As noted earlier, last week U.N. Human Rights Council rapporteur James Anaya (who also happens to be a lawprof at the University of Arizona) declared the U.S. to be trampling the aboriginal land rights of Indian tribes. I have a new Daily Caller piece pointing out (as I detail at more length in Schools for Misrule) that the U.N.’s involvement with American law school projects is nothing new: “Now the plaintiff’s counsel [in the Western Shoshone claim] of a few years back re-surfaces as the official instrument of a U.N. body, a revolving-door arrangement that is actually quite typical of the international human rights establishment, where a rather small band of crusading law professors, ‘civil society’ activists and Guardian readers around the world seem to take turns investigating each others’, or as the case may be their own, countries for putative human rights violations.” (& Julian Ku, Opinio Juris)
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Arizona,
Indian tribes,
international human rights,
law schools,
Schools for Misrule,
United Nations
- U.N. rapporteur lectures U.S. on Indian rights, calls for “some form of land restoration” [IPSNews] “So, the UN Wants the U.S. to Return Land to Indian Tribes…” [Claudia Rosett] In Chapters 10 and 11 of Schools for Misrule, I discuss the growing cooperation between Indian land-claim activists in this country and international organizations both within and without of the U.N. system. (More: I expand theme into a Daily Caller piece).
- “Union Uses NAFTA To Fight Alabama Immigration Law” [Sean Higgins, IBD]
- “UN hunger expert investigates Canada” [Hillel Neuer, National Post]“Everyone’s grievances can thus be transformed into human rights violations” [Jacob Mchangama and Aaron Rhodes, Freedom Rights Project, PDF]
- Admittedly, at a “lefty Quaker school in the Northeast”: “You know international law is getting some traction when your fourth-grader is being taught about the Convention on the Rights of the Child.” [Peter Spiro, OJ]
- New Third Circuit opinion in remanded U.S. v. Bond case, which tested limits of treaty power, could tee up issue for another SCOTUS outing [Spiro/OJ, FedSoc Blog, Liberty and Law; earlier]
- “Canada’s Much Better and Very Different Alien Tort Statute” [Ku/OJ]
- Implementation of United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) could draw inspiration from U.S. experience with institutional reform lawsuits [Michael Perlin via Bagenstos]
Tagged as:
alien,
Canada,
child,
disabled rights,
immigration law,
Indian tribes,
international human rights,
international law
As I relate in a post at Cato at Liberty, the Obama Labor Department has withdrawn a far-reaching proposal that would have banned much or most work done by kids on farms, even work for their own family members (a narrow exemption would have remained in cases where parents were the sole owners of a farmstead). The proposals drew a huge outcry from rural America (earlier here and here).
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation (PDF),
For approximately a decade, activists have attempted to pass legislation amending the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to restrict the ability of youth under the age of 16 to work in agriculture. The legislation has never been scheduled for a vote or even a hearing, and the DOL-proposed rule change is [was] apparently an effort to restrict youth employment in agriculture through regulation.
If it seems impossibly extreme to forbid 15-year-olds from feeding chickens at a neighboring farm owned by their aunt, be aware that many groups organized around the fine-sounding mission of ending “child labor” would like to institute bans that go even further. For example, an NGO by the name of Global March Against Child Labor (represented in Washington, D.C. here) supported the DoL rules and declares itself “of the view that child labour in agriculture should not be allowed in any part of the world and in any form- whether as family labour or as hired labour.”
P.S. For more pro-ban sentiment, see this piece by AP labor correspondent Sam Hananel stenographizing the views of groups like Human Rights Watch.
Tagged as:
agriculture and farming,
Barack Obama,
international human rights,
workplace
- NAACP takes complaint against American election laws to U.N. Human Rights Council [PowerLine, Steyn, von Spakovsky, Ku]
- Also at Opinio Juris: David Landau, Mark Tushnet on judicial/constitutional enforcement of “social rights”; getting international law enforced in U.S. courts is hot topic in legal academia [Oona Hathaway, Sabria McElroy and Sara Aronchick Solow and Steve Vladeck]
- Too many strings in Toronto: “York University Faculty Torpedo $60 Million International Law Donation” [Ku/OJ]
- What UNESCO is up to: “Empowering the Poor Through Human Rights Litigation” [long PDF]
- “Taming Globalization,” new Yoo-and-Ku book on international law [Liberty and Law: about, interview, more]
- Baby thrown out with bathwater: courts now coping with grossly overbroad state enactments barring reception of foreign law [WSJ Law Blog, earlier here, etc.]
Tagged as:
international human rights,
law schools,
Voting Rights Act
- Supreme Court orders rebriefing in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum case, could address extent of permitted extraterritoriality in Alien Tort Statute [Kenneth Anderson/Volokh quoting John Bellinger, Point of Law featured discussion, Ilya Shapiro on Cato brief]
- UN “food rights” official: trade, investment pacts should not go forward without “human rights impact assessments” [De Schutter; his paternalist food-policy agenda] UN panel reviews Canada’s record on race, lectures on need for more multiculturalism [OHCHR]
- Courts still reluctant to restrain parents’ physical discipline of kids, but UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, for which ratification push is expected in the U.S. this year, could change that [Elizabeth Wilson, ConcurOp]
- Golan v. Holder: “Copyright Case May Have Profound Effect on Treaty Power” [Ilya Shapiro, Jurist]
- Web accessibility litigation spreads to UK [Disability Law, related on role of U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, earlier and background]
- New tone under Ambassador Joseph Torsella: “Obama Comes Around on U.N. Reform” [Brett Schaefer, NRO]
- Reviewing new John Fonte book Sovereignty or Submission, Temple lawprof Peter Spiro contends that trend toward transnational governance isn’t “reversible…. It’s mostly wishful thinking to suppose that we can stick to the vision of the Founders.” [OJ, earlier here, etc., and see chapters 11-12 of Schools for Misrule]
- Dante’s Divine Comedy “offensive and should be banned,” per UN anti-discrimination consultancy [Telegraph]
Tagged as:
Alien Tort Claims Act,
children's rights,
international human rights,
international law,
United Nations,
web accessibility
Creative application #95,724 of international human rights law: maybe it turns out to ban U.S.-style factory farming. Activists are urging the Derbyshire county council in England to deny planning permission to a large hog facility on the grounds that it violates local residents’ protected right to private and family life [Guardian]
Tagged as:
agriculture and farming,
international human rights,
United Kingdom
Mark Steyn on the paradoxes of our contemporary proliferation of rights-coinage, in which even being deprived of a choice can count as a right [NRO]
Tagged as:
international human rights,
schools
The U.S. in 2010 signed onto the newish international human right to clean water and sanitation, but I wonder how many of those involved in the ratification expected it to lead to consequences like these [Sacramento Press]:
An appointee to the United Nations Human Rights Council has issued a four-page memo warning Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson that local officials could be violating the human rights of the homeless people living within the city. In the January 23rd dated letter, Catarina De Albuquerque, the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation for the United Nations human right council, says that the current policy of evicting the homeless from their “tent cities” and denying the homeless with safe access to clean water is, in effect, prohibited discrimination based on their economic and social status.
Tagged as:
international human rights,
United Nations
Islamists are demanding the execution of Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari over tweets, since retracted, that they say are blasphemous toward their religion. Malaysia has detained Kashgari and may extradite him to face the charges; according to reports, the international police organization had put out an order for his arrest at the behest of the Saudi government [Guardian, Nina Shea/NRO, Daily Beast, Reason, Facebook support page, blog, #FreeHamza]
[]
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international human rights,
Malaysia,
Saudi Arabia,
Twitter
- More on John Fonte’s new book Sovereignty or Submission [FrontPage interview, W. James Antle III/Washington Times, Clifford May via Israpundit, earlier here and here] U.N. Human Rights Council finds much to criticize about U.S. rights record, including inadequate attention to rights of clean water and sanitation; State Department response to “universal periodic review”;
- “The President Can’t Increase Congress’s Power Simply by Signing a Treaty” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato, on Supreme Court case of U.S. v. Bond]
- Another “international norms vs. American sentencing practices” showdown headed to SCOTUS? [Hans Bader]
- France, Turkey restrict talk of Armenian genocide in opposite ways, and both are wrong [Walter Russell Mead]
- Transnational prosecutions on an inexorable upward arc? Depends on how you count them [Jeremy Rabkin, TAI]
- International law pressed into use to remake family law and gender customs [Stephen Baskerville]
- “Time to Fix the European Court of Human Rights?” [Julian Ku, Opinio Juris]
- “We are fighting the caste system with capitalism”: open market in India helps Dalits [NY Times]
Tagged as:
Europe,
family law,
France,
India,
international human rights,
international law,
Supreme Court,
Turkey
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is asking the UN high commissioner on human rights to rule various American states in violation of international law because of the states’ insistence on various restrictions on the franchise, including ID requirements for voters, denial of the vote to convicted felons, and measures that “have reduced the ease of early voting, a convenience that is disproportionately heavily used by African-Americans.” [Guardian; Caroline May, Daily Caller]
Tagged as:
international human rights,
voter fraud
- Union withdraws, and NLRB drops, complaint against Boeing over plant location decision [Adler, earlier] “Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) Introduces Bill to Reverse NLRB’s ‘Micro-Union’ Decision” [LRT via @jonhyman] Video of “Organized Labor & Obama administration” panel [Federalist Society convention]
- Suing Atlantic City is an established sport for current, former employees [Press of AC] After lawsuit win, former Gotham sanitation worker litters neighborhood with cars [NY Post via Christopher Fountain] Why have House, Senate reversed usual ideological lines on federal employee workers’-comp reform? [WaPo]
- Murder of reformist professors reinforces difficulty of changing Italian labor law [Tyler Cowen] UK considers relaxing “unfair dismissal” controls on employers [BBC, earlier]
- Taylor Law and NYC transit strike: “ILO Urges that U.S. Stop Violating International Obligations It Hasn’t Agreed To” [Ku, OJ; Mitch Rubinstein, Adjunct Law Prof]
- Maryland’s misnamed 2009 “Workplace Fraud Act” bedevils carpet installers and other firms that employ contract workers, and perhaps that was its point [Ed Waters Jr./Frederick News-Post, Weyrich Cronin & Sorra, Floor Daily]
- “Government pay is higher” [Stoll] Notwithstanding “Occupy” themes, interests of unions and underemployed young folks might not actually be aligned very well [Althouse]
- More on outcry over proposed federal restrictions on kids’ farm chores [WSJ, NPR, Gannett Wisconsin, CEI, earlier]
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agriculture and farming,
international human rights,
Italy,
labor unions,
Maryland,
New Jersey,
NYC,
United Kingdom,
workers' compensation
Next up, regicide on the chessboard? “One of the world’s largest and most respected humanitarian groups … is investigating whether the Geneva and Hague conventions should be applied to the fictional recreation of war in video games.” [Kotaku]
Tagged as:
international human rights
- “Ohio Attorney Sues Over Misleading Emails, Even Though He Wasn’t Misled” [Chris Danzig, Above the Law]
- Feds say new EPA-ordered fuel economy standards could add $2000 to price of new car [C.J. Ciamarella, Daily Caller] More: WSJ.
- Las Vegas considers following Chicago’s lenders-must-cut-grass folly [Kevin Funnell, earlier] “The Fed actually does impose, via legal risk, a de facto ceiling on mortgage rates.” [Mark Calabria, Cato]
- 2nd Circuit: Prison Litigation Reform Act curbs attorney fee shift at 150% of cash won, and yes, that applies to a $1 award [PoL] Panel on attorneys’ fees in class actions at Federalist Society convention [video, PoL]
- John McClaughry reviews Reckless Endangerment, Morgenson/Rosner book on financial crisis [Reason]
- Daniel Hannan on John Fonte’s new book on transnational law, Sovereignty or Submission [Telegraph, and see chapters 11-12 of Schools for Misrule] International human rights activism pushes into “economic rights” [James P. Kelly III, Federalist Society "Engage"] NGOs exercise oft-envied combination of power without responsibility [Anderson] UK attorney general Dominic Grieve takes on the European court of human rights [Joshua Rozenberg, Guardian] UN battle plan on non-communicable diseases aims to save us from ourselves;
- Sans statutory authority, EPA wanders into “environmental justice” [PowerLine]
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
autos,
Environmental Protection Agency,
Europe,
international human rights,
mortgages,
United Nations
