Philip G. Alston

Courses

• Children's Rights in International Law Seminar

  Every state in the world, except for Somalia and the USA, has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As a result children’s rights have subsequently come to play a major role in the human rights field generally – constitutions have been amended, legislative frameworks comprehensively revised, and specialist national institutions established. In addition, international organizations and non-governmental groups have adopted a child rights framework for many of their activities concerning children. Nevertheless, the field remains significantly under-theorized and there is a clear need for a better understanding of the conceptual and other underpinnings of policy and practice in this area. The seminar thus focuses on both the theory and practice of children’s rights, starting with the question of whether children really should be treated as rights-holders and whether this approach is more effective than the alternatives. Consideration will be given to the key legal concepts and the framework of rights reflected in the CRC. Specific issues will include: children’s rights in the criminal justice context including the death penalty and corporal punishment; whether it is productive to think in terms of children’s rights to education, housing or health care and how such rights can be ‘enforced’; whether child labor should or could be banned worldwide; efforts to end the involvement of children in armed conflict; and child sexual exploitation. Various country case studies will be used to ensure that the seminar is solidly grounded in current realities. We will also consider the pros and cons of US ratification of the Convention.

• Economic and Social Rights

  International human rights law embraces two sets of rights – the traditional civil and political rights, along with economic, social and cultural rights. The latter include the rights to food, health, housing and education, and also labor rights and cultural rights. Despite the strength of opposition to such rights within the United States, all of these rights are part of the international bill of rights, many have been explicitly recognized in national constitutions, and they are increasingly subject to judicial implementation in a range of countries. In many respects, they represent the new frontier of human rights advocacy. The course will explore whether these issues are properly dealt with under the rubric of rights, the types of obligations that flow from recognizing such rights, the mechanisms that are evolving in order to give effect to these rights in practice, and the desirability of courts being closely involved in their implementation. The course will also examine a range of highly topical issues such as the role of the private sector, corporate responsibilities in this area, the fight against extreme poverty as a human rights issue, social rights in the post-2015 UN development framework, and the nature of any international obligation on wealthy states to assist the poor in developing states.

• Fact Finding In International Law Seminar

  Fact-finding lies at the core of most human rights advocacy. Actions that would otherwise be classified as criminal rise to the level of a human rights violation when committed or tolerated by government actors. Where such governmental involvement or responsibility exists, a criminal investigation is either unlikely to be undertaken or unlikely to succeed. In the not so recent past, the allegations would simply be denied. Today, governments make concerted efforts to block humanitarian access to affected areas, destroy evidence systematically, confiscate media and other images, and employ sophisticated technology in an effort to discredit even very strong allegations. It thus becomes more difficult for the accusers, victims, or observers to establish the veracity of the facts as alleged. The most significant result of these trends has been a huge increase in the number and variety of fact-finding mechanisms established by inter-governmental bodies. While it is predictable that the governments impugned would have issued scathing indictments of many of these reports, more objective commentators have also begun to be critical of the composition, methodologies, interpretive techniques, and rigor of some of the fact-finding missions. Given their crucial importance and the seemingly ever-increasing reliance that the international community is placing on them, it is essential that some comparative and critical attention should be devoted to the key issues that arise in this context. But remarkably little comparative research or analysis has so far been undertaken. This seminar will work from concrete recent examples of major fact-finding. Diverse situations will be examined, including the cases of the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sri Lanka, and Israel and its neighbors. While the principal focus will be on fact-finding undertaken under inter-governmental auspices, the seminar will also consider the role of national-level commissions of inquiry, as well as NGO fact-finding. New technologies are also a central part of the emerging sub-discipline of human rights fact-finding and the seminar will explore the ways in which mobile phones, social media, crowdsourcing, forensic architecture, satellie imagery, big data and other developments are changing the nature of in human rights fact-finding. We will also discuss the controversial question of whether there could, or should, be a set of minimum standards for those operating in this area.

• International Criminal Law Seminar

  From a humanitarian perspective, the highpoints of international law in the twentieth century may well have been the Post World War II military tribunals (especially Nuremberg) and the adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998. Since the mid-1990s, a variety of other criminal tribunals have been set up including those dealing with the situations in: the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Cambodia and Lebanon. The ICC, in particular, has transformed the way in which we think about the international legal order, while at the same time opening up immense challenges for those who wish to see a functioning and credible globalized system of international criminal justice. This is an advanced seminar for students who already have a basic knowledge of the international criminal justice system. It focuses on both the substantive international criminal law and on the courts and tribunals set up to enforce it. In terms of crimes, we will concentrate on genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The course will be co-taught with Alison Cole who has worked for many of these tribunals and is currently the Open Society Justice Initiative’s legal officer for international justice, and will closely track current developments in the field. We will also be inviting a range of experts involved in the field to participate and make presentations in the seminar.

• International Human Rights Law

  The course provides an introduction to human rights, as one of the dominant discourses in international law and international relations, as well as at the national level in many countries. It examines the historical origins of the concept, its international legal underpinnings, and the political and other dynamics that have driven the expansion of the regime, as well as those factors that have sought to undermine it. The course focuses mainly on the principal international actors operating under the auspices of the United Nations. It thus looks at the political organs such as the Security Council and the Human Rights Council, the bodies monitoring states’ treaty obligations such as those dealing with civil and political rights, torture, women, and racism, and the key institutional actors such as the UN Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights. In order to bring some of the issues alive we go into depth on subjects such as women’s rights, summary executions, disappearances, arbitrary detention, LGBT rights, democratization, and the human rights responsibilities of non-state actors such as corporations. The broader themes running through the course include the challenge of cultural imperialism, the relationship between rights and duties, the extent to which private actors can have human rights obligations, the relationship between a robust human rights regime and respect for state sovereignty, and the challenges posed by twenty-first century forms of terrorism.

• International Law

  This is an overview course which aims to give students a sense of traditional theories of international law as well as, perhaps more importantly, a sense of how the doctrine, institutions and methodologies of international law have responded to the dramatic changes that have affected the international community over the past two decades or so. Topics may include: the nature and sources of international law, the application of international law in domestic courts, recognition of states and governments, territorial disputes, the law of the sea, jurisdiction, state responsibility for breaches, the law of treaties, human rights, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and the use of armed force. The course content will also be responsive to major current developments in the field.