Human rights in the United States : beyond exceptionalism
Foreword: are Americans human? Reflections on the future of progressive politics in the United States Dorothy Q. Thomas 1. Paradoxes and possibilities: domestic human rights policy in context Kathryn Libal and Shareen Hertel Part I. Structuring Debates, Institutionalizing Rights: 2. The yellow sweatshirt: human dignity and economic human rights in advanced industrialized democracies Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann 3. The welfare state: a battleground for human rights Mimi Abramovitz 4. Drawing lines in the sand: building economic and social rights in the United States Cathy Albisa 5. State and local commissions as sites for domestic human rights implementation Risa Kaufman Part II. Challenging Public/Private Divides: 6. The curious resistance to seeing domestic violence as a human rights violation in the United States Sally Engle Merry and Jessica Shimmin 7. At the crossroads: children's rights and the US government Jonathan Todres 8. Entrenched inequity: healthcare in the United States Jean Connolly Carmalt, Sarah Zaidi and Alicia Ely Yamin 9. Business and human rights: a new approach to advancing environmental justice in the United States Joanne Bauer Part III. From the Margins to the Center: Making Harms Visible through Human Rights Framing: 10. The law and politics of US participation in the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities Michael Ashley Stein and Janet E. Lord 11. The anomaly of citizenship for indigenous rights Bethany R. Berger 12. Human rights violations as obstacles to escaping poverty: the case of lone mother-headed families Ken Neubeck 13. The human rights of children in conflict with the law: lessons for the US human rights movement Mie Lewis 14. LGBT rights as human rights in the United States: opportunities lost Julie Mertus 15. No shelter: disaster politics in Louisiana and the struggle for human rights Davida Finger and Rachel E. Luft.
Monitoring State Fulfillment of Economic and Social Rights Obligations in the United States
This article adapts the economic and social rights fulfillment index (SERF Index) developed by Fukuda-Parr, Lawson-Remer, and Randolph to assess the extent to which each of the 50 US states fulfills the economic and social rights obligations set forth in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It then extends the index to incorporate discrimination and examines differences in economic and social rights fulfillment by race and sex within each of the states. The overall SERF Index score varies between states from below 70% to almost 85%, with wider variation on some of the six substantive rights that comprise the overall SERF Index score. The findings reveal limited sex discrimination but pronounced race discrimination.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1