1 page, abstract only, Food law, including traditional food safety regulation, antihunger programs, and food system worker protections, has received increased attention in recent years as a distinct field of study. Bringing together these disparate areas of law under a single lens provides an opportunity to understand the role of law in shaping what we eat (what food is produced and where it is distributed), how much we eat, and how we think about food. The food system is rife with problems— endemic hunger, worker exploitation, massive environmental externalities, and diet-related disease. Looked at in a piecemeal fashion, elements of food law appear responsive to these problems. Looked at as a whole, however, food law appears instead to entrench the existing structures of power that generate these problems.
This Article offers a novel conceptual critique of the food system. It argues that food law is built on two contradictory myths: the myth of the helpless consumer who needs government protections from food producers and the myth of the responsible consumer who needs no government protection and can take on the food system’s many problems herself. The first myth is self-actualizing, as the laws that it justifies disempower food consumers and producers. The second myth is self-defeating, as the legal structures that assume consumer responsibility impede meaningful consumer choice.
Food law, as it is shaped by these myths, constructs powerlessness by homogenizing— or erasing diversity within—the food system, paralyzing consumers through information control, and polarizing various food system constituents who might otherwise collaborate on reform. Ultimately, food law is designed to thwart food sovereignty. By revealing how the structures of food law itself obstruct reform, this Article also identifies a path forward toward true food sovereignty.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
306 p., This dissertation concentrates on the relationship between law, literature, and slavery in the Hispanic Caribbean of the Early Modern Period. The analysis is based on two letters and a treatise, Resolución sobre la libertad de los negros y sus originarios, en estado de paganos y después ya cristianos (1681), that were written by Capuchin friar Francisco José de Jaca, while he was serving as a missionary in the Caribbean region. His writings set the stage for a discussion of how Spanish hegemonic legal thinking is challenged and redefined from an alternative transatlantic narrative.
We must continue to support one another for the future of our community. We need to see more African American leaders coming into the Haitian community, not just during election time but throughout the year. We need to see more solid commitment on the part of the Haitian community also to join different causes in the African American community. These are the only ways we can overcome in this struggle for equality. If we continue to treat our political interests as separate entities, we will never get to partake of the ftuits of democracy. Concerned citizens and political officials in both communities need to let people know that we don't have a Haitian/African American problem. I would hope that the Haitian community can realize that just because Mr. Duke, an African American, was defeated by Mr. [Joe Celestin], a Haitian, that Haitians are not "better" or "tougher" or "stronger" than the African American community. Likewise, the African American community needs the growing Haitian vote in the future. Haitian and African American people are one race, living through different cultural lifestyles. It's okay to have different lifestyles, as long as we respect each others' differences, without animosity or violence. For instance, the Latin community is comprised of Spanish-speaking people from different countries: Cuba, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, etc. Does anyone think that these groups are in complete harmony with one another? The answer is no. The different Spanish-speaking groups do not like one another that much but, in reality, when it comes to standing up for a common cause you see them marching side by side, taking pictures with each other and voting for each other.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
10 p., In this submission, prepared for the Universal Periodic Review of Haiti in October 2011, Amnesty International raises concerns that key institutions for implementing reform of the judicial system have still not been established. The state has failed to provide security forces with adequate training and supervision in relation to the use of force. Haitian law does not provide a protective framework for children's rights. Hundreds of thousands of people have been left homeless by the earthquake; and at the end of 2010, nearly a million people were still living in appalling conditions in camps.
Seventeen years after Guyana introduced a positive, liberal abortion law, the government, professional bodies and civil society together have failed to give any leadership in implementing that law. How can one explain that after an outstanding campaign of extensive ministerial and parliamentary consultation, as well as widespread engagement from religious organisations and the media, so little has been done by way of implementing the law? This paper seeks to trace some aspects of the campaign for law reform and to learn from the difficulties of providing services over the last seventeen years.
