Author: Breanna Silva

by Michael Hiestand 

View/Download Paper

Abstract

In the United States, the “collateral consequences” of a criminal record extend far beyond the period of physical detention. These disadvantages fall disproportionately on the shoulders of people of color, and on Black Americans in particular. Among the numerous policy mechanisms aimed at alleviating these collateral consequences, expungement – the extraction and isolation of official criminal records from public access – stands out as particularly promising in that it promises to provide criminalized individuals a “clean slate.” However, the emerging literature on the uptake rate of expungement policies in their current, petition-based state has been far from encouraging. This paper provides a critical race perspective to this emerging literature through a comparative analysis of expungement policies in New Jersey and Alabama. This analysis reveals that existing expungement policies are not simply ineffective; they are also active contributors to the racial disparities in the impacts mass incarceration. This paper concludes by suggesting that the only equitable path forward for expungement is to follow the lead of New Jersey and other states by providing expungement automatically to those who qualify.

About the Author

Michael Hiestand is a second-year J.D. candidate at the University of Texas School of Law whose main academic interests are American racial politics and linguistics. Originally from Kentucky, he received his undergraduate education at the University of Chicago before moving to Texas. He will spend this summer working in the Houston office of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett before returning to Austin for his final year.

by John Fossum

View/Download Paper

Abstract

Of the many jobs categorized as “essential” during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the continued operation of American meatpacking plants stood out. This work was 1) unrelated to critical healthcare services, 2) primarily staffed by minority and immigrant workers, and 3) conducted in conditions that seemed ideal for the coronavirus’ spread. Why and how did meatpacking facilities then remain open through the spring and summer of 2020, despite the proliferation of facility-linked COVID-19 hotspots and worker deaths? Drawing from authors of legal theory on racial capitalism, self-regulatory behavior by transnational corporations, and “precarity capitalism,” this paper builds context for this phenomenon through a case study on JBS USA Beef in Greeley, Colorado, the flagship facility for the American branch of world-leading meat producer JBS S.A. based in Brazil. It frames the protracted battle over production and worker safety as a standoff between workers of minority racial status, in precarious economic and labor conditions, and a winning coalition of powerful political and corporate stakeholders invested in the global value chain in beef.

About the Author

John Fossum graduated from the LBJ School of Public Affairs with a Master in Public Affairs in 2021. In the summer of 2020, he completed a graduate fellowship with Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the UT Austin School of Law, co-publishing a study of COVID-related labor policy affecting meatpacking workers in the United States. Prior to his graduate studies, John served for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin, West Africa. He has continued on to program roles with the Carter Center in Chad, Central Africa, and with the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

by Holly Genovese

View/download paper

Abstract

Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, and Robert Hillary King, colloquially known as the Angola 3, spent most of their adult lives in solitary confinement, Wallace and Woodfox for the murder of Louisiana State Penitentiary Prison Guard Brent Miller, and King for a separate false murder accusation. They were Black Panther Party members, activists, artists, and writers who used their artwork and intellectual production to protest the unjust systems of incarceration and solitary confinement that they faced as political prisoners. The Angola 3 participated in direct action protest—food and work strikes in particular—but also wrote and created artwork to challenge dominant narratives about the Black Panther Party. I argue that while the members of the Angola 3 do not fit conservative conceptions of intellectuals, they have used intellectual means to redefine the memory of the Black Panther Party and lay claim to their own experiences in prison. The Angola 3’s engagement with other prison writers, the black radical tradition, and their own intellectual and artistic production in the years since they were released can also expand our understanding of both the prison arts movement and prison literature writ large.

About the Author

Holly Genovese is a PhD student in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also completing Graduate Portfolios in Black Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies. Her dissertation will consider black poetics, life writing, hip hop, and street art by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in the American South as resistance to the carceral state. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Teen Vogue, The Washington Post, The LA Review of Books, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She has served as co-curator for exhibitions at Eastern State Penitentiary, McKissick Museum, and the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks. Holly holds a BA in History and Political Science from Temple University and MA in History from the University of South Carolina.

By Caroline Omari Lichuma

View/download paper

Abstract

Material inequality or (extreme) economic inequality has been touted as one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century. Wealth is “hemorrhaging upwards” rather than “trickling down.” In a world where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the inequality gap in income and wealth continues intensifying at an alarming pace, there exists an “inequality explosion” that threatens the very fabric of our global society. While economic inequality and questions of (re)distribution of wealth and income have traditionally been examined within the spheres of development law and political economy, I argue that a human rights based approach that contains economic and social rights (hereinafter, ESRs) at its core is capable of mitigating economic inequality. International human rights norms enjoy a high level of global legitimacy, as evidenced by the fact that the key human rights instruments have been widely accepted in all regions of the world. 169 States have ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (hereinafter, ICESCR). Underpinned by universally recognized moral values and reinforced by national and international legal obligations, ESRs therefore provide a compelling normative framework through which material inequality can be addressed.

About the Author

Ms. Caroline Lichuma is a PhD candidate at the Georg-August Universität, Göttingen. In 2010, she graduated with an LLB from the University of Nairobi, where she received the Hamilton Harrison and Mathews – Le Pelley Prize for the best third year student in the school of Law for the 2008/2009 academic year. She thereafter undertook her LLM degree in International Legal Studies at the New York University School of Law, where she was a Dean Graduate scholar. Caroline has worked as an assistant lecturer at the Strathmore Law School and at Riara Law School, both in Nairobi, Kenya. She was the 2014 Emer De Vattel Scholar at The Hague Academy of International Law’s Public International Law Summer School. And in 2017, Caroline was one of the finalists of the International Junior Faculty Forum held at Stanford Law School, where she presented her paper, “TWAILing the Minimum Core Concept: Rethinking the Minimum Core of Economic and Social Rights.”

by Serges Djoyou Kamga

View/download paper

Abstract

Higher education is an important step towards ensuring human development. This was understood by South Africans who included the right to education, and to further education, in their Constitution. Subsequently, the country has adopted various policies to ensure access to higher education for students with disabilities, and this was in line with the spirit of the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to which South Africa is a party. Yet disabled students still face barriers to higher education. The article examines these barriers to inclusion for students with disabilities in higher education and proposes solutions to foster their inclusion. To this end, the article reviews legal and policy documents as well as the enforcement of such policies (or lack thereof). It also evaluates the appropriateness of support for students with disabilities in higher education by exploring the practice at various South African universities. It concludes that although policies and legislative measures are in place, it is essential to implement enforcement mechanisms to foster the inclusion of students with disability in higher education. In addition, adequate policy measures should be supplemented by appropriate institutional support structures. The latter should include establishing credible Disability Units and implementing universal learning design methods that comprise planning for accessibility of buildings, flexible curricula, training and awareness of academic and non-academic staff on disability issues.

About the Author

Serges Djoyou Kamga is Associate Professor of Law at the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, based at the University of South Africa. He holds a PhD in International Human Rights Law from the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa. His research over the years demonstrates a profound and sustained commitment to advancing knowledge about human rights in Africa, especially regarding the right to development, human rights from cross cultural perspectives, and disability rights.

Dr. Djoyou Kamga is the author of The Right to Development in the African Human Rights System (Routledge, 2018) and the co-editor of Perspectives on the Right to Development (Pretoria University Press, 2018). He is also the co-editor of the Cross Cultural Human Rights Review and the African Disability Rights Yearbook, the only journal that focuses on the rights of persons with disabilities in Africa. In spring 2019, Dr. Djoyou Kamga took part in the Visiting Professor/Practitioner Program, hosted by the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice.

by Dr. Abena Ampofoa Asare 

View/download paper

Abstract

In the 70th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), this paper proposes an alternative perspective on the progress of the international human rights regime inaugurated in 1948. Focusing on the multiple ways that international human rights discourse is deployed in diverse African locales throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, this paper launches the concept of domestication as a way to apprehend the variety of human rights practice. In so doing, this paper challenges definitions of human rights progress that focus on expanding global consensus, and instead theorizes a future for human rights discourse that is rooted in difference, particularly the divergent strategies and ideologies of diverse local stakeholders.

About the Author

Dr. Abena Ampofoa Asare is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History at Stony Brook University. Her research and writing span questions of human rights, citizenship and transformative justice in Africa and the African diaspora.  Her work can be found in The Radical Teacher, The International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, African Arguments, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other places. She is the author of Truth Without Reconciliation: A Human Rights History of Ghana (University of Pennsylvania, 2018) which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. In 2018-2019, she will be Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

by Viki Zaphiriou-Zarifi

View/download paper

Abstract

This paper explores how African women in Athens are collectively mobilising to resist and manage the exclusionary and othering processes they all-too-often face in their everyday lives. In particular, it focuses on the activism of the United African Women’s Organization (UAWO) and its mobilisation of the ‘African woman’ identity in the fight for greater livability in terms of both material conditions and social intelligibility. Applying the notion of ‘acts of citizenship,’ formulated by Isin and Nielsen (2008), the paper illustrates the ways in which UAWO works towards claiming citizenship rights for non-citizens creatively, performatively, and in multiple spaces. In so doing, the paper also explores how UAWO seeks to challenge, and potentially transform, the categories of recognition available to African women in Athens.

About the Author

Viki Zaphiriou-Zarifi is a researcher and activist working on migration and gender. Before completing a doctorate in Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, Viki worked as a gender consultant at the UN and with smaller organisations in Malawi, Pakistan and Greece. Drawing upon her background in the arts, Viki often uses participatory and collaborative methods in her work, such as visual diaries and interactive theatre techniques. Most recently, she has written a chapter for the forthcoming publication, To Exist is To Resist: Black Feminism in Europe (Pluto Press, 2019). Viki is currently working with female asylum-seekers and refugees in London and is writing a book based on her ethnographic research with African women in ‘crisis’ Greece.