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Teaching Latin American Legal History
Matthew C. Mirow
This essay discusses themes and English-language source materials for teaching Latin American Legal History.
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International Water Law Principles and Frameworks: Perspectives from the Nile River Basin
Ryan B. Stoa
With the current body of international water law limited to customary principles and nascent treaty instruments, the potential for major transboundary water resources conflict is high. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Nile River Basin. At about 6,825 km long, the Nile is the longest river in the world, sustaining the livelihoods of more than 180 million people in 11 riparian countries. And yet, the Nile River continues to flow without a binding cooperative management treaty or agreement. While the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) may soon come into force, it lacks the support and participation of two of the largest players in the region, downstream Egypt and Sudan. Meanwhile, basin countries’ interpretations of customary international water law highlight the inherent and predictable difficulties of reconciling the principles of equitable use and no significant harm. Considering the Nile River Basin’s critical importance to the economic development of basin states, the absence of a binding cooperative management agreement places the Nile River Basin at risk of conflict and continued mismanagement. This chapter analyzes the legal status of Nile River Basin water allocations through the lens of contemporary international water law, a developing body of law struggling to resolve transboundary disputes such as those found in the Nile River Basin.
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Child Soldiers: Children's Rights in the Time of War and Genocide
Hannibal Travis
The experiences of children during cases of genocide are varied. Children may be affected as persons succumbing to the deliberate imposition of conditions leading to death from hunger or disease, and as refugees and internally displaced persons, and may even be involved as perpetrators of killings planned by adults. This chapter begins with definitions of children and child soldiers and turns to legal developments surrounding the definitions and their practical impact. The next section of the chapter will deal with genocides involving children or child soldiers in important roles and highlight key aspects of the jurisprudence of the international criminal tribunals relating to child soldiers in the context of genocide or politicide. In this chapter, the main focus will be on child soldiers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. However, child soldiers have existed throughout the history of mankind (Afua 2003). Yet, political and military elites largely neglected and in some ways aggravated the problem until the late 1990s. The large-scale wars and genocides of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have influenced the development of an international legislation relating to child soldiers.
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Skills and Values: Constitutional law
William D. Araiza, Thomas E. Baker, Olympia Duhart, and Steven I. Friedland
Skills and Values: Constitutional Law brings practical context to what is possibly the most abstract and thus, for many students, frustrating course in the basic law school curriculum. The heart of the book are problems which pose constitutional law issues in the context of situations a lawyer is likely actually to encounter in her practice. As practical problems they require the student to perform functions required of a practicing lawyer, ranging from deposition preparation to letter-drafting to presentation of legal concepts to lay audiences. The problems thus require students to demonstrate mastery of doctrine in the context of real-world problems that call for practical lawyering skills.
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(Re)Defining Crimes Against Humanity for a Jus Post Bellum World
Charles C. Jalloh
"This collection of essays brings together jus post bellum and transitional justice theorists to explore the legal and moral questions that arise at the end of war and in the transition to less oppressive regimes. Transitional justice and jus post bellum share in common many concepts that will be explored in this volume. In both transitional justice and jus post bellum, retribution is crucial. In some contexts criminal trials will need to be held, and in others truth commissions and other hybrid trials will be considered more appropriate means for securing some form of retribution. But there is a difference between how jus post bellum is conceptualized, where the key is securing peace, and transitional justice, where the key is often greater democratization. This collection of essays highlights both the overlap and the differences between these emerging bodies of scholarship and incipient law"--Provided by publisher.
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Self-Representation and the Use of Assigned, Standby and Amicus Counsel
Charles C. Jalloh
The emergence of international criminal courts, beginning with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and including the International Criminal Court, has also brought an evolving international criminal procedure. In this book, the authors examine selected issues that reflect a blending of, or choice between, civil law and common law models of procedure. The topics include background on civil law and common law legal systems; plea bargaining; witness proofing; written and oral evidence; self-representation and the use of assigned, standby, and amicus counsel; the role of victims; and the right to appeal.
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Equality of Arms in International Criminal Law: Continuing Challenges
Charles C. Jalloh and Amy Elizabeth DiBella
This chapter considers the meaning of “equality of arms” between the prosecution and defense in modern international criminal law. The analysis reveals the disparity between the theory and practice, and shows how this oft mentioned principle in the jurisprudence and the literature is a lofty goal that seems to be applied feebly. The paper starts out by examining how international criminal courts define and apply the phrase in concrete cases, and offers multiple examples of courts shying away from ensuring the substantive equality of the parties in favor of reading the right as a mere procedural guarantee. Following a brief discussion of the link between equality of arms and the right to a fair and public trial, the authors argue that equality of arms is more than a simple fair trial right; it is an expansive institutional entitlement which is impacted by the lack of structural independence of defense offices in all but one international criminal court. The chapter uses the glaring inequality in investigative resources between the prosecution and the defense as a case study to advocate for special attention to the substantive enjoyment of equality of arms during the important investigative stages of such trials. In addition, the authors assess the out-of-court structural and resource inequalities that further stack the deck against defendants. They show how greater prosecution compliance with the statutory duty to collect and disclose both incriminating as well as exculpatory evidence in the permanent International Criminal Court could serve as one mechanism to help improve the substantive position of the defense and the fairness of international criminal trials.
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Épocas en la Historia del Derecho en los EE.UU
Matthew C. Mirow
A very brief legal history of the United States in Spanish.
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Orígenes de la Función Social de la Propiedad en Chile (Origins of the Social Function of Property in Chile)
Matthew C. Mirow
Una traducción de M.C. Mirow, Orígenes De La Función Social De La Propiedad En Chile. A Spanish translation of M.C. Mirow, Origins of the Social Function of Property in Chile.
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The Legality Principle and the Constitution of Cádiz
Matthew C. Mirow
The reform of criminal law was an important aspect of the Constitution of Cádiz and one that was commented on and explained at length. Although not containing a list of enumerated rights, the Constitution provides for some individual rights, including rights of the criminally accused, at various places in its text. Fearful of unrestrained royal authority to imprison individuals, the Constitution prohibits the king from depriving individuals of their liberty or imposing punishment. It criminalizes actions of executive or judicial officials carrying out such royal orders. When, on account of the security of the state, officials detain an individual on the king’s order, the accused is afforded presentment before a judge within 48 hours. The Constitution places similar prohibitions on the king’s power to seize property. (Art. 172). In addition to imposing substantial limitations on the king related to accusing and punishing criminal suspects, the Constitution also contains a relatively detailed description of the power of the courts and their duties in criminal matters. Thus, only courts may try criminal causes; the function of courts is exclusively judicial. (Arts. 242-245). Judges are personally liable for failing to observe the law. (Art. 254). Prisoners have the right to know the crime for which they are charged and to be presented to a judge. (Arts. 287, 29'7. Punishment may only follow after an information of the facts, a violation of law, and judicial order. (Art. 287). Forfeitures of good are permitted only for crimes carrying a financial punishment. (Art. 294). The Constitution prohibits torture and confiscation. (Art. 303, 304). Searches must be conducted under law and only for the goods order and security of the state. (Art. 306). Furthermore, the Constitution contemplates one criminal code of universal application throughout the nation. (Art. 258). Thus, the Constitution of Cádiz expresses the Legality Principle and ancillary aspects in several important provisions. This study analyses the origin of these and related provisions in the Constitution. It examines the debates of deputies in the sessions of the Cortes, explanatory works regarding the Constitution such as the Discurso Preliminar, and the writings of deputies to reconstruct the debate over the place of these provisions in the Constitution and the nation. Such provisions not only were the product of newer, liberal thought but also were grounded in and justified by the established practice of centuries of Spanish law. They accordingly provide a fascinating example of the deputies in Cádiz asserting the legitimacy of constitutional texts through political arguments that employed claims of both innovation and historicity.
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Spain and Portugal after 1800
Matthew C. Mirow and Alvaro Pérez-Ragone
European Supreme Courts: A Portrait through History is a lavishly illustrated hardback book, the culmination of more than three years' work by a team of leading legal historians and experts drawn from faculties across Europe and beyond. The book explores in a lively and accessible style the history of supreme courts structures throughout the European continent from the high medieval period to the modern day. The story is one of considerable diversity, but it also reveals many common themes which influenced the practice of law at the highest level in different times and places. The book serves to set the contemporary role of the international supreme courts within the context of a strikingly rich legacy of legal traditions, culture and history in Europe.
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The Law of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management
John Copeland Nagle, J. B. Ruhl, and Kalyani Robbins
The third edition contains an all-new section on the major threats to biodiversity, including several chapters detailing the impact of climate change and the emerging legal and administrative issues that are arising in response to this development. The book further defines biodiversity, outlines factors in choosing among different policy approaches for its protection. The authors include original notes and questions to stimulate class discussion.
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Los Juristas Académicos de Venezuela: Historia Institucional y Biografía Colectiva
Rogelio Pérez Perdomo
Indice:
Capítulo 1. El estudio histórico-social de los juristas académicos: producción intelectual y papel político.
Capítulo 2. La independencia y la construcción inicial del estado (1800-1847).
Capítulo 3. Tiempos de disgregación y autoritarismo (1848-1958).
Capítulo 4. Institucionalización de la investigación y sus límites (1959-2012).
Capítulo 5. Conocimiento, política y revolución. - Apéndice: Mini biografías de los juristas académicos analizados.
Referencias. -
An Ecosystem Management Primer: History, Perceptions, and Modern Definition
Kalyani Robbins
Ecosystem management is still a relatively new field of study - then Forest Service Chief F. Dale Robertson coined the term just two decades ago in 1992 - so its membership is still fairly small. But the issues are too important, too potentially life-altering, to leave to a handful of experts to worry about. This book is for everyone: law students, college and graduate students, experts, and weekend readers alike. Because it is for everyone, it is essential that it begin at the beginning.
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Those Damned Immigrants : America's Hysteria Over Undocumented Immigration
Ediberto Román
"The election of Barack Obama prompted people around the world to herald the dawning of a new, postracial era in America. Yet a scant one month after Obama's election, Jose Oswaldo Sucuzhanay, a 31-year old Ecuadorian immigrant, was ambushed by a group of white men as he walked arm and arm with his brother. Yelling anti-Latino slurs, the men beat Sucuzhanay into a coma. He died 5 days later. The incident is one of countless attacks--ranging from physical violence to raids on homes and workplaces to verbal abuse--that Latino/a immigrants have confronted for generations in America. And these attacks--physical and otherwise--are accepted by a substantial number of American citizens and elected officials, who are virulently opposed to immigrant groups crossing the Mexican border. Quick to cast all Latino/a immigrants as illegal, opponents have placed undocumented workers at the center of their anti-immigrant movement, and as such, many different types of native Spanish-speakers in this country (legal, illegal, citizen, guest), have been targeted as being responsible for increasing crime rates, a plummeting economy, and an erosion of traditional American values and culture. In Those Damned Immigrants, Ediberto Roman takes on critics of Latina/o immigration, drawing on empirical evidence to refute charges of links between immigration and crime, economic downfall, and a weakening of Anglo culture. Roman utilizes government statistics, economic data, historical records, and social science research to provide a counter-narrative to what he argues is a largely one-sided public discourse on Latino/a immigration"--Publisher's website.
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Workplace Bullying in Higher Education: Some Legal Background
Kerri Stone
Research-based chapters cover the impact of bullying on the workforce, the ways that bullying manifests within different sub-cultures and at different institutions including community colleges, the legal and ethical issues of bullying, and recommendations to address bullying on campus. Exploring bullying policies and innovative programs, this book provides a better understanding of how to rethink current policies and practices to proactively create more civil cultures. Workplace Bullying in Higher Education is a valuable resource for all higher education leaders and professionals on understanding, mediating, and preventing bullying.
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Genocide, Ethnonationalism, and the United Nations : Exploring the Causes of Mass Killing Since 1945
Hannibal Travis
Genocide, Ethnonationalism, and the United Nations examines a series of related crises in human civilization growing out of conflicts between powerful states or empires and indigenous or stateless peoples. This is the first book to attempt to explore the causes of genocide and other mass killing by a detailed exploration of UN archives covering the period spanning from 1945 through 2011. Hannibal Travis argues that large states and empires disproportionately committed or facilitated genocide and other mass killings between 1945 and 2011. His research incorporates data concerning factors linked to the scale of mass killing, and recent findings in human rights, political science, and legal theory. Turning to potential solutions, he argues that the concept of genocide imagines a future system of global governance under which the nation-state itself is made subject to law. The United Nations, however, has deflected the possibility of such a cosmopolitical law. It selectively condemns genocide and has established an institutional structure that denies most peoples subjected to genocide of a realistic possibility of global justice, lacks a robust international criminal tribunal or UN army, and even encourages "security" cooperation among states that have proven to be destructive of peoples in the past.
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Introduction: Cyberspace as a Product of Public-Private Censorship
Hannibal Travis
Cyberspace networks the globe. Its “bright lattices of logic” simulate and transcend the world in a “cage of neon” (Gibson, 1984, 5–10). Yet attempts to restrict it are at the center of some of the key legal battles of our time. Copyright owners seek to impose copyright filters on YouTube, possibly censoring thousands of channels and millions of videos in a way that television has never been regulated (Viacom, 2012). Trademark owners’ complaints shape the content of eBay and other online shopping sites, and copyright holders have shut down some software services using arguably antiquated notions of “encouraging” illegality (Tiffany, 2010, 104). The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that patents are being issued by the U.S. government for inventions implicating methods of speech or thought implemented by computer (ACLU, 2008).
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Neutralizing the "Open Internet"
Hannibal Travis
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) handed a stunning victory to advocates of media reform in 2005 when it endorsed a robust theory of the First Amendment in the Comcast adjudication (FCC, 2008). It is a theory that moves away from the dark ages of selective deregulation of discriminatory corporate media and looks towards prioritizing media consumers' right to access diverse and antagonistic sources of information and opinion, rather than the right of large corporations to acquire and control ever-larger combinations of media infrastructure. This theory, if upheld, may herald a new era of attention to citizens' First Amendment interests in accessing and benefiting from regulated telecommunications facilities such as broadcast airwaves and cable networks. This Chapter will begin with a brief history of telecommunications regulation, and turn to net neutrality activism, culminating in the law of Internet discrimination. The Communications Act of 1934 created the FCC for the precise purpose of making available, "so far as possible, to all the people of the United States a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges" by the mechanism of" centralizing authority" (Communications Act of 1934, Section 1). The 1934 Act made it unlawful for common carriers to discriminate unduly or unreasonably against any particular person or class (ibid., sections 201-202).
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The "Monster" That Ate Social Networking?
Hannibal Travis
This chapter analyzes the privacy, intellectual property, competition policy, and human rights law implications of the rise of Facebook and the threat of a natural monopoly in social networking. Facebook instructed its users that it may provide friend lists and other profile information to third parties, as well as to law enforcement when it thinks public safety is at issue. The service warned users that it may disclose information without permission, but with “notice, such as by telling you about it in [a data use] policy.” In 2009, Facebook announced the settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of users of Facebook as of November 2007, which involved privacy violations. Facebook subsequently became embroiled in patent litigation, democratization movements, and the mass surveillance of unsuspecting users, and this chapter briefly surveys its role in these controversies.
The book in which it appears explores what the American Civil Liberties Union calls the ‘third era’ in cyberspace, in which filters "fundamentally alter the architectural structure of the Internet, with significant implications for free speech." Although courts and nongovernmental organizations increasingly insist upon constitutional and other legal guarantees of a freewheeling Internet, multinational corporations compete to produce tools and strategies for making it more predictable. When Google attempted to improve our access to information containing in books and the World Wide Web, copyright litigation began to tie up the process of making content searchable, and resulted in the wrongful removal of access to thousands if not millions of works. Just as the courts were insisting that using trademarks online to criticize their owners is First Amendment-protected, corporations and trade associations accelerated their development of ways to make Internet companies liable for their users’ infringing words and actions, potentially circumventing free speech rights. Finally, as social networking and content-sharing sites have proliferated, so have content-detecting tools for finding, flagging, and deleting content that makes one or another corporation or trade association fear for its image or profits.
The book provides a legal history of Internet regulation since the mid-1990s, with a particular focus on efforts by patent, trademark, and copyright owners to compel Internet firms to monitor their online offerings and remove or pay for any violations of the rights of others. -
Who Controls the Internet? : The Second Circuit on YouTube
Hannibal Travis
On appeal to the Second Circuit, Viacom attempted to distinguish YouTube and other "media" sites from Hotmail and other "private" storage sites (Viacom, 2011, 38). Viacom had also pointed out that You Tube was disqualified from asserting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbor because it obtained a direct financial benefit from users visiting the site to find unlicensed "premium" copyrighted material, and to view it without permission (Viacom, 2011, 25-34). Moreover, Viacom alleged that YouTube employees featured popular music or music videos on the site in order to maximize viewership, and targeted advertisements to unlicensed copyrighted videos (Viacom, 2011, 36). In their brief as amici curiae supporting Viacom, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA) argued that YouTube should be found liable for copyright infringement because its founders encourage the uploading of popular copyrighted video in order to become a destination site that could be sold at a high price to a larger company such as Google, that they were aware of patterns of infringement that they did nothing about, and they derived a direct financial benefit from these patterns of infringement (MPAA and IFTA, 2011, 1-31).
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Understanding Civil Rights Litigation
Howard M. Wasserman
This student-focused treatise provides a concise, accessible, comprehensive overview of the doctrine, policy, and theory of civil rights and constitutional litigation under Section 1983 and its Bivens federal counterpart. The book is written to function as an assigned or recommended supplement to a casebook or case materials, as a statutory supplement to a casebook or case materials, and as an additional study guide for students wanting additional background, context, and synthesis in a course on Civil Rights Litigation and Federal Courts.
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Latin America
Jorge L. Esquirol
This Handbook represents a big step towards a global history of international law. First, it notes that the Eurocentric story of international law is incomplete since it ignores the violence, ruthlessness, and arrogance which accompanied the dissemination of Western rules, and the destruction of other legal cultures which that dissemination caused. Second, the authors of the book come from different academic backgrounds: they are lawyers, historians, and political scientists. They come from, and work in, different regions of the world. Although accounts of the history of international law written from a non-European perspective are still rare, processes of creative appropriation and hybridization have recently been highlighted both by global historians and by international and comparative lawyers. Studying the history of international law can help improve our understanding of the character of a particular legal order, its promise, and its limits. The world is experiencing a period of fundamental change in international relations, a process instigated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc of states, and the end of the Cold War. This Handbook represents not the history, but many histories of international law.
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Versions of antihumanism : Milton and others
Stanley Fish
"Stanley Fish, one of the foremost critics of literature working today, has spent much of his career writing and thinking about Milton. This book brings together his finest published work with brand new material on Milton and on other authors and topics in early modern literature. In his analyses of Renaissance texts, he meditates on the interpretive problems that confront readers and offers a sustained critique of historicist methods of interpretation. Intention, he argues, is key to understanding which pieces of historical data are relevant to literary criticism. Lucid, provocative, direct and inimitable, this new book from Stanley Fish is required reading for anyone teaching or studying Milton and early modern literary studies"
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The Tea Party : Three Principles
Elizabeth Price Foley
"In The Tea Party: Three Principles, constitutional law professor Elizabeth Price Foley takes on the mainstream media's characterization of the American Tea Party movement, asserting that it has been distorted in a way that prevents meaningful political dialogue and may even be dangerous for America's future. Foley sees the Tea Party as a movement of principles over politics. She identifies three "core principles" of American constitutional law that bind the decentralized, wide-ranging movement: limited government, unapologetic U.S. sovereignty, and constitutional originalism. These three principles, Foley explains, both define the Tea Party movement and predict its effect on the American political landscape. Foley explains the three principles' significance to the American founding and constitutional structure. She then connects the principles to current issues as health care reform, illegal immigration, the war on terror, and internationalism"
