International Human Rights Law and Political Asylum in Comparative Perspective

拟议的项目将制定一个关于在庇护案件中何时引用国际人权法的经过实践检验的理论。它将根据法官依赖或以其他方式参考人权条约的方式，分析联合王国法院和行政法庭自1990年以来作出的庇护决定。将对决定进行编码，以确定这些条约的影响是否取决于条约是否纳入国内法、庇护申请人的原籍国以及申请人和法官的性别等因素。该项目还包括与英国的半结构化访谈。难民律师需要确定在何种情况下他们认为援引人权条约会帮助或伤害他们的当事人。拟议的项目推进了社会法律学术的三个相互关联的分支：国际人权条约的效力;难民法的人权办法，以及律师事业。 它对效力辩论采取了微妙的方法，认为人权条约的影响取决于几个因素，包括上文所述的因素，而不是全有或全无的问题。 该项目并没有假定这些条约总是有利于难民，而是断言，在某些情况下，这些条约可能弊大于利。 该项目还研究了代表非公民的律师如何利用人权法。 该项目影响法律的宣传、法律的培训和法律的奖学金。第一，它将确定寻求庇护者的律师如何利用国际人权法更有效地为其当事人辩护。第二，它将通过将法律学生纳入一个以团队为基础的项目来教育未来的律师，该项目包括经验方法和复杂案例分析的培训。第三，它将有助于对国际法的原则性和战略性应用进行学术辩论，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.