Articles by Molly Land
112 AJIL Unbound 329, 2018
This essay argues that duties—a core component our humanness and our obligations to others—requir... more This essay argues that duties—a core component our humanness and our obligations to others—require us to consider the impact that our online speech has on others. Recognizing such duties could help to fill some of the gaps in efforts to respond to hate speech, for example speech that inflicts harm but falls short of violating domestic law or platform terms of service. The essay also argues that recognizing speech duties for individuals also gives rise to a correlative duty upon governments and other duty bearers to create an enabling environment in which those duties can be, and are likely to be, carried out.
New Technologies for Human Rights Law and Practice (Molly K. Land & Jay D. Aronson eds. CUP), 2018
The first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen a simultaneous proliferation of new t... more The first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen a simultaneous proliferation of new technological threats to and opportunities for international human rights. New advances – not only the Internet, social media, and artificial intelligence but also novel techniques for controlling reproduction or dealing with climate change – make clear that scientific and technological innovations bring both risks and benefits to human rights. Efforts to protect and promote human rights have to take seriously the ways in which these technologies, and the forms of knowledge creation, production, and dissemination they enable, can create harms and be exploited to violate rights. At the same time, human rights practitioners must continue to seek creative ways to make use of new technologies to improve the human condition.
This dichotomy is the central tension that animates both this volume and the emerging field of human rights technology. The overriding purpose of the volume, and of the University of Connecticut workshop that launched it, is to encourage human rights institutions, experts, and practitioners to take seriously the risks and opportunities of technology for the promotion and protection of human rights. The volume uses diverse case studies to examine how the dynamic of intertwined threat and opportunity plays out in a range of contexts. Case studies focus on assisted reproductive technologies, autonomous lethal weapons, climate change technology, the Internet and social media, and water meters. Considering the relationship between technology and human rights across these diverse areas reveals areas of both continuity and discontinuity in terms of how technology affects the enjoyment of human rights.
We begin by laying out the principles that animate the project. These principles have been derived chiefly from international human rights law and practice, and also draw on the scholarly study of science, technology, and the law. Based on these principles, we define a “human rights” approach to the study of technology. Finally, we identify and analyze the cross-cutting themes that unite the book – power and justice, accountability, and the role of private authority – to chart a road map for further study of the relationship between technology and human rights.
8 UC Irvine Law Review 513, 2018
Global intellectual property rules have had adverse consequences for the promotion and protection... more Global intellectual property rules have had adverse consequences for the promotion and protection of a range of human rights, including the rights to food, health, water, culture, equality and non discrimination, and freedom of expression. Nonetheless, these issues have been framed in human rights terms primarily at the international and regional levels. Domestic human rights advocates have largely not taken up the issue of how intellectual property law affects the enjoyment of human rights.
This Article argues that this incomplete translation is due to widespread reliance on a fairly narrow understanding of human rights. Human rights, when understood only as a set of legal rules and institutions, inevitably devolves into a debate about reconciling conflicting rights. This is an important conversation, but it is also a limiting one. The emancipatory potential of human rights often lies not in its power as a set of legal rules but in the way in which those rules can be employed by affected individuals to make claims and demand political change.
Using the case study of law and politics around intellectual property mobilization, the Article argues that framing intellectual property in more robust human rights terms is important for challenging the fundamental power structures that undergird the intellectual property regime. The Article then argues that the Marrakesh Treaty—a new treaty that requires states to create mandatory exceptions to copyright to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities—charts a new path for human rights advocacy on intellectual property. This treaty has the potential to lay a foundation for better translation of intellectual property issues into human rights advocacy by identifying a clear violation and by activating domestic human rights advocates. Creating a foundation for affected individuals and human rights advocates to participate in intellectual property lawmaking is essential to realizing the potential of human rights for revising the essential bargains of the international intellectual property system.
Book Chapters by Molly Land
he UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: A Commentary (Ilias Bantekas, Michael Ashley Stein & Dimitris Anastasiou eds. Oxford University Press), 2018
This chapter examines the legal and normative obligations of states under Article 22 of the Unite... more This chapter examines the legal and normative obligations of states under Article 22 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) to respect the right to privacy of individuals with disabilities, including in light of current technological trends and obligations for promoting ICT accessibility. Article 22 requires states to protect the rights of persons with disabilities against unlawful and arbitrary interference with their privacy, both in general and in particular with respect to their personal, health, and rehabilitation information. For persons with disabilities, the right to privacy plays a particularly important role in helping to guarantee rights such as the rights to equality, to freedom from discrimination, to employment, and to education, among others. The right to privacy is also uniquely vulnerable for individuals with disabilities because they must generally disclose their disability status and information related to their health and medical history in order to obtain accommodations from employers or receive social welfare benefits from the state.
This chapter examines the approaches used by the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower U.S. federal co... more This chapter examines the approaches used by the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower U.S. federal courts to contend with the challenges presented by new Internet technologies for the protection of constitutional rights. The chapter first discusses judicial regulation of the Internet as a story of inter-branch power sharing. Regulation has been most effective, and most coherent, when Congress and the courts are engaged in dialogue with one another in ways that play to the strengths of each. Second, the chapter argues that although U.S. federal courts have been relatively effective in updating the individual constitutional protections to meet the demands of new technologies, their efforts in this respect have been hampered by the lack of a comprehensive constitutional theory for understanding the effects of new technologies on individual rights. The chapter proposes the international human right to equality as a frame that better recognizes the significance of access to the Internet in promoting the realization of rights and orients the discussion on the needs and experiences of the user with respect to both speech and privacy online.
Using the example of the prisoner voting cases at the European Court of Human Rights, this chapte... more Using the example of the prisoner voting cases at the European Court of Human Rights, this chapter builds on existing literature regarding the legitimacy of judicial institutions to consider the role of justice with respect to the normative and sociological legitimacy of international human rights courts. The chapter identifies the pursuit of just outcomes as a significant independent influence on the legitimacy of these courts. Doing justice even when it requires expansive lawmaking in order to protect unpopular groups can be an affirmative source of legitimacy for these institutions. Although the legitimacy challenges faced by the European Court of Human Rights in connection with its prisoner voting cases are significant, the chapter argues that the Court’s retroactive narrowing of its decision in Hirst may have undermined the extent to which prisoner voting is viewed as an issue of justice. When a court that derives its legitimacy from its moral compass bows to political pressure, it risks doing violence to the perception that it is a moral actor, which may be a critical part of the foundation of its legitimacy. In some instances, taking an unpopular position and displeasing states is precisely what human rights courts are supposed to do—and in so doing, they may end up strengthening their position in the long term.
Short Articles by Molly Land
Reports by Molly Land
Books by Molly Land
New Technologies for Human Rights Law and Practice (Molly K. Land and Jay D. Aronson eds. CUP 2018), open access at https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/new-technologies-for-human-rights-law-and-practice/A6473E8A4F6A9ED12675E54A03318802#fndtn-contents, 2018
The first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen a simultaneous proliferation of new t... more The first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen a simultaneous proliferation of new technological threats to and opportunities for international human rights. New advances – not only the Internet, social media, and artificial intelligence but also novel techniques for controlling reproduction or dealing with climate change – make clear that scientific and technological innovations bring both risks and benefits to human rights. Efforts to protect and promote human rights have to take seriously the ways in which these technologies, and the forms of knowledge creation, production, and dissemination they enable, can create harms and be exploited to violate rights. At the same time, human rights practitioners must continue to seek creative ways to make use of new technologies to improve the human condition.
This dichotomy is the central tension that animates both this volume and the emerging field of human rights technology. The overriding purpose of the volume, and of the University of Connecticut workshop that launched it, is to encourage human rights institutions, experts, and practitioners to take seriously the risks and opportunities of technology for the promotion and protection of human rights. The volume uses diverse case studies to examine how the dynamic of intertwined threat and opportunity plays out in a range of contexts. Case studies focus on assisted reproductive technologies, autonomous lethal weapons, climate change technology, the Internet and social media, and water meters. Considering the relationship between technology and human rights across these diverse areas reveals areas of both continuity and discontinuity in terms of how technology affects the enjoyment of human rights.
We begin by laying out the principles that animate the project. These principles have been derived chiefly from international human rights law and practice, and also draw on the scholarly study of science, technology, and the law. Based on these principles, we define a “human rights” approach to the study of technology. Finally, we identify and analyze the cross-cutting themes that unite the book – power and justice, accountability, and the role of private authority – to chart a road map for further study of the relationship between technology and human rights.
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Articles by Molly Land
This dichotomy is the central tension that animates both this volume and the emerging field of human rights technology. The overriding purpose of the volume, and of the University of Connecticut workshop that launched it, is to encourage human rights institutions, experts, and practitioners to take seriously the risks and opportunities of technology for the promotion and protection of human rights. The volume uses diverse case studies to examine how the dynamic of intertwined threat and opportunity plays out in a range of contexts. Case studies focus on assisted reproductive technologies, autonomous lethal weapons, climate change technology, the Internet and social media, and water meters. Considering the relationship between technology and human rights across these diverse areas reveals areas of both continuity and discontinuity in terms of how technology affects the enjoyment of human rights.
We begin by laying out the principles that animate the project. These principles have been derived chiefly from international human rights law and practice, and also draw on the scholarly study of science, technology, and the law. Based on these principles, we define a “human rights” approach to the study of technology. Finally, we identify and analyze the cross-cutting themes that unite the book – power and justice, accountability, and the role of private authority – to chart a road map for further study of the relationship between technology and human rights.
This Article argues that this incomplete translation is due to widespread reliance on a fairly narrow understanding of human rights. Human rights, when understood only as a set of legal rules and institutions, inevitably devolves into a debate about reconciling conflicting rights. This is an important conversation, but it is also a limiting one. The emancipatory potential of human rights often lies not in its power as a set of legal rules but in the way in which those rules can be employed by affected individuals to make claims and demand political change.
Using the case study of law and politics around intellectual property mobilization, the Article argues that framing intellectual property in more robust human rights terms is important for challenging the fundamental power structures that undergird the intellectual property regime. The Article then argues that the Marrakesh Treaty—a new treaty that requires states to create mandatory exceptions to copyright to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities—charts a new path for human rights advocacy on intellectual property. This treaty has the potential to lay a foundation for better translation of intellectual property issues into human rights advocacy by identifying a clear violation and by activating domestic human rights advocates. Creating a foundation for affected individuals and human rights advocates to participate in intellectual property lawmaking is essential to realizing the potential of human rights for revising the essential bargains of the international intellectual property system.
Book Chapters by Molly Land
Short Articles by Molly Land
Reports by Molly Land
Books by Molly Land
This dichotomy is the central tension that animates both this volume and the emerging field of human rights technology. The overriding purpose of the volume, and of the University of Connecticut workshop that launched it, is to encourage human rights institutions, experts, and practitioners to take seriously the risks and opportunities of technology for the promotion and protection of human rights. The volume uses diverse case studies to examine how the dynamic of intertwined threat and opportunity plays out in a range of contexts. Case studies focus on assisted reproductive technologies, autonomous lethal weapons, climate change technology, the Internet and social media, and water meters. Considering the relationship between technology and human rights across these diverse areas reveals areas of both continuity and discontinuity in terms of how technology affects the enjoyment of human rights.
We begin by laying out the principles that animate the project. These principles have been derived chiefly from international human rights law and practice, and also draw on the scholarly study of science, technology, and the law. Based on these principles, we define a “human rights” approach to the study of technology. Finally, we identify and analyze the cross-cutting themes that unite the book – power and justice, accountability, and the role of private authority – to chart a road map for further study of the relationship between technology and human rights.
This dichotomy is the central tension that animates both this volume and the emerging field of human rights technology. The overriding purpose of the volume, and of the University of Connecticut workshop that launched it, is to encourage human rights institutions, experts, and practitioners to take seriously the risks and opportunities of technology for the promotion and protection of human rights. The volume uses diverse case studies to examine how the dynamic of intertwined threat and opportunity plays out in a range of contexts. Case studies focus on assisted reproductive technologies, autonomous lethal weapons, climate change technology, the Internet and social media, and water meters. Considering the relationship between technology and human rights across these diverse areas reveals areas of both continuity and discontinuity in terms of how technology affects the enjoyment of human rights.
We begin by laying out the principles that animate the project. These principles have been derived chiefly from international human rights law and practice, and also draw on the scholarly study of science, technology, and the law. Based on these principles, we define a “human rights” approach to the study of technology. Finally, we identify and analyze the cross-cutting themes that unite the book – power and justice, accountability, and the role of private authority – to chart a road map for further study of the relationship between technology and human rights.
This Article argues that this incomplete translation is due to widespread reliance on a fairly narrow understanding of human rights. Human rights, when understood only as a set of legal rules and institutions, inevitably devolves into a debate about reconciling conflicting rights. This is an important conversation, but it is also a limiting one. The emancipatory potential of human rights often lies not in its power as a set of legal rules but in the way in which those rules can be employed by affected individuals to make claims and demand political change.
Using the case study of law and politics around intellectual property mobilization, the Article argues that framing intellectual property in more robust human rights terms is important for challenging the fundamental power structures that undergird the intellectual property regime. The Article then argues that the Marrakesh Treaty—a new treaty that requires states to create mandatory exceptions to copyright to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities—charts a new path for human rights advocacy on intellectual property. This treaty has the potential to lay a foundation for better translation of intellectual property issues into human rights advocacy by identifying a clear violation and by activating domestic human rights advocates. Creating a foundation for affected individuals and human rights advocates to participate in intellectual property lawmaking is essential to realizing the potential of human rights for revising the essential bargains of the international intellectual property system.
This dichotomy is the central tension that animates both this volume and the emerging field of human rights technology. The overriding purpose of the volume, and of the University of Connecticut workshop that launched it, is to encourage human rights institutions, experts, and practitioners to take seriously the risks and opportunities of technology for the promotion and protection of human rights. The volume uses diverse case studies to examine how the dynamic of intertwined threat and opportunity plays out in a range of contexts. Case studies focus on assisted reproductive technologies, autonomous lethal weapons, climate change technology, the Internet and social media, and water meters. Considering the relationship between technology and human rights across these diverse areas reveals areas of both continuity and discontinuity in terms of how technology affects the enjoyment of human rights.
We begin by laying out the principles that animate the project. These principles have been derived chiefly from international human rights law and practice, and also draw on the scholarly study of science, technology, and the law. Based on these principles, we define a “human rights” approach to the study of technology. Finally, we identify and analyze the cross-cutting themes that unite the book – power and justice, accountability, and the role of private authority – to chart a road map for further study of the relationship between technology and human rights.