Volume 4, Number 9
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Legal Dialogue, Chinese Style

Legal scholars in China generally refrain from criticizing official policies in public. Qin (Sky) Ma writes that scholars’ response to the feared shutdown of the China Judgments Online (中国裁判文书网) at the end of 2023 was a noteworthy deviation from the norm. It showed that the space for critical discourse, though constrained, is not entirely closed and that strategic engagement by scholars can have impact. 

Volume 4, Number 8
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Feminization of Poverty and Women's Leadership

Poverty is often the face of a woman. Rangita de Silva de Alwis, a member of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, hopes that this year’s meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women will help make women the face of anti-poverty solutions.

Volume 3, Number 24
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The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act: ...

Tamar Groswald Ozery argues that risks to investors may actually be worsened by US enforcement of the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, which was enacted in the name of investor protection. Ozery describes the HFCA as part of a geopolitical agenda of decoupling, but says it is backfiring by enhancing the Chinese government’s control over Chinese issuers.

Volume 3, Number 20
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The High Price of Lying in US-China Relations

Following the recent Chinese balloon incident, both Washington and Beijing would do well to recall lessons from a failed CIA espionage mission in China 70 years ago, says Jerome A. Cohen. US refusal to acknowledge the CIA’s role resulted in its own agent, John T. Downey, spending almost 21 years in a Chinese prison. The most obvious lesson: how counterproductive it is for governments to engage in lying.

Volume 3, Number 19
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The Future of CEDAW

Rangita de Silva de Alwis, who joined the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in January 2023, shares her vision for future development of the jurisprudence of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

Human Rights

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Reassessing Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Tribunal

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On December 23, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Tribunal issued its final, written judgment in the case against Khieu Samphan, affirming his convictions for genocide, crimes against humanity, and other international crimes, as well as his life sentence. The judgment brought to a close the tribunal’s judicial proceedings and marked the improbable achievement of a measure of justice for the millions of victims of the Khmer Rouge regime. Unfortunately, a narrative has emerged among international human rights organizations and commentators that dismisses its achievements and focuses on its flaws.

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Adaptive Protection: Strengthening ASEAN’s Human Rights Regime through Scrutiny

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Human rights advocates frequently criticize the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for addressing human rights through soft rather than hard law mechanisms. Yet as ASEAN’s human rights system evolves, there are grounds for optimism that it is gradually developing scrutiny mechanisms that increase human rights protection.

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Hong Kong’s Rights Reckoning: What We Can Expect from the UN Human Rights Committee

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In July 2022, the UN Human Rights Committee will complete its first formal review of Hong Kong since the National Security Law (NSL) came into force in 2020. The review will be an important test of whether the local government still views the ICCPR as a meaningful constraint on its actions. It also will be a test of the efficacy of the UN human rights treaty-monitoring system.