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What duties, if any, does international human rights law establish for individuals, corporations, and other private actors? For many years, the conventional answer has been that it places duties on states to respect the rights of individuals and creates few or no private duties. In other words, human rights law is aligned vertically, not horizontally. But that view has regularly been challenged. Most recently, in 2003, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (Commission), historically the most important incubator of human rights agreements, received two proposed instruments that might appear to realign human rights law horizontally: private actors would have duties as well as rights, and they would owe those duties to society as a whole or to individuals within it. The draft Declaration on Human Social Responsibilities (Declaration) would identify duties that all individuals owe to their societies; and the Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights (draft Norms) would set out duties of businesses under human rights law. The Human Rights Commission did not embrace the proposals before its replacement by the Human Rights Council in 2006, and the Council has not considered them. Both received some support, however, and it seems likely that their proponents will continue to pursue adoption of their principles in one form or another. This article argues that if adopted, those principles would cause serious damage to human rights law.

Adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples - increasing involvement of international human rights machinery in the promotion of Indigenous rights - lack of an effective universal indigenous rights regime as a result of the absence of a universal instrument specifically designed to protect the rights of indigenous peoples - the UN Declaration as 'soft law'- argument that the Declaration has important legal effects and generates reasonable expectations of complying behaviour.

Courts in recent years have perceived threshold obstacles to the enforcement of treaties deriving from their nature as contracts between nations that generally depend for their efficacy on the interest and honor of the parties, rather than on domestic adjudication. This approach to treaty enforcement is in tension with the Constitution's declaration that treaties are part of the law of the land and its instruction to judges to give them effect. The Founders understood that treaties depended on interest and honor on the international plane, but they made treaties enforceable in our courts anyway in order to avoid the international friction that could be expected to result from treaty violations and to capture the benefits of a reputation for treaty compliance. The Supremacy Clause gives treaties a domestic judicial sanction that they would otherwise lack. It makes treaties enforceable in the courts in the same circumstances as the other two categories of norms specified in the clause -- federal statutes and the Constitution itself. The sole exception to this rule is for treaties that are non-self-executing in the sense contemplated by the Court in Foster v. Neilson. The concept of a non-self-executing treaty fits uneasily with the Supremacy Clause, as reflected in the common but untenable view that non-self-executing treaties lack the force of domestic law. According to Foster, a non-self-executing treaty is not enforceable in the courts because it is addressed to the political branches. But determining which treaties are so addressed has been challenging. Treaties generally leave the question of domestic implementation to the domestic laws of the states-parties, and our domestic law (the Supremacy Clause) directs judges to give them effect. I argue that the Supremacy Clause establishes a default rule that treaties are directly enforceable in the courts like other laws, rebuttable only by a clear statement that the obligations imposed by the treaty are subject to legislative implementation. If the stipulation had to appear in the text of the treaty, the clear statement rule would present problems for U.S. treatymakers seeking to control the domestic consequences of multilateral treaties. To address this problem, the treatymakers have developed a new form of clear statement, the \"declaration\" of non-self-execution. However, scholars have questioned the compatibility of such declarations with the Supremacy Clause. I conclude that the treatymakers have the power to limit the domestic effects of treaties through declarations of non-self-execution. On the other hand, if the Constitution were understood to establish a default rule of non-self-execution, declarations of self -execution would stand on more tenuous ground. Thus, a default rule of self-execution is not only more consistent with the constitutional text and structure and with Supreme Court precedent, it is also normatively attractive because it leaves the treatymakers with the power to control the domestic consequences of the treaties they conclude.

The Dominican Republic (DR) filed its declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Inter-American Court or Court) on March 22, 1999, and since then has been the subject of four judgments and a series of provisional measures. On November 4, 2014, however, the Constitutional Tribunal of the Dominican Republic (Tribunal) declared unconstitutional the government’s declaration accepting jurisdiction, implying that the Dominican Republic is not now, and perhaps never has been, under the Inter-American Court’s jurisdiction.

The United States often ratifies multilateral treaties by relying on what are commonly referred to as reservations, understandings, and declarations (RUDs). RUDs limit the domestic effect of treaties and confine provisions to particular meanings consistent with the United States' practices. In recent years, during and after the U.S. Supreme Court's consideration of Bond v. United States, some government officials have become increasingly concerned that RUDs could be unenforceable in courts, thereby exposing the United States to unintended treaty commitments and liabilities. Remarkably, the legal literature does not contain a comprehensive account of the extent to which RUDs are enforceable in courts of law. Such an understanding may influence domestic and international perspectives on ratifying future treaties, including the pending Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Consequently, this Note provides an original, searching review of the jurisprudence of RUDs in U.S. and international courts. It finds that U.S. courts and international courts consistently enforce RUDs, except for international courts reviewing treaties that expressly prohibit their use. Such findings should offer solace to those worried about the possibility that RUDs are inadequate to protect against unintended domestic effects of treaties. At the same time, they also reveal that the real concern over RUDs is not their insufficient drafting, but rather their overuse. There is a risk that treaties may increasingly prohibit RUDs, and that international courts will readily enforce these prohibitions. Given that there is no threat of the domestic invalidity of RUDs, this Note argues that the United States and other states should refrain from overusing RUDs and consequently risking broader treaty formulation and compliance.

An enormous effort has been dedicated to uncovering the original meaning of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses, but, surprisingly, little research has been directed toward the founding-era state constitutions on church and state. This article aims to open a field of inquiry by making the church-state provisions of the founding-era state constitutions more accessible. It begins with a consideration of the distinction between the state declarations of rights and the state constitutions and the interpretive challenge this distinction poses. I then identify, categorize, and interpret the relevant church-state provisions of the founding-era state declarations of rights and constitutions. The article concludes with a discussion of how a deeper knowledge of the founding-era state church-state provisions might shed light on the original meaning of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses, and it reveals the probable errors of particular originalist arguments made by leading scholars and Supreme Court justices.

The Dublin Declaration on Maternal Healthcare—issued by self-declared pro-life activists in Ireland in 2012—states unequivocally that abortion is never medically necessary, even to save the life of a pregnant woman. This article examines the influence of the Dublin Declaration on abortion politics in Latin America, especially El Salvador and Chile, where it has recently been used in pro-life organizing to cast doubt on the notion that legalizing abortion will reduce maternal mortality. Its framers argue that legalizing abortion will not improve maternal mortality rates, but reproductive rights advocates respond that the Dublin Declaration is junk science designed to preserve the world’s most restrictive abortion laws. Analyzing the strategy and impact of the Dublin Declaration brings to light one of the tactics used in anti-abortion organizing.

This article contrasts the original Allies' grand plans for post-WWII Asia with the subsequent turnout, which fell short of their expectations, as formulated in the Cairo Declaration (1943) and the Potsdam Declaration (1945). In the Instrument of Surrender it signed on Sept. 2, 1945, Japan pledged to implement in full the demands stated in both Declarations. One demand that was not fulfilled called for Japan's surrender of all territories it had taken by force from other countries. These would include the Ryukyus, an independent kingdom until conquered by Japan in 1879 (renamed Okinawa ever since), plus the Diaoyu island (Senkaku in Japanese) taken from China. The United States occupied both after V-J Day, but in its 1972 \"Okinawa Reversion\" move the island was included in the package, because Washington followed a deceptive 1939 Japanese map that showed Diaoyu/Senkaku as belonging to Okinawa. Consulting relevant international law, I found that the \"intent\" (commitment) the Allies conveyed in the Declarations, and Japan's signature on the Surrender Instrument, fulfilled the legal requirement to be binding international agreements. As agreements defining territorial arrangements, they were not subject to change following changed circumstances. Being equally bound by these agreements, the United States cannot escape charges of complicity by tolerating Japan's failure to live up to its obligations.