Well, no, actually, wrong, as I explain in a new Cato post taking issue with left-of-center commentator Garrett Epps.
Posts Tagged ‘international human rights’
Push for “national human rights institution” in U.S.
James P. Kelly III offers some reasons for skepticism [Federalist Society Engage; note especially discussion of “economic rights” on pp. 64 et seq.] And from the “when we say it, it’s alarmism” file: “The Regulatory Turn in International Law” [Jacob Katz Cogan, HILJ/Opinio Juris]
July 10 roundup
- Jury rejects Jamie Leigh Jones rape claim against Halliburton/KBR. Next, a round of apologies from naive commentators and some who used the case to advance anti-arbitration talking points? [WSJ; Ted Frank/PoL and more; WSJ Law Blog (plaintiff’s lawyers sought shoot-the-moon damages)]
- Time magazine vs. James Madison on constitutional law (spoiler: Madison wins) [Foster Friess via Ira Stoll]
- Andrew Trask reviews new Curtis Wilkie book on the Dickie Scruggs scandal;
- “Right to family life” evolution in human rights law deters UK authorities from deporting various bad actors [Telegraph]
- Paging Benjamin Barton: How discovery rules enrich the legal profession at the expense of the social good [PoL]
- USDA heeds politics, not science, on genetic crops [Henry Miller/Gregory Conko, PDF, Cato Institute Regulation]
- “Legal Questions Raised by Success of Monkey Photographer” [Lowering the Bar]
June 14 roundup
- Bizarrely overbroad: “Tennessee law bans posting images that ’cause emotional distress'” [Tim Lee, Ars Technica]
- “Superlawyer Stanley Chesley Faces Reckoning Tuesday” [Dan Fisher, Forbes, Cincinnati Enquirer, reporter Jim Hannah, earlier]
- More on record run-up in used car prices [Perry; my Cato take]
- Winkler County, Texas nurses case illuminates evils of prosecution-as-weapon [Texas Observer via PoL; earlier here, here, and here]
- Not a parody: claim that litigious celebs should be doing more to support Litigation Lobby [CJD]
- “Feminism by Treaty: Why CEDAW is Still a Bad Idea” [Christina Sommers, Policy Review]
- Why do agents of so many miscellaneous government agencies pack guns? [Quin Hillyer last year]
- New idea for who to sue over sex scandals [Conan show lawyer ad parody, adult content]
New frontiers in international human rights
Even for nonpayment of cable bills? “The United Nations has declared Internet access a human right, and disconnecting people from it is against international law.” [Stan Schroeder, Mashable]
More: According to some commenters, what’s going on here is an assertion only of liberty rights (authorities should not block access) and not of affirmative welfare rights to internet access. Accepting this view for the basis of argument, there still arises the question of whether commonly encountered terms of service will now be at risk of being declared contrary to international law; per news coverage, some advocates hope the new initiative will bar closing the accounts of distributors of pirated music etc., and one can readily imagine parallel claims by email spammers, launchers of DDOS attacks and other controversial classes of users.
“UK advocacy group proposes to sue predator drone operators”
Kenneth Anderson at Instapundit notes the latest outbreak of “lawfare,” the use of litigation against diplomatic and military actors. “As with most of these advocacy campaigns, the point is not to win cases, but to create a public narrative that says the practice is unsavory and illegitimate, and leverage that into personal legal uncertainty for officials, whether in office or once they leave government.” I’ve got much more on the phenomenon — and its large base of support in present-day legal academia — in Schools for Misrule.
Separately, Gabriel Schoenfeld at National Affairs argues that “when it comes to the American government’s efforts to provide for the common defense, a far-reaching legalism has taken hold,” and Anderson has more on the legalities of last week’s Bin Laden raid.
The U.N. vs. freedom of religion
While the campaign to ban “defamation of religion” appears to have lost some steam at the world body recently, continued efforts to curtail “religious hate speech” could restrict free expression in some of the same ways. [Nina Shea, NRO “Corner”; Ilya Somin, Volokh] Warns Nina Shea:
In 2009, the Obama administration had the U.S. co-sponsor with Egypt, which represented the OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference], a non-binding hate-speech resolution in the Human Rights Council. In contrast to U.S. constitutional law, that resolution urges states to take and to effectively implement “all necessary measures” to combat any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence. It thus encourages the worldwide criminalization of religious hate speech.
International human rights law roundup
Recent clips on a subject treated in much more detail in Schools for Misrule:
- Claim: Wisconsin Gov. Walker’s reforms to public sector labor law violate international human rights [HRW, Mirer/Cohn, FoxBusiness (views of Marquette lawprof Paul Secunda)] Related: UAW threatens charges against automakers [ShopFloor]
- Per some advocates, “right to health” has emerged as an “established international legal precept” even if it is “still to be fully embraced in the United States” [Friedman/Adashi, JAMA]
- GWB at risk of arrest if he visits Europe? Or are some of his enemies just posturing? “Bush trip to Switzerland called off amid threats of protests, legal action” [Atlantic Wire, WaPo, Daily Dish and more, Frum Forum, more and yet more]
- Oh, good grief: Tennessee solon “proposes law to make following Shariah law a felony” [Tennesseean] More states prepare to join unsound “ban all recogition of international law” movement [Ku, OJ] Background: Volokh.
- For those interested in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recently given a favorable nod by the Obama administration, a copy of the text is available here [CWB]
- “Conceptualizing Accountability in International Law and Institutions” [Anderson, OJ]
- Human rights initiative in UK: “Rapists and killers demand right to benefits” [Telegraph] European Court of Human Rights, Human Rights Acts “merely pretexts for judicial activism, argues Alasdair Palmer” [Telegraph]
- Claim: U.S. is odd-country-out in international law. Reality check please [Bradford, Posner et al, OJ]
- Opponents charge trying Pennsylvania 13 year old for murder as adult could violate international law [AI]
“The Case Against the U.N. Women’s Treaty”
Contrary to mythmaking in some quarters, CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) does push participating governments to regulate family life and private conduct, it goes far beyond the current state of U.S. law, it is no mere hortatory exercise unlikely to affect future decisions by judges and others, it is not merely a way of pressuring countries whose record on women’s rights is inferior to that of the United States, and its force will not be rendered meaningless by the inevitable Senate declarations, reservations and understandings. [Christina Hoff Sommers, NRO; Julian Ku/Opinio Juris (“[Sommers] is certainly right that most international law scholars think the reservations have no effect and that there will be a push after ratification to get courts to recognize CEDAW and ignore the reservations.”)] More: Rachel Ryan, FrumForum.
October 19 roundup
- Supreme Court case: “Family’s vaccine claim is not sustainable” [Washington Post editorial, earlier] More: John Calfee, The American.
- GAO: HHS acted in “unusual” way when it muzzled health plans on ObamaCare costs [Cannon/Cato-at-Liberty, earlier]
- “Trial Opens for Adoption Attorney Accused of Stealing From Clients” [NYLJ]
- U.K.: A “human right” to have someone prosecuted? [Greenfield]
- “Dodd-Frank, Bubble Laws, and Quack Corporate Governance” [Bainbridge]
- Child overprotection: “Pack away the cotton wool” [Sydney Morning Herald editorial, scroll]
- Here comes another SCOTUS case in the Twombly-Iqbal series? [WLF] Update: Apparently not [Ted at PoL] Why Iqbal and Twombly were rightly decided [Beck]
- Don’t link, criticize, use our name, refer to us, view our source code… [three years ago on Overlawyered]