scholarly journals The Economics of Canadian Anti-Discrimination Laws

2020 ◽  
pp. 839
Author(s):  
Reagan Seidler

Prohibiting discrimination is a noble political statement. What does it mean as economic policy? Applying a neoclassical framework, the article examines how Canada’s human rights laws affect society and marginalized groups from a welfare perspective. The article offers several practical reforms to improve the efficiency of current laws such as uncapping damage awards, removing criminal sanctions, and allowing non-profits to participate in remedies so as to compensate marginalized groups for systemic effects of discrimination. It also discusses bolder market-based options, including the taxing and licencing of discrimination for instances where our great project towards equality might be better served by redistribution than prohibition.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-333
Author(s):  
Tobias Kelly

Abstract This short essay offers a broad and necessarily incomplete review of the current state of the human rights struggle against torture and ill-treatment. It sketches four widespread assumptions in that struggle: 1) that torture is an issue of detention and interrogation; 2) that political or security detainees are archetypal victims of torture; 3) that legal reform is one of the best ways to fight torture; and 4) that human rights monitoring helps to stamp out violence. These four assumptions have all played an important role in the history of the human rights fight against torture, but also resulted in limitations in terms of the interventions that are used, the forms of violence that human rights practitioners respond to, and the types of survivors they seek to protect. Taken together, these four assumptions have created challenges for the human rights community in confronting the multiple forms of torture rooted in the deep and widespread inequality experienced by many poor and marginalized groups. The essay ends by pointing to some emerging themes in the fight against torture, such as a focus on inequality, extra-custodial violence, and the role of corruption.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 474
Author(s):  
Elisabet . ◽  
Cut Memi

One of the authorities of the Constitutional Court governed by the Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia in 1945 was the examining of laws against the contitution or judicial review. Inside the regulations which governing the implementation of this authority, the Constitutional Court only acts as a negative legislator, namely canceling or reinforcing a norm tested by the Petitioner. But in practice, the Constitutional Court has changed its role to become a positive legislator, who is forming a new legal norm, which is the authority of legislators. The Constitutional Court should not be able to form a new legal norm because there is no legal basis which regulate that. But Constitutional Court can form a new legal norm in some urgent circumstances, relating to Human Rights, and preventing legal vacuum. In addition, the establishment of laws by lawmakers that require a long process and time. This is compelling Constitutional Court to make substitute norm before the law was established by the legislators. In the Decision of the Constitutional Court Number 46/PUU-XVI/2016, the Court actually wants to establish a new legal norm, but because the articles in the petitioned have criminal sanctions, and if the Constitutional Court approves the petition, the Constitutional Court has formulated a new criminal act that can only be formed by the lawmaker. Whereas in the Decision of the Constitutional Court Number 21/PUU-XII/2014, the Constitutional Court established a new norm because in the article a quo there were no criminal sanctions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-287
Author(s):  
Sileshi B. Hirko

It is undisputed that education is instrumental both for socio-economic development and the enjoyment of other fundamental human rights. In particular, a tertiary education is very critical for less developed countries (LDCs) such as Ethiopia where education is considered a vital tool for sustainable development. Nonetheless, a quality tertiary education depends, inter alia, upon sufficient access to most copyrighted learning materials through a balanced copyright system with adequate room for flexibility. In fact, the tension between copyright protection and the right to education is integral to the global debate between intellectual property and human rights regimes. Despite its compelling socio-economic needs and its human rights obligation that dictate a broader room for flexibility, Ethiopia has adopted a very restrictive copyright system with a narrow set of limitations and exceptions (L&Es) for education. Further, both its copyright and criminal laws prescribe severe criminal sanctions for any act of copyright infringement. In so doing, Ethiopia has taken a legislative approach that exacerbates the problems related to both TRIPs’ implementation and access to learning materials. In the absence of a concrete step to rethink the approach, the effective utilisation of the constrained exception for education will be further undermined by TRIPs’ criminal enforcement in disregard of the socio-economic contexts of the country.


Author(s):  
Ackerly Brooke

This chapter explores the theoretical and political history of human rights that emerges out of the struggles that have been waged by feminists and other non-elites. It first considers the bases for the moral legitimacy of human rights and challenges to those arguments before discussing three aspects of feminist approaches to human rights: their criticism of some aspects of the theory and practice of human rights, their rights claims, and their conceptual contributions to a theory of human rights. It then examines the ways in which feminists and other activists for marginalized groups have used human rights in their struggles and how such struggles have in turn shaped human rights theory. It also analyses theoretical and historical objections to the universality of human rights based on cultural relativism. Finally, it shows that women’s rights advocates want rights enjoyment and not merely entitlements.


Author(s):  
Radhika Balakrishnan ◽  
Krishanti Dharmaraj

This chapter suggests that achieving sustainable development requires a change in the current economic system. Moreover, it advances the idea that an economic system based on the fulfillment of human rights and a peace and security agenda must consider what polices are needed to achieve sustainable peace, beyond the absence of war and violence. The chapter observes that in order to examine the issues surrounding women, peace, and security it is critical to unpack the relationship between existing economic policy and violent conflicts, and to consider how women are disproportionately affected at this intersection. If the fulfillment of human rights was at the center of economic policymaking, the chapter argues, the way in which the state gets and distributes resources would be very different.


2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-686
Author(s):  
Neha Jain

AbstractWhile the global pandemic has exposed the fragility of human rights protections, it has also resulted in rights victories for some of the most vulnerable members of society. This Essay examines epistemic, consequentialist, and normative rights reframing efforts that have been mobilized to advocate for and secure human rights during the pandemic through the lens of prisoners’ rights. It argues that these rights seeking strategies hold promise for advancing rights claims of prisoners and other marginalized groups beyond the pandemic.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 307
Author(s):  
Olga E. SHISHKINA ◽  
Olga V. HABIBULINA ◽  
Aleksandr F. REKHOVSKIY

Recently, there has been a substantial increase in the number of judgments delivered by the European Court of Human Rights with regard to the Russian Federation on the complaints filed by Russian citizens, including the complaints related to the liability for administrative offences. The characteristic tendency of the European Court of Human Rights to qualify administrative offences as criminal acts not only brings into focus the issue of ensuring procedural safeguards for individuals charged with administrative offences but also touches upon material aspects of the relation between criminal and administrative law-breaking in Russia as well as changes the traditional juristic view upon the essence of the legislation on administrative offence. Political and economic reforms of Perestroika and the first post-Soviet decade had a significant influence on the institution of administrative justice. Hence, on the one hand, its current state is caused by objective reasons. On the other hand, the legislator, having quite a broad discretion in determining whether to impose administrative or criminal sanctions in each particular case, has seriously blurred the material boundary between criminal and administrative offences. The problem of present-day legislation on administrative offences in Russia is a material hypertrophy of administrative liability together with continuous reduction of procedural safeguards and guarantees for individuals charged with administrative offences. The procedural norms of the existing Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation cannot provide for the adversarial nature of the administrative trial due to the fact that the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation is not methodologically aimed at regulating administrative (judicial) proceedings.


2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-193
Author(s):  
JAMES L. BISCHOFF

Notwithstanding estimates that 12.3 million persons today are subjected to conditions analogous to slavery, public international lawyers have almost completely ignored slavery and related institutions in recent decades. This article explores the phenomenon of forced labour in the Amazon, where anywhere between 25,000 and 100,000 people are compelled through trickery and coercion to work in subhuman conditions. After outlining the legal regime governing slavery-related practices, the author examines why the Brazilian government has failed in its efforts to secure compliance within its own borders of its obligations under anti-slavery and human rights conventions. The author then argues that holding the Brazilian state responsible and assessing monetary damages is not in fact the most effective and fair way to secure the human rights of the victims of forced labour, and that international criminal sanctions for the individual perpetrators – including prosecution in the ICC for crimes against humanity – is a viable and preferable alternative.


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