Our Online Journal features original pieces written and edited by our Online staff at Columbia. They are not representative of any views held by the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review Editorial Board.
As Hannah Arendt predicted nearly a century ago, the refugee crisis is the greatest test of the human rights paradigm. An estimated 103 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide. In response to increased “small-boat” refugees, the United Kingdom entered a deal with Rwanda in April 2022 to allow the British Home Office, the state immigration and security department, to relocate asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda. An emergency injunction from the European Court of Human Rights in June halted the first round of deportations, leading to a class-action lawsuit, R. v Secretary of State (2022), that challenged the policy. The Divisional Court subsequently ruled against the challenge in December, and individual appeals are currently underway. The case is complicated by complex refugee law, but procedural fairness during the asylum process underpins the key legal issues at stake as the prerequisite to upholding all other fundamental human rights. Under this framework, the Home Office can be held in breach of the asylum seekers’ right to non refoulement by failing to fulfill relevant procedural obligations and violating asylees’ due process rights.
The LGBTQ+ community has endured a complicated history of discrimination in United States courts of immigration. Under U.S. law, a refugee is legally defined as one who can "demonstrate that they were persecuted or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group." "Particular social group" suggests an intentionally ambiguous, theoretically "all-encompassing" category. While its ambiguity may be used for purposes of inclusion, one may discern that such language risks bias infiltration and foster far more exclusionary practices. The history of queer exclusion is a long one: In the 1950s, queer immigrants—denoted as "psychopathic personalities''—were specifically forbidden from becoming U.S. citizens; the 1965 Immigration Reform Act referred to homosexuality as "sexual deviation;" the ban on HIV-positive immigrants endured until 2010. But in the early 2000s, the legal paradigm began a subtle shift for the better: under the category of "particular social groups'' of those seeking asylum, U.S. immigration increasingly began to recognize those who listed their LGBTQ+ identity as potentially belonging to a persecuted group that was qualified for refugee status. However, proving one's past or future persecutory risks on account of belonging to such a broad social category—a task known as the "Nexus" dilemma—invites discretion in what can constitute proof of membership to the queer community.
In February 2021, the Supreme Court decided two cases that threaten to narrow the avenues available to Holocaust survivors looking to obtain restitution for property stolen from them as a part of the larger Nazi genocide. The cases were remanded and are currently being heard by lower courts, where, if argued persuasively, the claimants can salvage a vulnerable avenue of restitution for their stolen property — the “last prisoners of war.” With every tick of the clock, the world is left with fewer living survivors and refugees of the Holocaust who can demand justice from the countries that deprived them of their humanity, rights, and loved ones.
The American dream is nonexistent for an abundance of individuals within the LGBTQ+ community whose rights have been rapidly curtailed. March 28, 2022 marked the beginning of a particularly discriminatory period as a result of Ron Desantis’ signing of the “Parental Rights in Education” Law, now more widely known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. This law is one among more than a dozen others, including the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” which prohibit federally-funded schools from teaching material related to sexuality. Together, these bills intend to outlaw discussion of sexuality and gender identity in elementary school classrooms and thereby infringe upon the rights of teachers. The passing of “Don’t Say Gay” has evoked an abundance of social controversy and multiple lawsuits that accuse the law’s wording of being incredibly vague which could lead to dangerously broad applications. Ultimately, the aforementioned bills and laws violate the First Amendment by widely censoring teachers and are therefore unconstitutional.
Chile’s ongoing effort to write a new constitution has created an opportunity for the country to create a more democratic, cohesive, and equal society. These core values guided the design behind each section of the proposed Chilean Constitution, from civil rights to government structure. The timing of this new constitution coincided with the decades-long legal movement to restructure power between the federal and regional governments; until then, Chile’s decentralization process had unfolded gradually through patchwork revisions to the current Constitution. [1] If ratified, the recently proposed constitution would have reconfigured the relationship between the federal and regional governments, distributing power locally through newly created political bodies that would have the resources to carry out their constitutional responsibilities. Even though the proposed constitution was rejected by Chileans in the 2022 plebiscite, understanding how its language would have changed power-sharing arrangements throughout the country allows us to visualize innovative legal methods for fostering and protecting local autonomy while still respecting the national political framework.
For over a year, tensions at the Poland-Belarus border have been rising at an unprecedented rate. The resulting humanitarian crisis has inspired discussion about the legal status of refugees, shedding light on Poland’s shameful reaction to the eviction of Middle Eastern refugees by Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko in June of 2021. Polish authorities regularly subjected thousands of fugitives camping in the village of Usnarz Gorny without food, sanitation, and heating to water cannons or tear gas, and then, ultimately, pushed them back into Belarus. [1] Such state of affairs is dictated both by the ruling party’s - PIS- historically nationalist and Catholic agenda and by public sentiment. This anti-refugee policy is not only ethically questionable, but also legally untenable. Under several international acts, notably the European Charter of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Geneva Convention, Poland has the obligation to provide Middle Eastern refugees with temporary asylum and respect their right to apply for foreign protection.
Today, there are over 40,000 graves of Native American children around the United States on properties that operated as boarding schools for Indigenous youth. [1] These gravesites reveal a fraction of the impact of the mistreatment at these federally sanctioned schools, and of the number of Indigenous youth harmed emotionally and physically that led to diminished populations and resources, little culturally relevant schooling, and increased mental and physical illnesses in Indigenous communities.
The United States’ troubled history with Native people is an extensive one. Notorious for forcibly and unjustifiably removing Native children from their homes and families, the U.S. government’s conscious effort to strip Native peoples of their community ties was reinforced by legislation set to undercut Indigenous rights. As one historical data point, the Civilization Fund Act, codified into law by President James Monroe in 1819, established church-run “Indian boarding schools” with the aim of forcibly assimilating Native children. [1] For over a century, Native children were forcibly removed from their homes, rehoused with white families, and placed into these “schools”, effectively stripping them of their identities, languages, and beliefs.
Every year, state officials conduct about two million child welfare investigations, subjecting children and their families to home searches, physical examinations, and interviews. [1] While such investigations sometimes reveal instances of abuse or neglect, many families are forced through the intrusive process for seemingly no reason at all; in 2002, only twenty-eight percent of the two million investigations were later substantiated. [2] Most surprisingly, the Fourth Amendment requirements of a particularized warrant and probable cause do not apply to suspected cases of child abuse, despite child welfare investigations bearing strong resemblance to criminal ones. [3] As a result, investigations can occur following a single, anonymous phone call or for reasons as trivial as not having the technology needed for the child to participate in virtual learning during COVID-19. [4]
