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Laurel E. Fletcher - 12th January 2021
I teach human rights at a law school that will forever be associated with the Bush Administration’s torture policy. John Yoo, one of the principal authors of the Torture Memo authorizing “enhanced interrogation techniques,” sits on Berkeley Law faculty. The link between the school and this shameful history sparked a crisis as critics demanded the […]
Vincent Southerland - 14th December 2020
Over the course of her 27-year tenure as a United States Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg consistently voted to protect the rights of the marginalized and dispossessed, reflecting an unrelenting commitment to equal justice under law, regardless of one’s gender, race, or sexual orientation. In many ways, Justice Ginsburg extended that commitment to the […]
Jade Weiner - 10th December 2020
On 09 November 2020, Mr Justice Turner of the High Court, handed down a judgment that denied the jurisdiction of the English Court to adjudicate the liability of BHP Plc and BHP Ltd on the merits, for the catastrophic consequences caused by the 2015 Fundão dam collapse. The judgment struck out the claims of over […]
- 10th December 2020
On 17 November 2020, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) delivered B and C v. Switzerland, a case concerning the deportation of a homosexual Gambian national. While the Court noted that the mere existence of laws criminalising homosexual acts did not render deportation contrary to Article 3 ECHR, it concluded that the Swiss […]
Mariam Kizilbash - 8th December 2020
Until the summer of this year, Pakistan did not have any adequate state legislation or any other mechanism in place that enforced the rights of persons with disabilities (“PWDs”). It had ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (“the Convention”) in 2011 but there had been no specific domestic implementation of […]
Andrea McArdle - 4th December 2020
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s long tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court produced a limited but meaningful body of work in fair housing cases. Although overshadowed by her historic rulings on gender-based discrimination, among other Constitutional and administrative law issues, the impact of her record interpreting the Fair Housing Act’s (FHA) broadly framed policy aims has not […]
Sahara Nankan - 22nd November 2020
A seminal joint report published by the Water Integrity Network and Corruption Watch earlier this year critically examines corruption in the South African Department of Water and Sanitation. The report finds that corruption is now ‘endemic and systemic’ within the sector. It identifies a number of cases under investigation in the portfolio of the former […]
Tatiana Kazim - 16th November 2020
Until March 2019, the UK operated an immigration policy – set out in Chapter 60 of the General Instructions to Home Office caseworkers – that worked like this: if a migrant did not have leave to enter or remain in the UK (that is, if they were an “irregular migrant”), the Secretary of State for […]
Anne Lofaso and Rachel Wechsler - 5th November 2020
On September 18, 2020, the first evening of the Jewish New Year holiday, Rosh Hashanah, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. By “Jewish tradition, a person who dies on Rosh Hashanah . . . is a tzaddik, a person of great righteousness.” Although she was just 5’1” and a bit over 100 […]
Mairead Enright - 30th October 2020
The Irish Oireachtas (parliament) has passed controversial legislation relating to the Mother and Baby Homes Commission archives. The Commission’s report should be published by the end of the year. It will provide an official history of abuses within Ireland’s system for the management of single mothers and their children. For first-person accounts and human rights […]
Laura Íñigo Álvarez and Aintzane Márquez Tejón - 27th October 2020
On 14 April 2010, the Argentinean criminal courts began an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed during the Franco regime. The investigation was initiated under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows states to claim criminal jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where the crime was committed or the nationality of the perpetrator […]
- 17th September 2020
The level of educational achievement by incarcerated offenders in the UK is far lower than the average. In addition, 40-50% of prisoners assessed in John Rack’s research for the Dyslexia Institute (2005) were at or below levels of literacy and numeracy expected of an 11-year old. In 2007, the Prison Reform Trust reported that prison […]