Faculty Bibliography

The electoral successes of right-wing populists since 2016 have unsettled world politics. The spread of populism poses dangers for human rights within each country, and also threatens the international system for protecting human rights. Human Rights in a Time of Populism examines causes, consequences, and responses to populism in a global context from a human rights perspective. It combines legal analysis with insights from political science, international relations, and political philosophy. Authors make practical recommendations on how the human rights challenges caused by populism should be confronted. This book, with its global scope, international human rights framing, and inclusion of leading experts, will be of great interest to human rights lawyers, political scientists, international relations scholars, actors in the human rights system, and general readers concerned by recent developments.

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Boumediene v. Bush elaborates a 'functional approach" to the selective application of constitutional limitations to U.S. government action outside U.S. sovereign territory. This functional approach provides the best fit, both descriptively and normatively, to the Court's modern case law. The decision repudiates the stance of the plurality in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, which sought to deny all constitutional rights to foreign nationals involuntarily subjected to U.S. action abroad. Important ambiguities remain in the articulation of the functional approach. One major question is whether and when foreign nationals who are not in U.S. custody (unlike the Boumediene petitioners) are also potentially eligible for constitutional protection. Another concerns how coarsely or finely the categories of foreign locations are drawn when the functional analysis is applied. The confirmation of the functional approach has significant consequences for U.S. citizens who travel abroad and for foreign nationals who travel here, as well as for foreign nationals who remain abroad. Although the Supreme Court did not rely on international law in its Boumediene decision, international human rights law may prove helpful in the future in determining whether limitations such as the First Amendment or the Takings Clause can practicably be given effect in foreign countries.