Semper Disqualified: The Incongruity between Federal and State Suffrage Protections for Certain Military Voters Seeking to Vote in State and Local Elections, and a Possible Legislative Remedy

It is axiomatic that members of the United States military forces at all levels and throughout the course of the nation’s history have fought for the essential freedoms which underlie the constitution – key among them the suffrage right. Over the course of its history, the suffrage right has seen controversy and change, which mirrored the social and political issues and changed realities of the country. As the right to vote has been extended to encompass more citizens, so too has the ability to serve one’s country as part of the military. In recognition of the importance of the right to vote, and the importance of serving as a member of the military, the absentee ballot has been embraced as a way to ensure that members of the military who have an established home can vote for federal officers while stationed overseas and at bases which are not in their home state. This method of voting has further been applied to military families stationed overseas and away from their homes. Indeed, recent federal legislation has provided members of the armed services and their families with further guarantees that the states where they are otherwise eligible to vote will timely provide them with absentee ballots for federal elections, and has provided states with a set of procedures which must be followed to ensure that each military ballot is properly processed in time to be counted for the relevant election. However, despite the federal and state constitutional and statutory protections guaranteed to members of the United States military and their families, there is a segment of the military population which is at risk of being disenfranchised. This article begins with an examination of the applicable state and federal constitutional provisions relating to the suffrage right and its relation to the military. It then examines state and federal statutory provisions enacted to protect voting rights in general and, where applicable, military voting rights in particular. As an outgrowth of both constitutional and statutory schemes, this article then examines federal and state case law as applied to military voters seeking to exercise their right to vote. While several aspects of case law are touched on, the primary focus of case law analysis in this article is on how state and federal courts have treated military voters seeking to vote in the state and locality to which they have been stationed. After delving into the background of the interrelation between members of the military and the suffrage right, the article then presents three hypothetical situations involving members of the military who, though conscientious and well-informed as to issues in elections, are nevertheless disenfranchised in the place in which they are stationed – and, in some of these situations, disenfranchised from state and local elections altogether. These situations are followed by a call for Congress to enact legislation – possibly referred to as the “Domestic Military Voting Rights Act” – in order to close this gap and ensure that members of the military are able to exercise their right to vote in the society in which they live, and that the society can benefit from allowing interested voters who protect the rights of all citizens, including suffrage, to vote. The article concluded that Congressional action in the form advocated is necessary not only to satisfy the equal protection clause, but to satisfy basic tenet of social responsibility and overall fairness

A Tale of Three Nations?: The Role of United Nations Peacekeepers and Missions on the Concept of Nation-State, Nationalism, and Ownership of the State in Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Kosovo

The concept of nationalism of ideology and shared values has existed since Biblical times, and has only become more prominent in societal structure in the centuries which have followed . Many attempts to define what is and is not nationalism have been made throughout history, yet despite these attempts there is no perfect formula for what gives rise to nationalism or what makes a nation-state and how to create it. However, at its core a nation is made of people, and all nations, regardless of organization, ideology, or ethnicity, turn to law to control – if not shape – their societies. This duality of basic composition is perhaps best illustrated by the Black’s Law Dictionary definitions of “nation” and “state.” According to these definitions, a “nation” is “[a] large group of people having a common origin, language, and tradition and usually constituting a political entity,” while a “state” is “[t]he political system of a body of people who are politically organized; the system of rules by which jurisdiction and authority are exercised over such a body of people.” From this emerges the unity of people and law which forms the fundamental core of the global concept of a nation-state,, regardless of where one believes the concept itself originated. With the advent of the United Nations (U. N.) in the aftermath of World War II, nations and nationalism became framed in the concept of “self-determination.” This concept has taken on a life of its own and has been used in the international law realm to support the idea of breaking up states and providing support for splinter groups wishing to form their own states, regardless of whether these groups were part of the colonial apparatus that the United Nations’ charter was intended to eradicate. The U. N. Charter also charges the members of the Security Council with maintaining international “peace and security.” From its initial conception as a means to stop interstate conflicts, the “peace and security” preservation strand of the U. N. Charter has been used in conjunction with the military portions of the Charter to justify the creation and deployment of United Nations peacekeepers to areas of intrastate and intra-society conflict as well. From keepers of peace and protectors of innocent populations, U. N. peacekeeping missions have come to encompass multi-faceted operations which attempt not only to protect human innocents, but also to create a legal and governmental structure for the affected areas. Many of the legal systems which the U. N. attempts to impose in the areas where peacekeepers are deployed involve creating a constitution which, at least in name, guarantees that all peoples in an affected area are represented in various governmental and political bodies. This article will address the issue of whether U. N. peacekeeping missions and their attendant attempts to restructure the laws and governments of the affected areas actually promote the creation of a healthy and viable nation-state. By examining three United Nations missions – the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (UNMONUC) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) – this article will examine several cases to see whether these peacekeeping missions do in fact lead to viable nation-states. The areas to be examined are the physical stability of the area and the ability of the peacekeepers and missions to prevent and respond to violence; the stated goals and activities of the peacekeepers and the missions for the affected areas; and the constitutional and/or governing documents which the missions have either promulgated or are in the process of attempting to promulgate for the affected areas

Signed, Sealed, Delivered, and ?: The Correlation between Policy Areas, Signing, and Legal Ratification of Organization of American States’ Treaties by Member States.

Abstract: Signed, Sealed, Delivered, and ?: The Correlation Between Policy areas, Signing, and Legal Ratification of Organization of American States’ Treaties by Member States. Like any organization, the Organization of American States’ ability to affect lasting policy changes through treaties is only as strong as the will of the federal legislative bodies of its member states. No matter how lofty or well-meaning the OAS’s goals in any area or matter addressed by a treaty, or the number of OAS member states which sign onto a treaty reflecting these goals, under the OAS Charter, and the federal constitutions of most member states, these treaties are merely aspirational unless they are ratified by the federal legislatures of the member states. Although it could be assumed that a member state’s signing of an OAS treaty is indicative of the member state administration’s policy goals - and hence the policy goals of the member state as a whole - there is often a counter-intuitive negative correlation between the number and type of treaties signed by member states and those treaties which are ultimately ratified by the member state’s federal legislature and adopted as binding law on the state. Even in the event of ratification, many member states feature federal constitutional provisions which subsume the primacy of treaty law to domestic law, regardless of when the law was promulgated or the policy choices behind it. Given the disconnect between OAS policy goals and member states’ federal legislative choices, it can easily seem that there is little political or legal force behind treaties promulgated by the OAS. Examining OAS treaties promulgated during the period from post-World War II to the present, however, sheds light on the incidents of positive and negative signing to ratification correlations. This article conducts such an examination, focusing on several themes of treaty promulgation and signing to ratification correlation. One area of focus is the legal requirements for treaty signing and ratification under the OAS Charter, as well as the individual constitutional requirements for individual member states under their federal constitutions. A second area of focus is the basic signature to ratification correlations, including a discussion of those member states which elect to become treaty signatories, or indeed to ratify treaties, with express reservations made to some or most of the treaty terms. The author extrapolates that reservations are often used as a way to help ensure domestic ratification of treaty provisions, and points to the effectiveness of this political/legal strategy. A third area of focus is the type of treaty policy areas used and their past and future uses as indicators of treaty success within the OAS and the federal legislatures of the member states. The conclusion of this article uses the legal, political, and statistical information offered in the previous parts to go beyond a historical summary of OAS treaty policy and the actions of member states and to predict policy areas which will be maximally or minimally accepted by member states as areas in which domestic legal primacy will or will not be ceded to OAS community ideas and goals. This article argues that, however laudable many of the OAS policy goals, as expressed by treaty, have been, the OAS and its member states should consider focusing their calls for cooperation and treaty law ratification on several policy areas with proven records of signing to ratification correlative success

What Lies Beneath: USMCA Chapter 24 and Sub-National Governance of Environmental Issues

This article examines the sub-national governance issues existing in the USMCA through the lens of environmental law and regulation in each of the three State Parties. It asserts that the governance gaps created by failing to include the terms of sub-national laws in the express parameters of the USMCA are significant and can pose a challenge to the successful implementation of the Agreement now and into the future. The decision to focus on the USMCA regime was made because of the recent timing of its negotiation, the many efforts made by all sides to incorporate critical non-trade issues into the main text of the Agreement, and the federal governance structures used in all three State Parties. In the USMCA context, environmental issues represent both an emerging area of law and policy, notably in the context of pollution and climate change responses, and one which was carried over from NAFTA

Resurrection from Babel: The Cultural, Political, and Legal Status of Christian Communities in Lebanon and Syria and Their Prospects for the Future

In the well-known Biblical story, the faithful, attempting to create a place of unity for themselves, set about building the Tower of Babel, only to see the Tower implode due to linguistic differences and power assertions. Thousands of years later, the world is still plagued by sectarian strife and warfare. Indeed, the situation has only become more involved since Babel, as there are now inter-communal and intra-communal conflicts for supremacy and superiority – a notable difference in these conflicts is that the ultimate tool of getting to Heaven is no longer a tower, it is now a state. Within the framework of the much-vaunted and highly-contested state structure which sits at the heart of inter-communal and intra-communal conflicts lies a duality of politics and law. A state cannot exist without political actors, whatever their motivations may be, and political actors of all belief systems have embraced the need for laws as a method of control – if not equality and a means of assuring an open society. For Christian communities in the Middle East there is perhaps no greater a living symbol of the effects of Babel-esque intra-communal fighting than Lebanon. The fighting between Christian communities in Lebanon, and the alliances of these communities with various Muslim communities and other nations to try to crush rival Christian opposition, is more than just a memory of decades past; it continues today, albeit in slightly less violent forms than during the civil war which ravaged the country for over a decade. By contrast, the political and legal standing of Christian communities across the border in Syria is nowhere near as visible, or publicized, as their Lebanese co-religionists. This article examines the role of Christian communities in Lebanese and Syrian history and law, and, conversely, the role of constitutional and statutory law on Christian communities in Lebanon and Syria. With these laws and relationships established, the article then goes on to call for a resurgence of unity between the Christian communities in Lebanon, and an awakening of the Christian communities in Syria, as a means to solve the political and societal unrest in both countries. The author argues that the law allowing this type of participation has already been established, and now is waiting for the people to use it as a weapon against terrorism and injustice. By using existing laws, particularly constitutional laws, to change their respective countries, the Christian communities in Lebanon and Syria would be able to help not only themselves, but also the Muslim communities and other religious minority communities in Lebanon and Syria