There's No Place Like Home: The Right to Live in the Community for People with Disabilities, Under International Law and the Domestic Laws of the United States and Israel

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlene S Kanter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Living ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Right ◽  
Legal Right

This article explores the developing ‘right to live in the community’ for people with disabilities under international law and the domestic laws of two countries: the United States and Israel. In 2006, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). This Convention embraces a human rights approach to disability, based on the principles of equality, dignity, freedom and inclusion. Based on these principles, Article 19 of the CRPD includes a specific right of all people with disabilities ‘to live in the community, with choices equal to others’. The author argues that the mandate of community living in Article 19 supports an explicit legal right of all people with disabilities not only to live in the community, but to choose where to live and with whom, and with supports, as needed. This new international legal right to live in one's home in the community also advances the goals and principles of the domestic laws of the US and Israel.In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects the right of people with disabilities to receive services in ‘the most integrated’ setting. Relying on this ‘integration mandate’, the US Supreme Court, in 1999, upheld a limited right of people with disabilities to live in the community inOlmstead v LC and EW. In Israel, the Parliament (Knesset) enacted a law similar to the ADA in 1998. This law, the Equal Rights of Persons with Disabilities Law (‘Equal Rights Law’) includes a general right of people with disabilities to equality and non-discrimination. Although the current version of the Equal Rights Law does not include a specific article on the right to live in the community, the basis for such a right may be found in other articles of the law as well as other Israeli laws. In addition, in the recent case ofLior Levy et al., the Israeli High Court of Justice was asked to consider the right to live in the community under Israeli law. While the Court in this case recognised a limited right to live in the community, it failed to invalidate as discriminatory the Israeli government's policy of placing people with disabilities in large institution-like hostels rather than in homes in the community. The author concludes the article with a discussion of the scope and meaning of community living and the extent to which institutions, as well as community housing that functions just like institutions, should be prohibited under the CRPD as well as under US and Israeli law.

scholarly journals A Comparative View of Equality Under the UN Convention on the Rights of PERSONS with Disabilities and the Disability Laws of the United States and Canada

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Arlene S Kanter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Milieu De Travail ◽  
Substantive Equality ◽  
Reasonable Accommodations ◽  
Personnes Handicapées ◽  
Maintien Dans L’Emploi ◽  
The Right

In 2006, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities [CRPD], the first international treaty addressing specifically the rights of people with disabilities, including in the workplace.  The purpose of the CRPD is “to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity....” The CRPD has been ratified by 160 countries, including Canada, but not yet by the United States. Article 27 of the CRPD, entitled Work and Employment, prohibits not only discrimination against people with disabilities in employment, but also the right of people with disabilities to reasonable accommodations, equal remuneration for work of equal value, safe and healthy working conditions,  assistance in finding, obtaining, maintaining and returning to employment,  rehabilitation, job retention and return-to-work programmes,  as well as affirmative action programmes, incentives and other measures to promote equal employment opportunities. As compared to the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Canadian Charter, the CRPD, therefore, goes beyond prohibiting discrimination and instead seeks to ensure greater substantive equality for people with disabilities in the workplace.  As such, the author proposes that both US and Canadian legislatures and courts should look to the CRPD to help their respective countries move beyond traditional notions of formal equality towards a new right to substantive equality in the workplace for people with disabilities.En 2006, les Nations Unies ont adopté la Convention relative aux droits des personnes handicapées [CDPH], le premier traité international portant explicitement sur les droits des personnes handicapées, y compris les droits dans le milieu de travail. La CDPH a pour objet de « promouvoir, protéger et assurer la pleine et égale jouissance de tous les droits de l’homme et de toutes les libertés fondamentales par les personnes handicapées et de promouvoir le respect de leur dignité intrinsèque […] ». La CDPH a été ratifiée par 160 pays, dont le Canada, mais les États-Unis ne l’ont pas encore ratifiée. En plus d’interdire la discrimination fondée sur le handicap dans tout ce qui a trait à l’emploi, l’article 27 de la CDPH, intitulé « Travail et emploi », protège le droit des personnes handicapées de bénéficier d’aménagements raisonnables, de l’égalité de rémunération à travail égal ainsi que de la sécurité et de l’hygiène sur les lieux de travail, le droit d’obtenir de l’aide liée à la recherche et à l’obtention d’un emploi, au maintien dans l’emploi et au retour à l’emploi, l’accès à des programmes de réadaptation, de maintien dans l’emploi, de retour à l’emploi et d’action positive, de même que l’accès à des incitations et à d’autres mesures visant à promouvoir l’égalité des chances dans l’emploi. En conséquence, comparativement à l’Americans with Disabilities Act et à la Charte canadienne, la CDPH va plus loin qu’interdire la discrimination et vise à assurer une plus grande égalité réelle pour les personnes handicapées dans le milieu de travail. C’est pourquoi l’auteur propose que les assemblées législatives et les tribunaux des États-Unis et du Canada examinent la CDPH afin d’aider les instances décisionnelles de leurs pays respectifs à dépasser les notions traditionnelles de l’égalité formelle et à promouvoir un nouveau droit à l’égalité réelle dans le milieu de travail pour les personnes handicapées.

The connection between the «color revolutions» and the strategic doctrines of the United States (late 20th century — 2014)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Igorevna Filimonova
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Time Interval ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Us ◽  
Color Revolutions ◽  
The Right

After the collapse of the USSR, fundamentally new phenomena appeared on the world arena, which became a watershed separating the bipolar order from the monopolar order associated with the establishment of the US global hegemony. Such phenomena were the events that are most often called «revolutions» in connection with the scale of the changes being made — «velvet revolutions» in the former Eastern Bloc, as well as revolutions of a different type, which ended in a change in the current regimes with such serious consequences that we are also talking about revolutionary transformations. These are technologies of «color revolutions» that allow organizing artificial and seemingly spontaneous mass protests leading to the removal of the legitimate government operating in the country and, in fact, to the seizure of power by a pro-American forces that ensure the Westernization of the country and the implementation of "neoliberal modernization", which essentially means the opening of national markets and the provision of natural resources for the undivided use of the Western factor (TNC and TNB). «Color revolutions» are inseparable from the strategic documents of the United States, in which, from the end of the 20th century, even before the collapse of the USSR, two main tendencies were clearly traced: the expansion of the right to unilateral use of force up to a preemptive strike, which is inextricably linked with the ideological justification of «missionary» American foreign policy, and the right to «assess» the internal state of affairs in countries and change it to a «democratic format», that is, «democratization». «Color revolutions», although they are not directly mentioned in strategic documents, but, being a «technical package of actions», straightforwardly follow from the right, assigned to itself by Washington, to unilateral use of force, which is gradually expanding from exclusively military actions to a comprehensive impact on an opponent country, i.e. essentially a hybrid war. Thus, the «color revolutions» clearly fit into the strategic concept of Washington on the use of force across the entire spectrum (conventional and unconventional war) under the pretext of «democratization». The article examines the period of registration and expansion of the US right to use force (which, according to the current international law, is a crime without a statute of limitations) in the time interval from the end of the twentieth century until 2014, filling semantic content about the need for «democratic transformations» of other states, with which the United States approached the key point of the events of the «Arab spring» and «color revolutions» in the post-Soviet space, the last and most ambitious of which was the «Euromaidan» in Ukraine in 2014. The article presents the material for the preparation of lectures and seminars in the framework of the training fields «International Relations» and «Political Science».

scholarly journals 9/11 as False Flag: Why International Law Must Dare to Care

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Baker Benjamin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
African History ◽  
The Us ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
International War

At the heart of contemporary international law lies a paradox: the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 have justified 16 years of international war, yet the official international community, embodied principally in the United Nations, has failed to question or even scrutinise the US government's account of those attacks. Despite the emergence of an impressive and serious body of literature that impugns the official account and even suggests that 9/11 may have been a classic (if unprecedentedly monstrous) false-flag attack, international statesmen, following the lead of scholars, have been reluctant to wade into what appears to be a very real controversy. African nations are no strangers to the concept of the false flag tactic, and to its use historically in the pursuit of illegitimate geopolitical aims and interests. This article draws on recent African history in this regard, as well as on deeper twentieth-century European and American history, to lay a foundation for entertaining the possibility of 9/11-as-false-flag. This article then argues that the United Nations should seek to fulfil its core and incontrovertible ‘jury’ function of determining the existence of inter-state aggression in order to exercise a long-overdue oversight of the official 9/11 narrative.

Where to limit the freedom of speech? Analysis in the context of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and the fighting words doctrine

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-256
Author(s):  
Karolina Palka
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Socialist Party Of America ◽  
The Right

This article is about the limits of the right to free speech. The first section provides a brief introduction to this topic, primarily in the context of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The second section describes the case of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, which was fundamental to the topic of this paper because the United States Supreme Court created the so-called "fighting words" doctrine based on it. In the next two sections, two court cases are presented that perfectly demonstrate the limits of the right to free speech in the United States: Snyder v. Phelps and Village of Skokie v. National Socialist Party of America. The fifth part shows the right to freedom of speech in the context of Polish civil, criminal, and constitutional law, as well as acts of international law binding on Poland. The last part is a short summary.

scholarly journals When US Scholars Speak of ‘Sovereignty’, what do they Mean?

2007 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 318-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Sinclair ◽  
Michael Byers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Academic

The term ‘sovereignty’ figures prominently in international affairs and academic analysis. But does ‘sovereignty’ mean the same thing in different countries and political cultures? In this article, we examine conceptions of sovereignty as they appear in the writings of US scholars of international law and those international relations scholars who deal with international law, in order to obtain a clearer picture of what ‘sovereignty’ means in American academic discourse. At first glance, the US literature is dominated by two distinct conceptions of sovereignty: (1) a statist conception that privileges the territorial integrity and political independence of governments regardless of their democratic or undemocratic character; (2) a popular conception that privileges the rights of peoples rather than governments, especially when widespread human rights violations are committed by a totalitarian regime. On closer examination, what seem to be two conceptions are in fact different manifestations of a single, uniquely American conception of sovereignty which elevates the United States above other countries and protects it against outside influences while concurrently maximising its ability to intervene overseas.

scholarly journals The “Right to Remain Here” as an Evolving Component of Global Refugee Protection: Current Initiatives and Critical Questions

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 614-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Kanstroom
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Refugee Protection ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Right ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers

This article considers the relationship between two human rights discourses (and two specific legal regimes): refugee and asylum protection and the evolving body of international law that regulates expulsions and deportations. Legal protections for refugees and asylum seekers are, of course, venerable, well-known, and in many respects still cherished, if challenged and perhaps a bit frail. Anti-deportation discourse is much newer, multifaceted, and evolving. It is in many respects a young work in progress. It has arisen in response to a rising tide of deportations, and the worrisome development of massive, harsh deportation machinery in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Mexico, Australia, and South Africa, among others. This article's main goal is to consider how these two discourses do and might relate to each other. More specifically, it suggests that the development of procedural and substantive rights against removal — as well as rights during and after removal — aids our understanding of the current state and possible future of the refugee protection regime. The article's basic thesis is this: The global refugee regime, though challenged both theoretically and in practice, must be maintained and strengthened. Its historical focus on developing criteria for admission into safe states, on protections against expulsion (i.e., non-refoulement), and on regimes of temporary protection all remain critically important. However, a focus on other protections for all noncitizens facing deportation is equally important. Deportation has become a major international system that transcends the power of any single nation-state. Its methods have migrated from one regime to another; its size and scope are substantial and expanding; its costs are enormous; and its effects frequently constitute major human rights violations against millions who do not qualify as refugees. In recent years there has been increasing reliance by states on generally applicable deportation systems, led in large measure by the United States' radical 25 year-plus experiment with large-scale deportation. Europe has also witnessed a rising tide of deportation, some of which has developed in reaction to European asylum practices. Deportation has been facilitated globally (e.g., in Australia) by well-funded, efficient (but relatively little known) intergovernmental idea sharing, training, and cooperation. This global expansion, standardization, and increasing intergovernmental cooperation on deportation has been met by powerful — if in some respects still nascent — human rights responses by activists, courts, some political actors, and scholars. It might seem counterintuitive to think that emerging ideas about deportation protections could help refugees and asylum seekers, as those people by definition often have greater rights protections both in admission and expulsion. However, the emerging anti-deportation discourses should be systematically studied by those interested in the global refugee regime for three basic reasons. First, what Matthew Gibney has described as “the deportation turn” has historically been deeply connected to anxiety about asylum seekers. Although we lack exact figures of the number of asylum seekers who have been subsequently expelled worldwide, there seems little doubt that it has been a significant phenomenon and will be an increasingly important challenge in the future. The two phenomena of refugee/asylum protections and deportation, in short, are now and have long been linked. What has sometimes been gained through the front door, so to speak, may be lost through the back door. Second, current deportation human rights discourses embody creative framing models that might aid constructive critique and reform of the existing refugee protection regime. They tend to be more functionally oriented, less definitional in terms of who warrants protection, and more fluid and transnational. Third, these discourses offer important specific rights protections that could strengthen the refugee and asylum regime, even as we continue to see weakening state support for the basic 1951/1967 protection regime. This is especially true in regard to the extraterritorial scope of the (deporting) state's obligations post-deportation. This article particularly examines two initiatives in this emerging field: The International Law Commission's Draft Articles on the Expulsion of Aliens and the draft Declaration on the Rights of Expelled and Deported Persons developed through the Boston College Post-Deportation Human Rights Project (of which the author is a co-director). It compares their provisions to the existing corpus of substantive and procedural protections for refugees relating to expulsion and removal. It concludes with consideration of how these discourses may strengthen protections for refugees while also helping to develop more capacious and protective systems in the future. “Those guarantees of liberty and livelihood are the essence of the freedom which this country from the beginning has offered the people of all lands. If those rights, great as they are, have constitutional protection, I think the more important one — the right to remain here — has a like dignity.” Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, 19522 “We need a national effort to return those who have been rejected … and we are working on that at the moment with great vigor.” Angela Merkel, October 15, 20163

The United States and Elections in Africa (2015–2018)

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrey Urnov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
The United States ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The Us ◽  
Global Leader ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Right ◽  
Selection Of

As a self-proclaimed “Global Leader” the United States have made “the assertion, advancement, support and defense of democracy” throughout the world one of the pillars of their foreign policy. This aim invariably figures in all Washington’s program documents pertaining to Africa. A major component of these efforts is an assistance to regular, free and fair elections. The selection of arguments cited to justify such activities has been done skilfully. In each specific case it is emphasized that the United States do not side with any competing party, stand “above the battle”, work for the perfection of electoral process, defend the rights of opposition and rank and file votes, render material and technical help to national electoral committees. Sounds irreproachable. However, the real situation is different. The study of the US practical activities in this field allows to conclude that Washington has one-sidedly awarded itself a role of a judge and supervisor of developments related to elections in the sovereign countries of Africa, tries to control the ways they are prepared and conducted. These activities signify an interference into the internal affairs of African states. The scale and forms of such interference differ and is subjected to tasks the USA try to resolve in this or that country on the national, regional or global levels. However, everywhere it serves as an instrument of penetration and strengthening of the US influence, enhancing the US political presence in African countries. The right of the US to perform this role is presented as indisputable. Sceptics are branded as opponents of democracy. The author explores the US positions and activities connected with elections in Africa during the last years of B.Obama and first two years of D.Trump presidencies. He shows how their policy have been implemented on the continental level and in regard to several countries – South Sudan, Libya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Nigeria, Somali, Kenya, Uganda.

Alternative Ways to Resolve Disputes Related to Consumer Protection of Financial Services in Hong Kong, Singapore and the United States: Innovations 2017 – 2019

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 394
Author(s):  
Natalia V. IVANOVSKAYA ◽  
Sergey S. ISAI
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Consumer Protection ◽  
Financial Services ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Right ◽  
Goals And Objectives

The authors explore regulatory innovations in financial services consumer protection in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States. It was revealed that: (1) the priority of such an alternative way of regulating financial demand with the participation of consumers as mediation is ensured by the activities of the FDRC Center in Hong Kong, and in Singapore – by the new law on mediation in 2017; (2) the creation of a unified mediation model, which is mandatory for all member states – the Singapore Convention on Mediation 2019 – will allow mediation to become the most widely used alternative way to resolve cross-border, including financial, disputes; (3) a positive result of the application of arbitration in the field of settlement of financial disputes with the participation of large banks can be achieved by creating certain conditions, including by attracting highly professional arbitrators with extensive practical experience, as, for example, was done by the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center (HKIAC); (4) on the example of the US experience, one can also identify another way to improve the mechanisms for resolving financial disputes, the goals and objectives of which are shifted from the vector of propaganda and updating alternative methods of resolving financial disputes to improving the mechanism for providing financial services; (5) the inclusion of a clause on the mandatory resolution of possible disputes in arbitration, as a mandatory part of the contract itself with consumers, indicates the deprivation of the right to choose the method of resolving the dispute by the consumer, and also deprives them of the right to file collective claims.

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