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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Corporations are now widely seen as having responsibilities in regard to human rights abuses. This was thrown starkly onto the front pages recently when a number of high profile UK companies, including M&S and Asos, were caught up in allegations of child refugees from Syria working in very poor conditions for clothing suppliers based in Turkey.
Nate Parker’s movie The Birth of a Nation, which opens in Europe this month, tells the semi-fictionalized story of Nat Turner, an enslaved man who led a short-lived rebellion in rural southeast Virginia in August 1831. The movie focuses on Turner’s life before the rebellion; demonstrating one man’s breaking point sparked by the witnessing of extraordinary brutality.
The public holds exaggerated views of the quality of the scientific foundations of a surprising number of forensics sciences, as well as of the courts’ scrutiny of that evidence. The most significant of the weaknesses were made plain in a report by the (U.S.) National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which concluded: “The bottom line is simple: In a number of forensic science disciplines, forensic science professionals have yet to establish either the validity of their approach or the accuracy of their conclusions.”
In recent weeks, relations between indigenous groups and the Canadian government have soured further over the Trans Mountain Extension Project–the controversial proposal for extending oil pipelines in British Colombia and Alberta. This proposal, and other similar pipeline proposals, has led to a notable unification of indigenous groups in opposition. The ‘pipelines dispute’ between the government and a large section of its indigenous population has been rumbling on throughout the first year of Justin Trudeau’s leadership, but it intensified significantly at the start of November.
December 10 is International Human Rights Day, as recognized by the United Nations. Human dignity, freedom from discrimination, civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights for all should go without question. Whether it be from “the Hindu Vedas; the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi; the Bible; the Quran (Koran); the Analects of Confucius; the codes of conduct of the Inca,
International human rights law has come to face compound challenges in the recent two decades. Long gone the optimism that followed the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of 1993 which confirmed that the major changes in the international political scene at the time, and the aspirations of all the peoples around the world were finally moving in the same direction. Since then, political support for human rights globally has suffered a significant decline.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of OUP’s International Law in Domestic Courts (ILDC). Created to be an innovative and valuable resource for research on the interpretation and application of international law, it shows how international law matters in practice. Digital innovation in the past decade has allowed ILDC to provide scholars with data in the form of case law and analysis on which to base further scholarship from jurisdictions around the world.
Aquila is the Latin word for eagle, but it is also an ambitious Facebook project to provide internet access by solar-powered drones. In India, the project was supposed to provide internet access to the rural and most impoverished areas. Yet, the project was prohibited by the telecoms regulator for several reasons, one being net neutrality. The project would have offered free access to Facebook and some associated web pages and access to the rest of the internet for a fee.
One hundred years ago, in 1916, Montana elected the first woman to serve in Congress: Jeannette Rankin. On Tuesday, the US did not elect its first woman president. Although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, Donald Trump won the Electoral College. The expectation of a Clinton victory led many to reflect on the long history of women’s quest for the right to vote.
There has been much in the press recently about the employment tribunal ruling finding that two Uber drivers were not self-employed, but rather workers, and were therefore entitled to some employment rights. In some reports it has erroneously been suggested that these drivers were found to be employees. This is not what happened.
It’s not often that Wallonia makes the news, but for the past week Belgium’s French-speaking region has been at the heart of the latest in a long series of EU crises. The reason for this is the Wallonian government’s refusal to sign off on the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA).
In the second presidential debate, Donald Trump indicated that Warren Buffett had deducted, for federal income tax purposes, net operating losses in a manner similar to Trump’s deduction of his net operating losses. In response, Buffett, an outspoken supporter of Hillary Clinton, released a summary of Buffett’s 2015 federal tax return. Buffett’s intended message was clear: Trump didn’t pay federal income taxes; I did.
Legal commitments will continue, regardless of membership of the EU, and will be a constraint on the UK’s ability to develop its own environmental policies; new trade agreements with the EU and other nations may further affect environmental standards.
The UK government has wanted to leave to their dramatic fate children, teenagers, refugees and migrants who find themselves in Calais and elsewhere in Europe. To much fanfare, a dozen children (legally meaning a person under 18) were finally allowed to cross the Channel on Monday 17 October to be reunited with members of their families. As the same paltry number of children arrived the next day, an uproar was started by the likes of David Davies MP and Nigel Farage.
Rarely has there been a time in which military justice has loomed so large, or in such diverse ways. Certainly at any given time there are likely to be one or two high profile cases around the world, but lately it has seemed that the subject is never long out of the public eye. Consider the following kinds of issues: A Russian soldier stationed in Armenia murders a local family. Who should prosecute him for the murder, Russia or Armenia?
At first glance, it may seem a dizzyingly impenetrable subject matter, but Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström’s contributions to ‘contract theory’ have revolutionized the study of economics. They have recently been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, with the presentation committee noting how their pioneering analysis laid the “intellectual foundation for designing policies and institutions in many areas, from bankruptcy legislation to political constitutions.”