International Human Rights Law and Political Asylum in Comparative Perspective

拟议的项目将发展一个经经验检验的理论，说明在庇护案件中何时引用国际人权法。它将根据法官依赖或以其他方式引用人权条约的方式，分析自1990年以来英国法院和行政法庭的庇护裁决。将对各项决定进行编码，以确定这些条约的影响是否取决于诸如将条约纳入国内法、庇护申请人的原籍国以及申请人和法官的性别等因素。该项目还包括对英国难民律师的半结构化采访，以确定他们认为在何种情况下援引人权条约有助于或伤害他们的客户。拟议的项目促进社会法律研究的三个相互关联的分支：国际人权条约的效力；人权途径的难民法，并引起律师。它对效力辩论采取了一种微妙的方法，认为人权条约的影响取决于几个因素，包括上述因素，而不是全有或全无。该项目并没有假设这些条约总是有利于难民，而是断言，在某些情况下，它们可能弊大于利。该项目还考察了代表非公民的公益律师如何利用人权法。该项目影响法律宣传、法律培训和法律奖学金。首先，它将确定代表寻求庇护者的律师可以使用国际人权法更有效地为其客户辩护的方法。其次，它将通过将法律学生纳入一个以团队为基础的项目来培养未来的律师，该项目包括经验方法和复杂案例分析的培训。第三，它将促进关于国际法的原则和战略用途的学术辩论，重点是庇护和人权。

The proposed project will develop an empirically-tested theory about when international human rights law is referenced in asylum cases. It will analyze asylum decisions by courts and administrative tribunals since 1990 in the United Kingdom according to the way that judges rely on or otherwise reference human rights treaties. Decisions will be coded in order to determine whether the impact of such treaties depends on factors such as incorporation of the treaty into domestic law, the country of origin of the asylum applicant, and the gender of the applicant and judge. The project also features semi-structured interviews with U.K. refugee lawyers to determine the circumstances under which they believe invoking human rights treaties helps or hurts their clients. The proposed project advances three interrelated branches of socio-legal scholarship: the efficacy of international human rights treaties; the human rights approach to refugee law, and cause lawyering. It takes a nuanced approach toward the efficacy debate, positing that rather than an all or nothing matter, the impact of human rights treaties depends on several factors, including those identified above. Rather than assuming that such treaties invariably benefit refugees, the project asserts that in some cases they may do more harm than good. And the project examines how cause lawyers representing non-citizens utilize human rights law. The project impacts legal advocacy, legal training, and legal scholarship. First, it will identify ways that lawyers representing asylum-seekers might use international human rights law to more effectively advocate for their clients. Second, it will educate future lawyers by incorporating law students into a team-based project that includes training in empirical methods and complex case analysis. And third, it will contribute to the scholarly debate over principled and strategic uses of international law, focusing on asylum and human rights.