NYU Law Professors Jose Alvarez, Kevin Davis, Benedict Kingsbury, and Richard Stewart will speak at the World Bank's Law, Justice, and Development Week on Nov. 8 and 9 in Washington, D.C. The full agenda is here. Professor Stewart will speak…
This installment in our ongoing series of book reviews looks at Children’s Rights and the Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility by Don Cipriani. Michael Gigante’s review takes a critical eye towards the arguments Cipriani advances in favor of requiring all nations to establish a minimum age of criminal responsibility.
By Michael V. Gigante
Ideas about the proper role of criminal responsibility in juvenile justice tend to fall along a welfare-justice continuum. The welfare approach, prominent at the birth of the modern notion of a juvenile justice system, essentially dismissed the notions of competence and criminal responsibility for children. State authorities intervened to make benevolent decisions on behalf of children, who were portrayed as objects without liberty rights. On the other end of the continuum, the justice approach—towards which clear shifts have occurred in recent decades—places criminal responsibility and children’s alleged competence at the center of juvenile justice. Accountability, due process, and punishment are the foundations of this approach. In Children’s Rights and the Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility: A Global Perspective, Don Cipriani points out the flaws of both these approaches and describes the merits of a children’s rights approach as a way to mediate between the tensions of the welfare and justice approaches.
JILP has awarded the Jerome A. Cohen Prize for International Law and East Asia to Professor Margaret Lewis (Seton Hall) for her article Controlling Abuse to Maintain Control: The Exclusionary Rule in China. The abstract: In July 2010, the People’s…
JILP's own Julian Arato has published a comment on EJIL Talk titled "A Preemptive Strike Against European Federalism: The Decision of the Bundesverfassungsgericht Concerning the Treaty of Lisbon." Julian summarizes his argument as follows: On first reading the 2009 Lisbon…
In the latest installment of book reviews, Nalini Gupta lauds Human Rights for the 21st Century, by Helen M. Stacy for providing a comprehensive analysis of human rights work. However, Gupta notes that Stacy risks oversimplifying the issues in her attempt to divide major critiques of the international human rights system into three categories: sovereignty, civil society, and multiculturalism.
By Nalini Gupta
In Human Rights for the 21st Century, Helen Stacy addresses the major critiques of the international human rights framework, offering suggestions on how to fill gaps in the current system in order to strengthen the framework. Stacy organizes the major critiques of the international human rights system into three categories: sovereignty, civil society, and multiculturalism. Responding to each of these critiques, she argues that the law and the courts must continue to play a critical role in the human rights system, but their role must be adjusted to adapt to the challenges posed by the current world order. Stacy’s book is a worthy read, providing a comprehensive analysis of the current challenges of the current human rights framework and offering interesting and practical proposals aimed at improving the present system.
In this edition of our ongoing series of book reviews, Paul Mignano presents a critical but ultimately favorable take on Re-Envisioning Sovereignty: The End of Westphalia?, a collection of interdisciplinary essays discussing the concept of sovereignty.
By Paul Mignano
For a concept that is so central to international relations and public international law, the meaning of “sovereignty” is surprisingly difficult to articulate. At its essence, Westphalian sovereignty is about the ability of a state to engage in political self-determination, to be considered a legal equal of other states, and to ensure non-interference of outside states in its own internal affairs.