The use of lethal force by law enforcement falls within the constraints set by international human rights. In particular, four standards govern whether and to what extent police may use lethal force: legality, necessity, proportionality, and accountability. However, every year, tens of thousands of civilians die at the hands of law enforcement worldwide, indicating a dysfunction in the nature of policing at a global scale. This study examines the written directives provided to police officers in the largest cities of the twenty-nine wealthiest countries and evaluates their compliance with the above standards. The study concludes that none of the directives in these cities complied with basic human rights standards, falling short in a variety of ways. By evaluating these directives, the report sheds light on enduring concerns about government abuses of power and suggests a way to constrain police use of force going forward.
This paper, based on a talk I gave at the University of Georgia’s conference on the Future of Global Healthcare Governance, examines the mechanisms through which the exclusion of noncitizen immigrants from the social safety net undermine public health, especially, but not only during the pandemic. The paper reviews the pandemic’s disparate on immigrants, and discusses how several different laws and policies, including the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the Affordable Care Act, and the Trump Administration’s public charge rule, have erected barriers to noncitizens’ access to health care and other critical components of the social safety net. The article concludes by discussing steps that the Biden Administration and Congress should take to reduce these barriers and improve public health.
It is well-recognized that it is easier for judges to enforce constitutional “negative rights” provisions than positive social and economic rights. This article focuses on the challenges of enforcing one specific positive right: the constitutional right of children to attend adequately funded schools. Our article tests on-the-ground judicial implementation of education funding provisions against the general theoretical framework of judicial interaction with the political branches developed by Katharine Young. We analyze how, in multi-year, multi-decision litigation, constitutional court judges in the three jurisdictions we studied actively experimented with the challenging task of forcing, or enticing, reluctant legislative and executive branches into spending more on education—often against the backdrop of potential political retaliation. Focusing principally on Indonesia and the American states of Washington and Kansas, we found Young’s model helpful in describing how judges shifted their tactical and rhetorical approaches among “peremptory,” “managerial,” “experimentalist,” “conversational” and “deferential” modes of review. Our study confirms Varun Gauri’s and Daniel M. Brinks’ observation that “judges . . . craft their opinions with an eye on the likelihood of compliance . . . , the political reaction and its effect on the standing of the judiciary.” These and other social scientists help explain why it is so difficult for courts to push the political branches to act, particularly when action requires higher taxes or a redirection of existing funds. We conclude that a court’s approach to judicial review of legislative and executive actions (or inaction) depends on the judiciary’s institutional strength, the remedies sought, and the specific political context within which the judicial review occurs. The three courts we studied were catalysts in contentious, multi-year education finance cases that were ultimately successful, in significant part, because of the strong support for judicial action from civil society groups and the media.
