Leitner Family Professor of International Human Rights and Founding Co-Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School Martin Flaherty writes about the Chinese government’s role as the world leader in the persecution of lawyers and human rights advocates.
Read MoreProgram Officer at the Open Society Foundation Joy L. Chia, writes about the broad crackdown against Chinese civil society since 2015, and the serious ramifications this might have on rights lawyering in the country.
Read MoreHualing Fu & Han Zhu from the Faculty of law at The University of Hong Kong take on the challenging question: is there a future for human rights lawyering in China as we know it?
Read MoreFelice Gaer, Director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, examines the Committee against Torture’s approach in its review of China’s compliance with the Convention against Torture since becoming a State party. She is also a member and Vice-Chair of the Committee and, in that capacity, participated in the 2000, 2008, and 2015 reviews of China’s periodic reports.
Read MoreWith the passage of the “Lawyers Law of the People’s Republic of China” at the Nineteenth Session of the Standing Committee of the Eighth National People’s Congress on May 15, 1996, the Chinese legal profession entered a period of fast and orderly development. On September 12, 1997, a report released at the Fifteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China formally introduced the term “rule of law” (依法治国)...
Read MoreOn January 20, 2018, former Hong Kong-based publisher Gui Minhai was forcibly removed from a train to Beijing. Gui, a Swedish citizen, had been traveling with two Swedish diplomatic officials, including the Swedish Shanghai counsul general, and was scheduled to visit with a doctor at the Swedish embassy after his arrival in Beijing...
Read MoreTwenty years after the purported decriminalization of homosexuality in China, the law remains largely silent on the interaction between the LGBT community and the State. This may be about to change. In recent years a number of LGBT civil society organizations in China have embarked on a series of bold legal advocacy campaigns to promote equal rights for LGBT people. As courts have started to publish decisions in cases involving LGBT issues, these campaigns have begun to bear fruit. While the results of these interactions between LGBT communities and the State in courthouses and other legal forums have not always resulted in direct victory for equal rights, many LGBT people and allies are encouraged by both what they have (and have not) seen in these decisions...
Read MoreWhen in May 2016, Peng Jiyue, a Chinese lawyer employed by the Chinese part of the international law firm Dentons Dacheng, undertook to represent the family of Lei Yang, a young environmental activist who had died under suspicious circumstances in police custody, it was an act of kindness, partly motivated by friendship with the family. They had not formally appointed him in writing, but he accompanied them to view the bruised body and called for an independent autopsy on their behalf...
Read MoreThe intersection of 116th Street and Broadway is an iconic spot in New York City. An exquisite black gate, with two towering pylons, one for the Arts and one for the Sciences, marks the entrance to one of the most beautiful places in Manhattan: Columbia University. There is one more iconic piece of that entrance, which everyone at Barnard and Columbia knows very well: the man who stands by the gate with a sign that says “Google it! Jews control . . . .” Some of his signs have said “Google it! Jews control the internet,”...
Read MoreThe most abusive forms of child labor are often thought to be trafficking for sexual exploitation or excessive working hours in factories. While these labor abuses do exist, the reality is that some of the most abusive forms of child labor occur in the private homes of wealthy and middle-class families in the form of domestic work. If it is true that criminals are best deterred by the likelihood of apprehension…
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