Overlawyered » international human rights

U.N. enlists U.S. lawprof to scold U.S. on Indian land rights

Walter Olson — Sat, 12 May 2012 15:33:21 +0000

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)

Tags: Arizona, Indian tribes, international human rights, law schools, Schools for Misrule, United Nations

U.N. enlists U.S. lawprof to scold U.S. on Indian land rights is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

International law roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:41:52 +0000

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]

Tags: alien, Canada, child, disabled rights, immigration law, Indian tribes, international human rights, international law

International law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Good news for farm families

Walter Olson — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:18:48 +0000

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.

Tags: agriculture and farming, Barack Obama, international human rights, workplace

Good news for farm families is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

International law roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:39:25 +0000

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.]

Tags: international human rights, law schools, Voting Rights Act

International law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Iran remained concerned over human rights violations in Ireland”

Walter Olson — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 04:15:25 +0000

Now there’s the UN process of universal periodic human rights review, conveniently summed up in one sentence. [OHCHR via Global Governance Watch]

Tags: international human rights, United Nations

“Iran remained concerned over human rights violations in Ireland” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

International law roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 05:06:48 +0000

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]

Tags: Alien Tort Claims Act, children's rights, international human rights, international law, United Nations, web accessibility

International law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

U.K.: “Mega pig-farm could breach human rights, council warned”

Walter Olson — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:57:04 +0000

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]

Tags: agriculture and farming, international human rights, United Kingdom

U.K.: “Mega pig-farm could breach human rights, council warned” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Australian: “G’day sport” teasing is rights violation

Walter Olson — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:27:41 +0000

Anti-antipodean harassment? “An Australian community warden whose colleagues greeted him with ‘G’day Sport’ is taking his racial abuse case to the European Court of Human Rights.” [Telegraph; Dymchurch, Kent, U.K.]

Tags: Australia, hostile environment, international human rights, United Kingdom

Australian: “G’day sport” teasing is rights violation is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

The “right to receive free compulsory education”

Walter Olson — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:04:40 +0000

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]

Tags: international human rights, schools

The “right to receive free compulsory education” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

UN official: evicting homeless could violate international human rights

Walter Olson — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 06:19:00 +0000

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.

Tags: international human rights, United Nations

UN official: evicting homeless could violate international human rights is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system