# International Human Rights Law
65 Va. J. Int’l L. 159 (2024) ♦ Note
Nailing Down the Issue: How Japan’s 2023 Symbolic Reforms Fall Short and How the Japanese Government Can and Should Protect the LGBT Community Through Proactive Lawmaking
2023 appeared to be a historic year for LGBT rights in Japan. The Japanese legislature passed its first law acknowledging the need for understanding of the LGBT community, and the Supreme Court issued two rulings in favor of transgender plaintiffs’ rights. However…
CARA SZELES
64 Va. J. Int’l L. 609 (2024) ♦ Note
Tempered Vigilance: Realizing Effective Remedy for Rightsholders Under the French Duty of Vigilance Law
Following the promulgation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in 2011, several countries began statutorily requiring their largest companies to report on human rights risk across their supply chains.
NICOLAS FRIEDLICH
63 Va. J. Int’l L. 51 (2022) ♦ Article
Prohibiting Slavery & The Slave Trade
Three lines Slavery and the slave trade stubbornly persist in our time, but they receive insufficient attention in international human rights law. Even when courts adjudicate slavery violations, they often fail to characterize slave trade conduct that nearly always…
JOCELYN GETGEN KESTENBAUM
62 Va. J. Int’l L. 181 (2021) ♦ Essay
Admiralty, Human Rights, and International Law
Admiralty offers a promising analogue to modern human rights law. Rooted in longstanding traditions of judge-made law and reference to customary international law, admiralty furnishes a template for recognizing and protecting human rights. Admiralty has…
GEORGE RUTHERGLEN
61 Va. J. Int’l L. 631 (2021) ♦ Note
Going Global: An International Human Rights Approach to Russian LGBTQ+ Law and Practices
The current treatment of LGBTQ+ people in Russia is characterized by a discriminatory withholding of rights, political and societal isolation, and endangerment. While this situation is well-documented, the legal analyses of it have been more limited. Those that…
MICHAEL P. GOODYEAR
60 Va. J. Int’l L. 737 (2020) ♦ Note
Bridging the Void in Transnational Corporate Accountability: Jesner v. Arab Bank as a Call to Action
The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC likely signals the end of transnational corporate (TNC) human rights litigation under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). More significantly, however, the ATS was never enough. The pace of globalization has…
RACHEL DAVIDSON RAYCRAFT
58 Va. J. Int’l L. 161 (2018) ♦ Article
Discursive Justice: Interpreting World War II Litigation in Japan
Since the 1980s, human rights litigation has spread around the world. I propose an analytical framework by which to interpret the multiple motivations and results of human rights litigation. By examining a recent spate of lawsuits brought by victims of World War II…
TIMOTHY WEBSTER
62 Va. J. Int’l L. 115 (2021) ♦ Article
“A New Law on Earth” Hannah Arendt and the Vision for a Positive Legal Framework to Guarantee the Right to Have Right
In the summer of 1950, Hannah Arendt issued a challenge. Writing from a place “still in grief and sorrow,”1 she argued that the horrors of the First and Second World Wars revealed “that human dignity needs a new guarantee which can be found only in a new political…
MELISSA STEWART
61 Va. J. Int’l L. 593 (2021) ♦ Note
Confronting the Sacred: Eradicating the Whipping of Women in Southwest Ethiopia
The quest for gender equality and women’s empowerment has brought a new era of equality and freedom for all women around the globe. Today, most African countries have ratified at least one human rights instrument, or at least incorporated gender equality under…
HALETA GIDAY FISEHA
60 Va. J. Int’l L. 571 (2020) ♦ Article
The Price of Prevention: Anti-Terrorism Pre-Crime Measures and International Human Rights Law
How far can law go to prevent violent acts of terrorism from happening? This Article examines the response by a number of Western democratic States to that question. These States have enacted special legal mechanisms that can be called ‘anti-terrorist…
ARTURO J. CARRILLO
59 Va. J. Int’l L. 147 (2019) ♦ Note
The Constitutional Protection of Freedom of Religion in Russia and Hungary: A Comparative Analysis
Freedom of religion is a cornerstone of healthy democracy. Although the commitment to advancing protection of religious minorities was at its peak in the 1990s, it slowly began to erode in both Russia and Hungary. However, despite the recent setback, it seems that…
MARILYN GUIRGUIS
57 Va. J. Int’l L. 129 (2017) ♦ Note
Decentering or Decentralizing? Economic, Social, & Cultural Rights in Federal Systems
Economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights have proliferated in modern constitutional systems, but there has been no serious debate about how they might interact with another key element of constitutional design: federalism. What is more, no country to date has…
REEDY C. SWANSON