Anil Kalhan

Marc Galanter
“Whither Indian Law? Impending Changes and Possible Futures”

Sponsored by the Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania South Asia Center, the University of Pennsylvania Center for the Advanced Study of India, and the Drexel Law Review

Marc Galanter, the John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law and South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and LSE Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, studies litigation, lawyers, and legal culture. He is the author of a number of highly regarded and seminal studies of litigation and disputing in the United States (including “Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change,” one of the most-cited articles in the legal literature. His work includes pioneering studies on the impact of disputant capabilities in adjudication, the relation of public legal institutions to informal regulation, and patterns of litigation in the United States. He is also co-author of Tournament of Lawyers (with Thomas Palay, 1991) which is widely viewed as the most robust explanation of the growth and transformation of large law firms.

He is an outspoken critic of misrepresentations of the American civil justice system and of the inadequate knowledge base that makes the system so vulnerable to misguided attacks.

Much of his early work was on India. He is recognized as a leading American student of the Indian legal system. He is the author of Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India (1984, 1991) and Law and Society in Modern India (1989, 1992). He is an Honorary Professor of the National Law School of India, served as advisor to the Ford Foundation on legal services and human rights programs in India, and was retained as an expert by the government of India in the litigation arising from the Bhopal disaster. He is currently engaged in research on access to justice in India.

A leading figure in the empirical study of the legal system, he has been editor of the Law & Society Review, President of the Law and Society Association, Chair of the International Commission on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received degrees in philosophy and law from the University of Chicago. In addition to the University of Wisconsin and the London School of Economics, he has taught at Chicago, Buffalo, Columbia, and Stanford.

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When: Tue, Aug 31, 2010, 4:15pm

Where: Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, Rm 240
3320 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA

Reception to follow.

Abstract:

In recent years, scholars have drawn attention to the myriad ways in which the lines between criminal enforcement and immigration control have blurred in law and public discourse. This essay analyzes this convergence in the context of immigration detention. For decades, courts and observers have documented and analyzed a wide range of detention-related concerns, including mandatory and presumed custody, coercion and other due process violations, inadequate access to counsel, prolonged and indefinite custody, inadequate conditions of confinement, and violations of international law obligations. With the number of detainees skyrocketing since the 1990s, these concerns have rapidly proliferated – to the point where some commentators resist the very term “detention” in this context as sanitized and misleading, masking quasi-punitive circumstances that approximate criminal “incarceration” or “imprisonment.” If convergence of immigration control and criminal enforcement more generally has given rise to a system of crimmigration law, as some observers maintain, then perhaps excessive immigration detention practices have evolved into a quasi-punitive system of immcarceration.

A recent report by Dora Schriro, a senior Homeland Security official, gives official imprimatur to crucial aspects of this picture, acknowledging explicitly that most detainees are – systematically and unnecessarily – held under circumstances inappropriate for immigration detention’s noncriminal purposes. In response, the Obama Administration has pledged reforms to reconstruct this regime as a “truly civil detention system.” This essay considers the possibilities and limits of these initiatives, which target excessive conditions of confinement but leave other excessive practices intact. Notwithstanding these proposed reforms, the expansion of existing enforcement initiatives means that the government will continue to detain noncitizens, in the words of its own head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “on a grand scale” – which may constrain its ability to dismantle many of the detention regime’s quasi-punitive features. While excessive detention conditions may well be tempered for many individuals, large-scale immcarceration seems here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Full article available here….

Symposium: Perspectives on Fundamental Rights in South Asia, Drexel Law Review, Vol. 2 No. 2 (Spring 2010):

Guest Editor’s Preface
by: Anil Kalhan | download this article (pdf)

This symposium issue of the Drexel Law Review marks the anticipated launch of a new section on Law and South Asian Studies of the Association of American Law Schools, including several contributions that were initially presented during a session of the proposed section at the AALS Annual Meeting for 2010. The proposed AALS section comes at a moment of heightened interest in the region among lawyers, policymakers, and the public at large in the United States, and is part of a rapidly growing constellation of scholarly initiatives on law in South Asia that have emerged internationally in recent years.

Foreword: World of Our Cousins
by: Marc Galanter | download this article (pdf)

Most of the people who live under some version of the common law today live in South Asia, as do a large portion (perhaps a majority) of those who live under a working constitutional democracy. Nevertheless, until very recently this part of our world was quite invisible to the American legal academy and profession. It is a pleasure to introduce this symposium, apparently the first of any mainstream American law review to focus on South Asian law. Its appearance is one of several markers that the neglect of South Asia by American law schools is being left behind.

The Substance of the Constitution: Engaging with Foreign Judgements in India, Sri Lanka, and South Africa
by: Shylashri Shankar | download this article (pdf)

The last two decades have seen an expansion of judicial power in developing and newly democratizing countries across the globe. The enhanced role for the judiciary, which some scholars have categorized as a “juristocracy,” has accompanied a dialogue or at least a tendency for judges to look beyond their national borders at other courts for assistance in resolving difficult national, legal, and political disputes. The Supreme Court of Pakistan has drawn on the rationale of India’s apex court to support public interest litigation, while India’s courts have referred to judgments from South Africa, the United States, Canada and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to argue for a right to life with dignity. Such engagement with foreign laws has provoked criticism from influential judges like Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court for eroding national sovereignty and even imposing foreign interpretations on culturally contextual national issues.

No Justice, No Peace: Conflict, Socio-Economic Rights, and the New Constitution in Nepal
by: Elisabeth Wickeri | download this article (pdf)

One day after the signing of the November 21, 2006 Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) between the Nepali government and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), Kathmandu’s The Himalayan Times editorial board declared, “Nepal has entered into a new era of peace, democracy and governance.” The CPA formally ended the more than ten-year conflict waged by Maoist insurgents since 1996. Over the next thirteen months, a new interim constitution was adopted, the royal family’s property was nationalized, and a republic was declared, dissolving the world’s last Hindu royal kingdom. National elections were held the following year. For hundreds of thousands of Nepalis, peace was a welcomed change. In the southern plains and hill regions, where much of the guerilla fighting had been concentrated, farmers were finally able to return to work.

Uterine Prolapse and Maternal Morbidity in Nepal: A Human Rights Imperative
by: Payal Shah | download this article (pdf)

In 2008, the Supreme Court of Nepal recognized what maternal health advocates in Nepal had known for decades: the status of reproductive health of women in Nepal is in a serious state, and it is also clear that no plan has been made to address this problem. In the present context, there are approximately six hundred thousand women suffering from the problem of uterus prolapse and it is also evident that no preventive or remedial programs focusing on problems relating to reproductive health and uterus prolapse have been initiated. The Supreme Court’s proclamation in this case, Prakash Mani Sharma v. Government of Nepal (Sharma), marked the first time that a legal body, international or national, has recognized explicitly that a high incidence of uterine prolapse may constitute a violation of human rights, including specifically women’s reproductive rights.

The Jammu and Kashmir State Subjects Controversy of 2004
by: Sehla Ashai | download this article (pdf)

In 2004, the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly passed the Jammu and Kashmir Permanent Residents Disqualification Bill (the “Disqualification Bill”), which proposed that women who married nonstate subjects could no longer claim state subject status and would thereby lose both preferential treatment in government hiring and the ability to acquire new property in the State. Various political actors decried the Disqualification Bill’s violation of Kashmiri women’s fundamental rights under the Indian Constitution, while proponents of the Disqualification Bill issued apocalyptic pronouncements about the end of constitutionally guaranteed autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir if the Disqualification Bill failed to pass. Arguments for and against the Disqualification Bill fell largely along the lines of a false and dangerous dichotomy, casting feminism and Kashmiri autonomy as inherent opposites.

Political Censorship and Indian Cinematographic Laws: A Functionalist-Liberal Analysis
by: Arpan Banerjee | download this article (pdf)

India produces more motion pictures than any other country. Indian cinema is synonymous with the extravagant musicals of “Bollywood,” a portmanteau word that the Oxford English Dictionary credits the British detective novelist H.R.F. Keating with inventing. There also exists a parallel arthouse genre of Indian cinema. Internationally, the most well-known proponent of the latter school is probably the late Bengali director Satyajit Ray, whose many laurels include an honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. Throughout history, these two divergent cinematic schools have shared an unfortunate common characteristic—that of rigorous state censorship.

You are cordially invited to the
7th Annual
SABANY Public Interest Fellowship Event
Please join us and spread the word!

Tickets on sale now

Wednesday, April 21, 2010
7:00pm-10:30pm

Aicon Gallery
35 Great Jones Street
New York, NY

Our famous Lychee Martinis, Wine, Beer & Food will be served.

SABANY established the Public Interest Fellowship to help support law students who spend their summers working in unpaid legal internships that provide services to underserved communities in the New York area.

Guest Speaker Sameer Ashar

Sameer Ashar is the Associate Dean for Clinical Programs, Associate Professor of Law at CUNY School of Law and teaches the Immigration and Refugee Rights and Community Economic Development Clinics. He received his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was Lead Articles Editor for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and edited and organized symposia on political lawyering and economic justice. He received his B.A. in politics and economics with high honors from Swarthmore College.

Professor Ashar has served as a Skadden Fellow with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, worked as an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and was a law clerk to the Honorable Deborah A. Batts of the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. He has taught the NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic and the University of Maryland School of Law Civil Rights Clinic. He is the author of law review articles on immigration, race, public interest law, and clinical legal education. Professor Ashar has presented at the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) conferences, annual meetings of the Law and Society Association, and at numerous law schools, including Berkeley, Seton Hall, Stanford, and Washington University. Professor Ashar is Chair-elect of the Poverty Law Section of AALS, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association, and a former board member of the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund and Swarthmore College.

Tickets on sale now:

SABANY Members:

$30.00 for Private Sector Attorneys
$15.00 for Public Interest Sector and Non-Attorneys
$10.00 for Law Students

SABANY Non-Members:

$40.00 for Private Sector Attorneys
$25.00 for Public Interest Sector and Non-Attorneys
$15.00 for Law Students

Tickets Purchased at the door:

SABANY Members:

$40.00 for Private Sector Attorneys
$25.00 for Public Interest Sector and Non-Attorneys
$15.00 for Law Students

SABANY Non-Members:

$50.00 for Private Sector Attorneys
$35.00 for Public Interest Sector and Non-Attorneys
$25.00 for Law Students

If you are unable to join us on April 21st, please consider purchasing a $50 donation ticket to help support the SABANY Public Interest Fellowship Program.

[Link]

Drexel Summer Theory Institute

About the Institute

The Drexel Summer Theory Institute is a new initiative for 2010 for Drexel students with public interest law internships in the greater Philadelphia area. The Institute is modeled on a similar program established by two public interest lawyers, Nisha Agarwal and Jocelyn Simonson, for Harvard law students with public interest internships in New York City. Institute Fellows will meet with the facilitators one evening a week to discuss works of social and critical theory as they relate to the Fellows’ public interest work. Although the conveners will seek to tailor the readings to the interests of the group, some examples of the kinds of thinkers we might engage with include Michel Foucault, F.A. Hayek, bell hooks, Martha Nussbaum, and Pierre Bourdieu.

The Summer Theory Institute will involve a significant but not overwhelming commitment on the part of the Fellows. The Fellows will be asked to attend all ten evening sessions, prepare for each meeting ahead of time, write short response papers to the readings, participate in the discussions, and lead one week’s discussion. If feasible, we may also arrange a joint session or event towards the end of the summer in New York with our counterparts from the Harvard program.

The goal of the Institute is to provide a space in which students can think critically about and reflect more deeply upon their everyday experiences practicing public interest law, using social theory as a lens through which to do so. Working together to think through the role that social theory can play in legal practice and activism allows the Fellows to engage more meaningfully with their organizations’ methods of pursuing justice on a day-to-day basis. By creating the space to discuss larger theoretical concepts outside of the work environment, the Institute enhances the Fellows’ senses of the potential for intellectual rigor and personal fulfillment in public interest work. The Institute also aims to foster a community of leaders who will bring their enthusiasm for pursuing social change through the law back to the Drexel community at the end of the summer.

How to Apply

If you are a 1L or 2L interested in becoming a Fellow in the Drexel Summer Theory Institute, please submit a statement of interest by April 26, 2010. Statements of interest should be emailed to dsti2010 [at] kalhan-dot-com. In your statement of interest, please explain:

1) Your anticipated internship plans for the summer;
2) Your interest in the Summer Theory Institute.

No prior experience with social or critical theory is necessary to participate. Instead, we are looking for a group of Fellows who are excited about public interest work and open to thinking in innovative and sometimes critical ways about that work. Fellows must be located in the Philadelphia area for the full ten weeks of the Institute.

About the Conveners

The 2010 Drexel Summer Theory Institute will be convened and facilitated by Umbreen Bhatti, Anil Kalhan, and Blair Thompson ’11.

Umbreen Bhatti is the Staff Attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware, where she conducts litigation and non-litigation advocacy on a broad range of civil liberties issues, including free speech, religious liberty, racial justice, privacy, students’ rights, prisoners’ rights, and police misconduct. Umbreen is the Delaware State Bar Association’s Roxana C. Arsht Fellow, a Fellow of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute, and a member of the board of Public Allies Delaware. Prior to joining the ACLU, Umbreen was an associate in the Washington, DC office of Latham & Watkins, LLP.

Anil Kalhan is an Associate Professor of Law at Drexel University, where he has taught immigration law, criminal law, First Amendment, and comparative constitutional law. He is an affiliated faculty member at the South Asia Center at the University of Pennsylvania and serves on the board of directors of the South Asian Bar Association of New York, the council of advisors for South Asian Americans Leading Together, and the Immigration and Nationality Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He previously has worked at Cleary Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, where he served as co-coordinator of the firm’s immigration and international human rights pro bono practice group, and the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.

Blair Thompson is a second-year law student at Drexel University. Since starting law school, she has been an intern at the Juvenile Division of the Public Defender in Baltimore, the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, and a co-op student at Philadelphia Legal Assistance. Before law school, Blair taught in Hong Kong and in Cape Town, South Africa, where she implemented a program in high schools involving group discussion of classical texts. She graduated from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland where she studied philosophy and the history of math and science.

Questions

Questions may be directed to the conveners at dsti2010 [at] kalhan-dot-com.

Links:

• Harvard Summer Theory Institute – Overview
• Harvard Summer Theory Institute – Final Report for 2008
• Harvard Summer Theory Institute – Final Report for 2009
• Nisha Agarwal & Jocelyn Simonson, Thinking Like a Public Interest Lawyer: Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy, 34 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change __ (2010)

The South Asian Bar Association of Philadelphia
invites you to a

Chai Chat

with

Professor Anil Kalhan
Associate Professor of Law
Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law

“Rethinking Immigration Detention”

Tuesday April 6, 2010
5:30pm to 7:00pm

at the offices of
Kolsby Gordon Robin Shore & Bezar LLP
2000 Market Street – 28th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103

Chai and other light refreshments will be served.

For planning purposes, RSVPs to andersonsk@ballardspahr.com by April 2, 2010 are appreciated, though not required.

Back in July 2009, we took note of what experts then were calling an “impending humanitarian disaster“: the displacement of as many as 2.5 million individuals due to the government’s military offensive in the North-West Frontier Province. Soon thereafter, the Pakistan government announced plans to return displaced individuals to their homes, and mainstream news coverage of the crisis subsided and public attention turned elsewhere.

Seven months later, how does the situation look for internally displaced persons? Writing at Changing Up Pakistan, Kalsoom Lakhani provides an update, arguing that although the IDP situation has been “out of the headlines,” the crisis remains severe….

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Come hear Nisha Agarwal, Director of the Health Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, discuss NYLPI’s use of law and organizing to address issues of racial and ethnic health disparities in New York City. Her talk will focus on two innovative campaigns: (1) improving access to pharmacies for limited English proficient individuals and (2) eliminating race and class segregation in academic medical centers. She will describe how these campaigns have evolved from community education and organizing to legal action to legislative victories and how law students can get involved in these projects and others.

Nisha Agarwal is the Director of the Health Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, where she began her legal career as a Skadden Public Interest Fellow. Ms. Agarwal’s work at NYLPI focuses on bringing a racial justice and immigrant rights perspective to health care advocacy. In collaboration with community-based organizations and coalitions across New York City, Ms. Agarwal is working on campaigns on language rights in pharmacies, racial discrimination in hospitals, medical deportation, and the closure of community hospitals and clinics in medically under-served areas. Nisha is also active in the South Asian Bar Association of New York, where she serves as Vice President for Public Interest, and is the co-founder of the Harvard Law School Summer Theory Institute for public interest law students. Ms. Agarwal earned her BA, summa cum laude, from Harvard College in 2000 and received a British Marshall Scholarship for graduate studies at Oxford University. She received her JD from Harvard Law School in 2006.

* * *

When: Wed, Mar 31, 2010, 4:15pm

Where: Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, Rm 240
3320 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA

When the BBC Asian Network was launched back in 2002 as a nationwide digital radio station throughout Britain, the BBC’s then-radio director, Jenny Abramsky, called it “one of the most important things the BBC has ever done.”  Since then, the Asian Network has developed a loyal following, both in Britain and, via the internet, around the world.

[Because of immigration patterns, "Asian" is the UK word for South Asians.]

Today, however, the Asian Network’s future is very much in doubt. On the eve of British general elections, a strategy review by BBC management proposes major changes in the BBC’s operations — including the closure of the Asian Network (and another network, BBC 6 Music) altogether….

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

The Indian Supreme Court is widely recognized as a complex and dynamic institution. It has been the subject of much acclaim, as well as criticism. The Court has even been charged with overreaching itself and intruding into the domains of the executive and the legislature. In an era of globalization and judicial activism, the experience of India, offers a valuable perspective on the role judges play in a vibrant democracy.

What explains the choices that India’s Supreme Court justices make? Do judges make distinctions between the religious and political affiliations of the accused when adjudicating anti-terror cases? If so, why, and under what conditions?

In an era of globalization, India’s experience offers a valuable perspective on the role judges play in a vibrant democracy. Hear Shylashri Shankar address these questions, in a talk drawing from her recent book, Scaling Justice: India’s Supreme Court, Anti-Terror Laws, and Social Rights.

Shylashri Shankar is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. She was previously an Assistant Professor in the Government Department at the University of Texas at Austin, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre on Religion and Democracy at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. She has received degrees from the University of Delhi, University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Columbia University. She is the author of Scaling Justice: India’s Supreme Court, Anti-Terror Laws, and Social Rights (Oxford Univ. Press 2008). She has written several articles in edited books on secularism, the judiciary in India and Sri Lanka, India’s courts and religious conversion, cross-judicial borrowing and national constitutions, among others. She has also written op-eds in national newspapers and magazines on democratic transition and consolidation in South Asia and the Middle East, judicial independence, ethnic conflict, and terrorism.

* * *

When: Mon, Jan 11, 2010, 4:30pm

Where: Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, Rm 340
(reception to follow in 3rd Floor Gallery)
3320 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA

Open Program on Law and South Asian Studies
Annual Meeting, Association of American Law Schools
New Orleans, LA
Saturday, January 9, 2010

This session will consist of (1) a panel on contemporary issues in constitutional law and fundamental rights in South Asia (the papers from which will be published in the Drexel Law Review as part of its Symposium on Law and South Asia) and (2) a short business meeting on the formation of the proposed AALS Section on Law and South Asian Studies.

Opening Remarks:

• Marc Galanter, John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law and South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, and Centennial Professor, Department of Law, London School of Economics and Political Science

Panelists:

• Sehla Ashai, Staff Attorney, National Immigrant Justice Center, Heartland Alliance, Chicago, IL — “Competing Constitutions: The State Subject Controversy of Jammu and Kashmir”

• Payal Shah, Legal Fellow for Asia, Center for Reproductive Rights, New York, NY — “Maternal Mortality in Nepal: A Case for Using International Law for Accountability and Justice”

• Shylashri Shankar, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi, India — “The Spirit of the Constitution: Engaging with Foreign Judgments: India, Sri Lanka, and South Africa”

• Elisabeth Wickeri, Executive Director, Leitner Center for International Law & Justice, Fordham University Law School, New York, NY — “Towards a Lasting Peace in Nepal: Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in the New Constitution”

Moderator:

• Anil Kalhan, Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, Philadelphia, PA

Registration and other details for the AALS Annual Meeting are available here.

How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?
Being Young and Arab in America

Just over a century ago, W.E.B. Du Bois posed a probing question in his classic The Souls of Black Folk: “How does it feel to be a problem?” he asked. Today, Arab and Muslim Americans, the newest minorities in the American imagination, are the latest “problem” of American society, and their answers to Du Bois’s question increasingly define what being American means today.

In a wholly revealing portrait of a community that lives next door and yet a world away, Moustafa Bayoumi introduces us to the individual lives of seven twentysomething men and women living in Brooklyn, home to the largest number of Arab Americans in the United States. Through telling real stories about young people in Brooklyn, Bayoumi jettisons the stereotypes and clichés that constantly surround Arabs and Muslims and allows us instead to enter their worlds and experience their lives. [link]

Panelists:
Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law- Moustafa Bayoumi, Associate Professor of English, Brooklyn College
- Jimmy Yan, General Counsel, Office of Manhattan Borough President
- Yasmin Dwedar

* * *

When: Thu, Dec 3, 2009, 4:30pm

Where: Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, Rm 140
(reception and book signing to follow in 3rd Floor Gallery)
3320 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA

Call for Papers – Drexel Law Review Symposium on Law and South Asia:

The Drexel Law Review is pleased to announce a symposium issue focusing on law and policy in South Asia to be published during Spring/Summer 2010. We invite the submission of articles, essays, and book reviews on any topic related to law or public policy in one or more countries in South Asia, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma/Myanmar, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sikkim, or Sri Lanka.

Submission guidelines:

• There are no minimum or maximum length requirements for submission, but we encourage submissions ranging between 10-65 journal pages (between 3,000 and 20,000 words, including text and footnotes). We encourage authors to target the lengths of their submissions to this range.
• Please include with your submission (1) a short cover letter explaining your interest in publishing in the symposium issue and the scholarly contribution that your article makes, and (2) a curriculum vitae.
• Articles should be fully supported and citations should conform to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (18th ed.) (http://www.legalbluebook.com)
• We accept Adobe PDF or Microsoft Word submissions, but authors should be prepared to use Microsoft Word 2003 or 2007 during the editing process.

Submissions should be sent by email to lawrev@drexel.edu, with the subject heading: 2010 Symposium Submission. In the email, please include your name, institutional affiliation, email address, postal address, and phone number.

Please direct any questions to the Symposium Editor at lawrev@drexel.edu.

Submission deadline: Submissions will be accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis through December 31, 2009.

For more information about the Drexel Law Review visit:
http://drexel.edu/law/lawreview

Inquiries should be directed to the Symposium Editor at lawrev@drexel.edu.

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2009/11/call-for-papers-articles-essays-and-reviews-about-south-asia.html

That’s what Audil Rashid and Mian Nazish Adnan sound the alarm about in the July 4, 2009 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet, following their recent visits to camps set up to house internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing the conflict zone in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. While Americans celebrate the Independence Day weekend with barbeques and fireworks, Rashid and Adnan paint a grim picture of the crisis in Pakistan:

From the very beginning it was evident that the government had underestimated the human cost of the military operation. As several camps were hastily set up to cater to the massive influx of IDPs, reports about the lack of even basic amenities in these camps began to emerge. Excessive heat (daytime temperatures soaring to 40°C and above), no electricity, food and water shortages, poor sanitation, and lack of proper health care are some of the immediate problems being faced by IDPs….

Lack of proper toilets and sanitation, unsafe drinking water, infrequent bathing, high air temperatures, inadequate disposal of solid waste, and the complete absence of a proper drainage system at the refugee camps are the main causes of worry for relief health workers. “This is the making of a disaster. These camps have been established on open tracts of land used for agricultural purposes. There are snakes, rats, and scorpions here. At night, when it is pitch dark because of no electricity, people sleep on the ground and are vulnerable to snakebites”, said M Idrees Mirza, a doctor who runs a private clinic in Rawalpindi city and is working voluntarily in the
camps.

“Conditions in these camps make them perfect breeding areas for mosquitoes and many varieties of insects. In my opinion, there is a very high probability of an outbreak of any disease like mumps, measles, scabies, malaria, diarrhoea, polio, and leishmaniasis”, said another health worker working for a respected NGO who spoke to The Lancet on condition of anonymity. “We need medicines, doctors, and qualified health workers. And we need them urgently. Any delays might result in a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.”….

Eager to establish its writ over the Swat Valley, the government seems to have created a health crisis which it may not be able to overcome. [link; registration req'd]

Two letters in the same issue of The Lancet offer additional details. But as dire as the situation has become within the camps, K.M. Bile and Assad Hafeez note in one of those letters that the government camps house only 20 percent of the IDPs — who may now total as many as 2.5 million individuals, almost half of them children:

Without counting the great costs to themselves, families in the local community are looking after more than 1·73 million people, in accordance with the local tradition of hospitality. Most displaced people have been accommodated within family homes; others are in schools, mosques, and other community buildings…. Although a proportion of host families are related to or friends of the displaced people, many have welcomed strangers. [link; registration req'd]

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

From the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School:

Land access, land tenure security, and related land rights are fundamental bases for the right to an adequate standard of living and are tied to the indigenous, ethnic, and cultural identities of peoples. Yet the problem of landlessness is growing worldwide: A quarter of the world’s population is landless. In Nepal, estimates suggest that over half the population is functionally landless.

For two weeks beginning May 9, Fordham Law School Professors Elisabeth Wickeri, Martha Rayner, and James Kainen will lead a delegation including eight law students on an overseas project to investigate and document the impact that inadequate access to land has on the rights of landless and land-poor people in Nepal, a country of 29 million in South Asia where landless people are disproportionately indigenous, of lower castes, and are women.

The Leitner Center delegation will document the impact that inadequate access to land has on human rights, including the rights to housing, food, water, and political participation. The delegation will also examine the evolving legal framework for landless people to secure their rights in a country emerging from ten years of conflict.

Professors Wickeri, Rayner, and Kainen will be joined by two additional human rights experts, Professors Anil Kalhan and Aoife Nolan. The Fordham Law School students participating in the documentation project are Crowley Scholars Amal Bouhabib, Corey Calabrese, Millie Canter, Benjamin Goldstein, Ganesh Krishna, Noushin Ketabi, David Mandel-Anthony, and Amisha Sharma. The delegation is happy to be working with the Kathmandu-based Community Self-Reliance Center.

The delegation will conduct wide-ranging interviews with members of the government, the judiciary, academics, lawyers, non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations, land rights organizers, men and women in rural landless communities, landlords, and local leaders whose expertise will inform a deeper understanding of the issues.

The delegation spent the spring semester studying human rights and Nepali culture and history. Following the fieldwork, the Leitner Center will publish a report of their findings which will be distributed in Nepal and internationally.

The Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School promotes teaching, scholarship, and advocacy in the field of public international law. The Center sponsors programs designed to prepare law students for work as human rights lawyers and seeks to have a real and measurable impact on the level of respect for international human rights standards.

Contact: Elisabeth Wickeri
Email: wickeri@law.fordham.edu
Website: http://law.fordham.edu/Leitner.htm

Times Now correspondent Simrat Ghuman was “walking on air” after President Obama called on her to ask a question during his news conference at the G-20 summit in London. (Is it just me, or does that number seem to change every year, and entirely without warning?) Apparently, Ghuman was so high in the clouds that she couldn’t help but interrupt Obama’s answer:

QUESTION: Hi, Mr. President.

OBAMA: How are you?

QUESTION: Thank you for choosing me. I’m very well. I’m (inaudible) from the Times of India.

OBAMA: Wonderful.

QUESTION: You met with our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. What did you — what are you — what is America doing to help India battle terrorism emanating from Pakistan?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, your prime minister is a wonderful man.

QUESTION: Thank you. I agree.

(LAUGHTER)

I agree.

OBAMA: You know, did you have something to do with that?

(LAUGHTER)

You seem to kind of take credit for it a little bit there.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: We’re really proud of him, so…

OBAMA: Of course. You should be proud of him. I’m teasing you. I think he’s a very wise and decent man and has done a wonderful job in guiding India, even prior to being prime minister, along a path of extraordinary economic growth that is a marvel, I think, for all the world…. [link]

Must-see video of the entire exchange (including Obama’s full response) is above, and the rest of Obama’s answer appears after the jump. No word on whether Prime Minister Singh is now “walking on air” as well. However, the next time someone tells me that Sree Sreenivasan and Arun Venugopal are “wonderful men,” I’ll be tempted to interrupt and say “thank you.”

Unfortunately, Ghuman’s pride in her Prime Minister stole some of the media oxygen from the actual response to her own question. However, as the Associated Press notes, in his response Obama said that “in a nuclear age, at a time when perhaps the greatest enemy of both India and Pakistan should be poverty, … it may make sense to create a more effective dialogue between India and Pakistan.”

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

The civil war in Sri Lanka has attracted greater international scrutiny within the past week, with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay suggesting that both the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) may have committed war crimes:

Warning that the loss of life may reach “catastrophic levels,” [Pillay] urged the government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels to halt hostilities to allow the evacuation of civilians trapped on the northeastern coast.

Pillay said the government had repeatedly shelled the designated “no-fire” zones for civilians and also cited reports the separatist
guerrillas were holding civilians as human shields and had shot some as they tried to flee.

“Certain actions being undertaken by the Sri Lankan military and by the LTTE may constitute violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” Pillay said in a statement.

“The world today is ever sensitive about such acts that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity,” added the former
U.N. war crimes judge, who is a member of the Tamil ethnic group and grew up in South Africa.

Pillay called on Sri Lanka’s government to grant full access to U.N. and other aid agencies to monitor human rights and humanitarian conditions amid reports of “severe malnutrition” among those trapped. [link]

Pillay stated that as many as 2,800 civilians have been killed and over 7,000 injured since January, and that as many as 180,000 civilians may be trapped in the conflict zone.

Others in the international community have raised similar concerns. According to the International Committee for the Red Cross, the humanitarian situation faced by civilians in the conflict zone is “deteriorating by the day.” Former special advisor to the UN Secretary General Lakhdar Brahimi says that the humanitarian crisis places Sri Lanka “on the brink of catastrophe.” In a phone call to to Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed “deep concern” about escalating civilian deaths and urged the Sri Lankan Army “not [to] fire into the civilian areas of the conflict zone.” The European Union has also called for a cease fire to permit trapped civilians to escape the fighting.

Sri Lanka disputes the UN’s figures — the LTTE, the government asserts, has “infiltrated certain personalities into these agencies” — and has rejected calls for a cease fire. More details are available in two stories from the BBC World Service’s Evening Report, linked above (and here and here). However, according to the Christian Science Monitor:

[T]he sensitive data aired by Ms. Pillay were based on firsthand daily reporting by UN national staff and aid workers trapped in the no-fire zone. A copy of a recent UN briefing paper that was obtained by the Monitor listed similar casualty figures and described mounting casualties in the squalid, densely packed coastal strip. “Daily incoming artillery and mortar fire has caused large number of casualties with a noted increase since 26 Feb,” it said.

The briefing paper said several weeks of food and medicine shortages had led to deaths from malnutrition and from preventable diseases. [link]

Meanwhile, SAJAer Angilee Shah has published a feature article in the Far Eastern Economic Review (which was reported from Colombo, Singapore, and Los Angeles with the support of a SAJA Reporting Fellowship) critically examining the consequences of the Rajapaksa government’s aggressive approach to prosecuting the civil war:

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Journalists from across all services of the BBC have resolved to hold two one-day strikes next month, prompted in large part by plans to “offshore” operations for the BBC World Service’s Hindi, Nepali, and Urdu language programming to Delhi, Kathmandu, and Islamabad. From the Guardian:

TV, radio and online news will be disrupted on Friday 3 April and Thursday 9 April after nearly 800 members of the National Union of Journalists chapel at the BBC today voted in favour of industrial action in a national ballot.

More than 1,100 of the union’s nearly 4,000 members at the corporation took part in the vote, 77% of whom voted in favour of a strike.

The most urgent threat of compulsory cuts is at the World Service’s South Asian section, where up to 20 members are at risk, the union has said. Staff in Scotland are also understood to be under threat.

The NUJ general secretary, Jeremy Dear, said: “Journalists at the South Asian services have been fighting a heroic struggle against the outsourcing of their jobs … now they have the weight of thousands of NUJ members at the BBC behind them.” [link]

In late February, journalists within the South Asia services held their own one-day strike to protest the proposed restructuring. In addition to worrying about lost jobs in London, the journalists fear that shifting operations to the subcontinent would compromise the quality and independence of the BBC’s coverage:

Staff are concerned that moving production of these BBC language services abroad will result in poorer output and a loss of independence which is integral to the BBC World Service.

One member commented: “If the BBC’s succeeds in imposing change, the tendency will be for the output to become more and more India-centric, in the case of the India service, as they try to compete with local FM broadcasters.

“This moves away from the World Service’s USP: impartial news with a global perspective. Why should the British taxpayer end up paying for a local Indian radio station?” [link]

The International Federation of Journalists has echoed these concerns, asserting that “the BBC management’s off-shoring plans will put at risk seventy years of first-class journalism and expose their journalists to political and commercial pressures beyond their control.” On the eve of last month’s one-day strike, John McDonnell, a Labour MP for west London, elaborated upon these concerns even further:

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Via Reuters (and Sadia Abbas), some breaking news from Pakistan:

The Pakistan government agreed on Monday to reinstate Iftikhar Chaudhry as Supreme Court chief justice to end a political crisis that has gripped the Muslim nation, a government official said.

The official added that a constitutional package would also be presented.

President Asif Ali Zardari had hitherto stonewalled calls from the opposition led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and a lawyers’ movement to restore the judge.

Chaudhry was dismissed in late 2007 by then-president and army chief
Pervez Musharraf, but Zardari regarded the judge as too politicized and
feared he could pose a threat to his own presidency if restored. [link]

No solid confirmation as yet, but Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani is scheduled to address the nation shortly.

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Everything old appears to be new again in Pakistan. The latest: government bans on independent television news coverage.

On the heels of an emergency crackdown earlier this week, in which the government of President Asif Ali Zardari responded to the “Long March” organized by the lawyers movement by banning public gatherings and reportedly detained hundreds of opposition lawyers and political workers, Zardari has also moved to block transmission of Geo TV throughout the country:

On the direct order of President Asif Ali Zardari, the transmission of the Geo News was blocked by cable operators in various parts of the country on Friday, which drew flak from across the country.

The transmission was blocked in some parts of Karachi, Hyderabad,
Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Quetta, Multan, Rawalakot, Muzaffarabad, Deepalpur, Sargodha, Nawabshah, Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Dera Murad Jamali. [link]

Geo and other TV news channels were previously blocked — for much the same reasons as the present ban by Zardari — by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, first as the lawyers’ movement was gaining momentum in the spring of 2007 and later after Musharraf declared a state of “emergency” in November 2007.

The Geo ban has apparently prompted the resignation of Information Minister Sherry Rehman, a leading member of the Pakistan People’s Party and close confidante of the late former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto:

Continue reading at SAJAforum….