scholarly journals The (Human) Rights of Nature: A Comparative Study of Emerging Legal Rights for Rivers and Lakes in the United States of America and Mexico

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Jane Macpherson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
International Consensus ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
Rights Of Nature ◽  
The Status

An international consensus of scientific experts is now demanding "immediate action" in response to the environmental, climate, and biodiversity crises. But are our legal and regulatory frameworks equipped to respond to the rapid pace of environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change? What incidence is there, transnationally, of laws that seek to protect the Earth from the humans that inhabit it? In the past few decades, there is a growing social, legal, and political movement towards more ecocentric regulation of the planet, where new laws and institutions seek to protect natural resources for their own intrinsic value. In this paper, I consider recent efforts to protect the rights of rivers in the U.S. and Mexico, which are novel and emerging attempts to discover new pathways for enhanced protection of vulnerable waterways. These attempts are being pragmatically driven from the bottom up to the highest levels of the legislature or judiciary as local communities (and sometimes Indigenous Peoples) become increasingly frustrated with apathetic and complacent governmental responses to environmental challenges, using whatever legal tools and processes are available to them. However, rather than an Earth-centred revolution, efforts to protect the rights of nature are distinctly "human"; as communities appeal to human rights laws, and their enhanced constitutional status, to upset the status quo. There are important lessons to be learned from these experiences in other countries in terms of the ability to entrench transformative environmental protections via constitutional hierarchies and the potential for the rights and interests of humans to be both an enabler of, as well as a threat to, nature's rights.

New Transitions from Human Rights to the Environment to the Rights of Nature

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susana Borràs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Environmental Laws ◽  
Rights Of Nature ◽  
The Right ◽  
New Generation

AbstractThe weaknesses of our environmental laws stem in large part from the fact that legal systems treat the natural world as property that can be exploited and degraded, rather than as an integral ecological partner with its own rights to exist and thrive. This article analyzes the recent rise of a new generation of environmental laws which reject the ‘false dogma’ of ‘humans over nature’ and instead recognize our interconnectedness with the natural world and acknowledge its rights to exist, persist, and maintain its vital cycles. The article focuses on the transition from an anthropocentric approach, denoted by the ‘right to the environment’, to a biocentric approach constructed around ‘rights of nature’. This transition is evident in various new legal instruments – the Ecuadorian Constitution, certain Bolivian laws, and numerous ordinances of the United States – which incorporate and respect rights of nature, and grant legal rights to the natural world and enforcement rights to affected communities. These instruments serve as models for legal systems which can steer us towards more robust and effective environmental laws.

Are Human Rights Universal?

2020 ◽  
pp. 190-218
Author(s):  
Nigel Biggar
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Moral Claim ◽  
Human Right ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Consensus ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
International Human ◽  
Moral Superiority

Broadly speaking, a human right is the same as a natural right, insofar as it is the property of anyone participating in human nature. However, ‘human rights’ usually refers to those bodies of rights that have attracted international recognition by states since 1945. Rights subscribed to by states possess a special authority that derives from national recognition, is confirmed by some international consensus, and is reinforced by international courts. This legal authority endows a natural, moral claim with the characteristic force of ‘a right’. From the early 1970s, international human rights have provoked the complaint from non-Western societies that they embody ‘neo-imperialist’ assumptions about the intellectual and moral superiority of Western culture. This chapter examines that complaint. It concludes that the human goods that rights seek to protect are universal, and it is therefore unlikely that any society has ever existed without establishing customary or legal rights that enjoy some security. Moreover, there is empirical evidence that some non-Western societies have in fact established rights, many of them familiar to Westerners. There are, however, different ways in which a good can be protected by a legal right, and the way chosen by a particular society will be shaped by its historical, cultural, and other circumstances. Therefore, while the good to be protected is universal, and while the means of protecting it by establishing a right is very probably universal, the specific form of the protective right will not be universal.

scholarly journals What we talk about when we talk about Jerusalem: The duty of non-recognition and the prospects for peace after the US embassy’s relocation to the Holy City

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 621-647
Author(s):  
Marco Pertile ◽  
Sondra Faccio
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Solution ◽  
Negative Reaction ◽  
International Consensus ◽  
Tel Aviv ◽  
Bilateral Agreement ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Holy City

AbstractThe article addresses the legality of the relocation of the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in light of the duty of non-recognition and the international consensus on the two-state solution. Analysing the massive reaction of states to the United States administration’s decision, the article takes stock of the practice on the status of Jerusalem and on the Israeli-Palestinian issue more broadly. The authors conclude that the almost unanimous negative reaction of states and their commitment to the two-state solution will remain a dead letter if the solution to the crisis is left to a future bilateral agreement.

Citizens' Rights and Human Rights

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Legomsky
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Building Community ◽  
Key Variables ◽  
Community Continuity ◽  
Present World

Given the burgeoning literature on the devaluation of national citizenship and the effects of globalization, the sources and beneficiaries of individual legal rights assume increased importance. This Article seeks to distinguish those legal rights that states should confine to their own citizens from those that flow from residence, immigration status, territorial presence, or simply personhood. Section I examines the very reasons for states to distribute citizenship in the first place. These reasons relate to participatory democracy, immigration privileges, other rights and disabilities, personal emotional fulfillment, building community, continuity over time, sovereignty, and the world order. It finds unconvincing those reasons that rest on the municipal interests of states but, given the present world order, finds those reasons that are rooted in international relations more compelling. Building on those conclusions, Section II considers a second normative question: What are the key variables that should determine whether a given legal right should be confined to citizens rather than made more generally available to all persons or at least selected classes of noncitizens? Section III then illustrates how one country—the United States—parcels out legal rights and examines whether its decisions comport with the demands of international human rights law.

Federated States of Micronesia: Country Report on Human Rights

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Tina Takashy
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Leadership Capacity ◽  
Country Report ◽  
Federal States ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Customary Laws

This article provides a country report on the status of human rights in the Federal States of Micronesia (FSM). FSM's legal and regulatory frameworks are a direct import of the US laws which were used during the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) period. There is an inherent danger in prioritising introduced rights over traditional duties, obligations and rights – or vice versa – without subjecting these two sets of human rights paradigms to systemic sociocultural analysis. However, there are human rights issues in the FSM in any capacity. These issues originate from three major sources: poor governance and leadership capacity, weak law administrative and enforcement capacity, and outdated legal and political frameworks. The author then provides strategies to protect human rights in the Pacific including major legal and political reform, and the use of region-specific strategies (including codifying customary laws). The challenge going forward is to have in place a unified human rights model that is based on the diverse cultural, spiritual, and democratic heritage of the Pacific.  

Voter Participation

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Fox-Piven ◽  
Lorraine C. Minnite
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Activist Groups ◽  
Capitalist Democracies ◽  
Dynamic Interplay

Scholars often refer to “American exceptionalism,” meaning that unlike other rich, capitalist democracies, the United States has never had a strong working-class political movement. One form of exceptionalism often overlooked in the academic literature offers two strong explanations for this. Some scholars argue that the voting process has been encumbered by procedures that make actual voting difficult. Other scholars offer an alternative explanation that legal rights or not, the voters must be mobilized by political parties and other activist groups. This entry examines the dynamic interplay of electoral rules and political action to mobilize and demobilize the American electorate since the 1970s.

Of Markets and Principles

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphanie Hennette Vauchez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Body ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
The Other ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
North American Market ◽  
The Status

This chapter assesses how blood, tissue, and cells are retrieved and circulated in Europe. It investigates the ongoing tug of war between two main regulatory paradigms in the field of human body parts and cells: a human/fundamental rights–inspired paradigm on one hand, and a market–inspired one on the other hand. It also recasts the familiar opposition that is often found in comparative work in the field of health and biomedical law between a European “human rights” model of regulation and a North American “market” one as overly simplistic. As it highlights the status of the actual actors that evolve in the field of biomedicine concerned in blood, tissue, and cells circulation as well as the corresponding normative rationales, it complements Natalie Ram’s “incomplete commodification” paradigm in the United States to that of the market creep that is taking place in Europe.

Paving the Way for Rights of Nature in Germany: Lessons Learnt from Legal Reform in New Zealand and Ecuador

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 569-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Schimmöller
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Protection Measures ◽  
Rights Of Nature ◽  
Legal Frameworks

AbstractThis article examines the concept of granting legal rights to nature as a strategy for more effective environmental protection in the era of the Anthropocene. Following decades of debate over the possibility and consequences of natural objects becoming legal rights holders, a number of countries have recently implemented rights of nature laws in their national legal systems. Comparing two of these examples – a constitutional amendment in Ecuador and recently transposed legislation in New Zealand – will help in understanding the potential for and challenges in the implementation of this concept. On the basis of the findings of this comparison the article further analyzes the possibility of legal reform in a European country, using Germany by way of example. This analysis demonstrates that the realization of rights of nature in Europe is faced with many obstacles as it contests institutional and legal frameworks that are deeply rooted in Western individual rights doctrines and neoliberal economic models. Nevertheless, the holistic approach of expanding the number of rights-bearing subjects beyond an anthropocentric framework can allow for more serious consideration of environmental interests, something that aligns with the German narrative of recognizing nature's intrinsic value in law and the need for effective environmental protection measures.

scholarly journals Corporations and constitutional guarantees

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 1125-1152
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Foster
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Review ◽  
Constitutional Protection ◽  
Equality Rights ◽  
Fundamental Freedoms ◽  
The Status

Certain constitutional guarantees are now clearly available to corporations, under the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, in the areas of Fundamental Freedoms and Legal Rights. Ambiguous terminology in the provisions dealing with Mobility and Equality Rights leaves the status of corporate applicants uncertain. The rationale of Big M may guarantee constitutional protection to corporations as indirect beneficiaries of rights to which they have no direct access. Whereas in the case of the Canadian Charter, responsability for the clarification of the scope and thereby of the political and social impact of the guarantees is likely to remain with the courts, an alternative solution may be available in Quebec. Clarification and/or reconsideration of the objectives of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, as they are defined through the identification of its beneficiaries, could take place in the context of general constitutional review.

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