Introduction to A Critical Juncture: Human Rights & U.S. Standing in the World Under the Obama Administration, Issue 20:1

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Introduction to A Critical Juncture: Human Rights & U.S.

Standing in the World Under the Obama Administration,

Issue 20:1

In March 2010, Transnational Law an d Contemporary Problems

(“TLCP”) hosted a symposium entitled A Critical Juncture: Human Rights &

U.S. Standing in the World Under the Obama Administration. This first issue

of Volume 20 of TLCP continues our exploration of the topic.

Our issue leads off with Brian Farrell’s Article, Access to Habeas Corpus:

A Human Rights Analysis of U.S. Practices in the War on Terrorism, which

explores how the Bush and Obama Administrations have resisted the

extension of habeas corpus to terrorism detainees. Exploring both the

international and U.S. history of habe as corpus, Farrell explains how habeas

corpus applies, or should apply, and explores why the Administrations

declined to extend it, which, Farrell argues, is in contravention of the

International Covenant on Civil and Pol itical Rights and the American

Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. In the context of these

instruments, Farrell examines the parame ters of the right to habeas corpus

and ultimately recommends their use as a framewo rk for domestic

enforcement of right.

In The Obama Administration and Obligations Under the Convention

Against Torture, U.N. Special Rappoteur Manfred Nowak discusses th e

United States’ international obligations regarding to rture. In his examination

of the “War on Terror,” Nowak explores the dangerous precedent that the

Bush Administration created by conducting torture and through rendition to

countries with the clear understanding of the same. Nowak laments that

although the Obama Administration pro mised a change in policy, it has yet

to follow through on such promises. Instead, the United States continues to

fail in its clear obligations under the U.N . Convention Against Torture and

Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This Article

discusses those specific obligation s, their significance, and the ways in which

the United States has addressed them.

In Realists Against the Nation-State, William Sch euerman examines the

legal and political theory behind Preside nt Obama’s apparent intellectual

affinity with Realist political theor ist Reinhold Niebuhr. This intellectual

pairing appears to be a contradiction in terms at first blush, as Secretaries of

State Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger are both se lf-proclaimed realists

who decry the state of international anarchy , arguing that self-interested

nation-states are the best arbiters of international chaos. Scheuerman refutes

this misperception of Realist legal theory by returning to the early works of

the founders of modern realism such as Niehbur, E.H. Carr, and Hans

Morgenthau. Scheuerman illustrates that the founding fathers of Realism

were critical of self-interested nation-states, sympathetic to conte mporary

international law, and increasingly certain that a more ambitious glo bal