The Struggle for Justice in the Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery: The Legacy of the Magna Carta and the Common Law Tradition

The article introduces the reader to the idea that justice involves social action and struggle. It then shifts the perspective to the struggle for justice in historic memory. The author focuses on the struggle to limit sovereign absolutism, the outcome of which is reflected in the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta was not a gift of the sovereign, it represented a political struggle to obtain it. The article then traces the evolution of law in the common law tradition and the importance of casuistic legal methods to ground the specific rights of citizens. The article draws reference to the struggle between judges and the sovereign to secure justice under the common law. A pivotal feature of the Selma March was the critical role of a brave federal judge, Frank Johnson, who ruled that the marchers had a constitutional right to march. The article then examines the religious influences on marching for justice ideals and the deeper meaning this represents existentially and spiritually

Reflections on Racism and World Order

This Article is about international racism. Racism is not simply a local or national phenomenon, it is an immense global problem. Indeed, its tentacles stretch from the local to the global and back to the local. Let us put the picture of international racism into perspective by tying it to the claims made to eradicate racism in economic relations. Apart from affirmative action, there are two other approaches: either to assert the notion that reparations is a way to ameliorate the worst manifestations of racism and provide for racial justice, or to join that with the notion that there is indeed a universal right to development, and that every human being has the right to fully develop their personality, to fully develop their emotional, material, cultural, and social well-being without unjust or unfair discriminations. This indeed, I would suggest, is also the foundation of the idea of human dignity. These two ideas have emerged, and they have traveled, not often in easily complimentary pathways

International Intellectual Property, Access to Health Care, and Human Rights: South Africa v. United States

This Article examines the question of access to patented medicines in international law. It analyzes the extent to which international agreements may lawfully limit affordable versions of these medicines that may be available through parallel imports or compulsory licensing procedures. It considers the concept of intellectual property rights from a national and international perspective to determine how these rights must be sensitive to matters of national sovereignty when extraordinary, life-threatening diseases afflict societies in catastrophic ways. This Article suggests that viewing property (including intellectual property) as a human right requires that its scope be delimited and understood in the context of other human rights. In short, property and human rights should be understood as complementary, rather than antagonistic ideas. This Article also reviews the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in light of the contemporary standards of construction and interpretation applicable to agreements of international human rights law