of the cases they decide deal with public rights, which generally include claims involving federal statutory rights or cases in which the federal government is a party. With litigant consent, however, the Supreme Court has upheld administrative adjudication of certain claims involving private rights. In the bankruptcy context, the Court has further determined that litigant consent may be implied.
This Note considers implied consent in the context of administrative adjudication. It examines various objections to it and argues that allowing parties to implicitly consent to administrative adjudication of claims involving private rights does not violate Article III. This Note offers a solution for how the consent exception to Article III should operate in the context of administrative adjudication by considering what constitutes implied consent and the weight of litigant consent in the determination of whether a claim involving private rights is proper for administrative adjudication