THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS OF THE 2003 IRAQ WAR: A MORAL OBLIGATION OR A MANDATORY MEASURE UNDER INTERNATIONAL TREATIES

Ramy A. Ibrahim[1]

Click here for a recommended citation and to download a paginated PDF version of this article.

The 2003 Iraq War has left a long-lasting detrimental impact on the lives of Iraqis. Aside from the highly destructive sectarian divide, political instability, and stunted economic development, both the United States and the Iraqi Governments have failed to address the environmental contamination that resulted from the military munitions used during the war.[2] This article focuses on the effects of that contamination, the reaction both governmental systems have taken, how these actions constitute violations of various international treaties, and also calls for action.

Studies have linked the highly radioactive environmental contaminates left behind by the war to dramatically increasing rates of cancer, birth defects, and other illnesses—including respiratory and neurological ones—in all affected areas.[3] Iraqi women and children continue to live in these hazardous conditions and are constantly exposed to these left-over toxic munitions and carcinogenic waste.[4] The failure of the U.S. and Iraqi Governments to take sufficient measures to decontaminate the affected areas, and to provide healthcare services for affected persons constitutes a blatant violation of a number of international treaties, including, but not limited to: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),[5] the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD),[6] and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.[7]

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E-DISCOVERY IN CRIMINAL DEFENSE: CHALLENGES OF PRETRIAL DETAINEE ACCESS

Emilee A. Sahli*

Click here for a recommended citation and to download a paginated PDF version of this article.

Introduction

Imagine that you are a criminal defense attorney and your client is being charged with a felony, denied bail, and held in pretrial detention on federal drug charges. It could be years before your client has an opportunity for trial. In the rare event that your client decides to hold out against pressures to accept a plea agreement, your client’s ability to participate in their own defense is extremely limited by the conditions of their confinement. Any reasonable penological explanation for restricting their access to calls or meeting with you to review evidence in the law library and otherwise participate in the investigation process will be constructively unchallengeable in court.

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CUNITY Conversation: Expectations of the Exemplar: An Exploration of the Burdens on Public School Teachers in the Absence of Tenure

CUNITY Conversation: Expectations of the Exemplar: An Exploration of the Burdens on Public School Teachers in the Absence of Tenure

The CUNY Law Review and the Education and the Law Society was proud to host this year’s first CUNITY Conversation, this past Tuesday, September 29 at 7:30pm in the Community Room!

The CUNITY Conversation Series features our student authors, who will have their scholarly articles published in an upcoming edition of the CUNY Law Review. This event gives the student body an opportunity to engage with the student author’s ideas and creates a conversation around interesting issues in public interest lawyering.

Our first CUNITY Conversation featured our own Managing Articles Editor, Jacqueline Meese, whose article Expectations of the Exemplar: An Exploration of the Burdens on Public School Teachers in the Absence of Tenure will be published in the CUNY Law Review this winter. She will be joined by Professor Ruthann Robson where they will engage in a conversation discussing employment law, education reform, or gender discrimination.

CUNY Law Review 17.2 Author, G. Flint Taylor’s Article in In These Times

 

CUNY Law Review 17.2 Author, G. Flint Taylor’s Article in In These Times 

CUNY Law Review 17.2 author, G. Flint Taylor recently published an article with In These Times focusing on Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge which he discusses in length in his CUNY Law Review article: The Chicago Police Torture Scandal: A Legal and Political History

Flint Taylor is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago. He is one of the lawyers for the families of slain Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and together with his law partner Jeffrey Haas was trial counsel in the marathon 1976 civil trial. He has also represented many survivors of Chicago police torture, and has done battle with the Chicago Police Department—and the Fraternal Order of Police—on numerous occasions over his 45 year career as a people’s lawyer.

 

You can read G. Flint Taylor’s piece in In These Times Here:

To Catch a Torturer: One Attorney’s 28-Year Pursuit of Racist Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge

You can read G. Flint Taylor’s CUNY Law Review Article Here:

The Chicago Police Torture Scandal: A Legal and Political History by G. Flint Taylor, founding partner, People’s Law Office (PLO).

Digital Program — The Long Crisis: Economic Inequality in New York City

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The City University of New York Law Review is proud to present “The Long Crisis: Economic Inequality in New York City”, a panel event focusing on the role that economic inequality and injustice play within the context of social justice legal issues and practical solutions lawyers and activists are employing to help overcome the inequality.

The Law Review thanks our fellow student organizations for endorsing this event: Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ); Latin American Law Students Association (LALSA); Labor Coalition for Workers’ Rights and Economic Justice; CUNY Law’s National Lawyers Guild Chapter (NLG); Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP); Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP); CUNY Law Association of Students for Housing (CLASH).

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Call For Submissions

CUNYLR Call for Submissions (May 2013)

Click to view our letter.

The City University of New York Law Review is a specialty journal devoted to publishing social-justice scholarship, engaging the public-interest bar, and fostering student excellence in writing, legal analysis, and research. The journal is published by students at the CUNY School of Law, the only law school in the New York metropolitan area whose chief mission is to train public-interest lawyers and champion diversity in the legal profession.

The journal is seeking submissions from scholars, practitioners, and students for its Winter 2014 issue, which will continue the journal’s tradition of advancing legal scholarship highlighting the touchstones of our publication’s work—including civil rights, progressive legal reform, the impact of the law on minorities and marginalized communities, international human rights, and attorneys’ insights on how recent developments in the law have affected their public-interest practices.

One-page proposals and finished manuscripts for consideration by our editorial board should be submitted to cunylr@law.cuny.edu. All offers to publish and final decisions are expected to be finalized by Aug. 5, 2013.

In addition, the journal is seeking shorter, more time-sensitive contributions—such as comments on recent federal or state case law, critiques of legislative proposals, and legally relevant analyses of current events—for inclusion in our evolving digital platform at the City University of New York Law Review website at www.cunylawreview.org.  Submissions for digital consideration should be sent directly to the Digital Articles Editor, at ldavis@mail.law.cuny.edu.

Recent editions of the journal have included symposia volumes on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and pioneering human-rights attorney Rhonda Copelon, a special edition on elder law featuring winning articles from the American Bar Association Law and Aging Student Competition, and a commemorative issue highlighting scholarship by CUNY Law faculty and students on the occasion of the school’s 30th anniversary.

Web-Exclusive: “Reargument in Kiobel: The End of the Alien Tort Statute As We Know It?”

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Article, Vol. 15.2

The CUNY Law Review is pleased to release our first-ever web-exclusive article as a companion to Issue 15.2’s release. The article, titled “Reargument in Kiobel: The End of the Alien Tort Statute As We Know It?,” was co-written by CUNY Law student Alex van Schaick in collaboration with NYU Law student Gabriel Hopkins. Stay tuned for more web-exclusive content from the CUNY Law Review.

 

 

 

Event: From Main Street to Court Square: Thirty Years of CUNY Law and Alternative Models of Legal Education

The City University of New York Law Review would like to invite you to a discussion on the merits of alternative forms of legal education, From Main Street to Court Square: Thirty Years of CUNY Law and Alternative Models of Legal Education. The event, with dinner and reception to follow, is taking place Wednesday, February 6, 6:00 PM, in the Auditorium. The discussion will feature:

  • Hon. Kristin Booth Glen, N.Y. Surrogate’s Court; Former Dean of CUNY Law
  • Prof. Pamela Edwards, Director of the Center for Diversity in the Legal Profession, CUNY School of Law;
  • Adam Shoop, Law Graduate, The Bronx Defenders, CUNY Law ’12
  • Prof. Frank Deale, CUNY School of Law (Moderator)

Come hear panelists discuss and debate the merits of alternative forms of legal education; the implications of race, class, and access in legal education and practice; the role of CUNY Law in the legal landscape, past and present; and the role of practitioners and law students in shaping the future of legal advocacy.

 

Event: Fire Your Boss: Worker Cooperatives, Community Development, and Social Change

The City University of New York Law Review and CUNY Law Labor Coalition would like to invite you to a discussion on worker co-ops, Fire Your Boss: Workers Cooperatives, Community Development, and Social Change! The event, with dinner and book reception to follow, is taking place Monday, November 12, 5:30 PM, in the Auditorium. The discussion will feature:

  • Omar Freilla, founder of Green Worker Cooperatives, an organization dedicated to incubating green and worker-owned businesses in the South Bronx
  • Michael Peck, North American delegate of the Mondragon Cooperatives Corporation, the largest worker cooperative in the world
  • Brian Glick, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Fordham Community Economic Development Clinic
  • Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Associate Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development, Department of African American Studies at CUNY – John Jay College
  • Moderated by CUNY Law’s Own Carmen Huertas-Noble, founding director of the Community & Economic Development Clinic

Come hear from our guests about why they believe worker ownership is a way out of the current economic and environmental morass, and their experiences helping to develop cooperative enterprises!

The event will be followed by a release reception celebrating CUNY Law Review’s latest publication, Issue 15.1. Dinner will be served. Attendance is free!

Transcript: Law Reform and Transformative Change: A Panel at CUNY Law

Panel Transcript, Vol. 14.1

Editor’s Note: The following excerpt contains Dean Spade’s introduction to a panel discussion with Rickke Mananzala, Soniya Munshi, Nadia Qurashi, Elana Redfield, and Dean Spade. April 1, 2010. Dean Spade served as the Haywood Burns Chair at the City University of New York School of Law for 2010, and recently published the book Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of the Law (2012). Click here for the full transcript.

During the Spring Semester of 2010, I served as the Haywood Burns Chair [FN 1] at the City University of New York School of Law and had the opportunity to teach Poverty Law to a class of passionate, brilliant students who came to law school from social movement work in many sectors hoping to gain new tools for making transformative change. [FN 2]  In the course, I aimed to create a critical dialogue about the role of law in structuring wealth inequality and remedying such inequality.  The interdisciplinary course materials were selected to assist students in engaging in critical analysis about the roles of capitalism, white supremacy, settler colonialism, patriarchy, and ablism in structuring law, as well as law’s role in structuring those systemic conditions. Continue reading