On December 6

On this day in ...

... 1947 (65 years ago today), President Harry S. Truman dedicated Everglades National Park, thus setting aside for conservation 1.5 million acres of wetlands and subtropical wilderness in south Florida. His dedication speech lavished praise on the site:

'Here is land, tranquil in its quiet beauty, serving not as the source of water, but as the last receiver of it. To its natural abundance we owe the spectacular plant and animal life that distinguishes this place from all others in our country.'

To this day, the park is home to threatened species like the Florida panther and the American crocodile, to multiple fish and wading birds, and to a huge mangrove forest. (credit for photos here and here)

(Prior December 6 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

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'After DiMeglio’s debut in the scrimmage, a game in which she was untouched, she brought cookies and dessert to her offensive line.'

– A tasty tidbit about a woman's touch, in a New York Times article about 17-year-old Erin DiMeglio, who this season became the 1st girl to play quarterback in a high school football game in the football-frenzied state of Florida.

Miami county: Right to be free of domestic violence

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Miami-Dade County has become the first in the United States to recognize that the protection from domestic violence is a fundamental human right.
Titled Resolution Expressing The Board’s Intent To Declare That The Freedom From Domestic Violence Is A Fundamental Human Right – it was passed, unanimously, by the Board of County Commissioners on July 17.
Personifying the day-to-day reality for domestic violence victims, the resolution outlines the effect of domestic violence on communities within Miami Dade – the psychological, financial, and physical effects, to name a few. The resolution thus:
► Compares the number of domestic violence offenses in the county in 2011 (9,313) with the number of arrests (about half).
► Cites the huge number of crisis hotline and direct service calls for assistance, and notes how domestic violence disproportionately impacts women with low income, women of color, and women who have disabilities.
► Emphasizes that local governments “bear a moral responsibility to secure this human right on behalf of their residents.”
► Concludes with a call to action for the government of Miami-Dade County: the resolution “serves as a charge” to all government agencies in Miami-Dade to incorporate its principles into their policies and practices.

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Introducing the measure – was Commissioner Sally A. Heyman (right), a longtime advocate for domestic violence victims. She coauthored the resolution along with my students at University of Miami School of Law Human Rights Clinic, Rashanda McCollum and Michael Stevenson. In addition to working with Commissioner Heyman, the students engaged with domestic violence advocacy groups across south Florida, gathering insight as to their shared goals and the most effective means by which to accomplish them.After the resolution’s passage, Commissioner Heyman and Michael Stevenson co-authored an op-ed that was published in the Miami Herald.
Miami-Dade follows in the footsteps of actions by 2 other local governments; specifically, an October 2011 Cincinnati resolution and a March 2012 Baltimore resolution. Professors Margaret Drew, then at the University of Cincinnati, and Leigh Goodmark, of the University of Baltimore, worked tirelessly with their clinic students and local city council members on those resolutions.
Other jurisdictions may soon follow suit.
At a recent clinicians’ conference sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools, Professor Goodmark and I led an “affinity group” of approximately 20 clinicians interested in initiating Domestic Violence and Human Rights Resolution Projects in their cities, municipalities, and states.
Moving forward following the resolution’s unanimous passage, Miami Law’s Human Rights Clinic students hope to engage local police departments and other government agencies to help realize and implement the resolution’s stated goal: to join world leaders in declaring that domestic violence is a human rights concern, and that local governments act as the first line of defense.

(Sincere thanks to Michael Stevenson for his gracious assistance in drafting this blog post.)

Incoming Foreign Relations chair

The arrival in January of the 112th Congress is slated to bring the 1st woman chair of the Foreign Relations Committee of either house of Congress.*
Moving from ranking minority member to chair will be U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (left).
In the United States since age 7, when her family fled her birthplace, Cuba, Ros-Lehtinen has served in Congress since 1989. As described by the Associated Press, her South Florida district "includes parts of Miami's Little Havana and the tourist-dependent and gay friendly Miami Beach and Florida Keys." That combination makes for the occasional unexpected position -- unlike many Republicans, she voted to repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell."
On many other issues, however, Ros-Lehtinen is likely to be a thorn in the side of policies favored by the administration of President Barack Obama. Examples of expected points of contention:
► She'll "resist any White House attempts to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu."
► She "may try to chip away at the president's executive order" -- about which we've posted -- "allowing foreign aid for international groups that provide information about abortion services."
► She'd "like U.S. contributions to the U.N. to be voluntary until the U.S. creates an office to audit U.N. activities for transparency and eliminate waste." She's particularly critical of the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose members include countries like China, Saudia Arabia -- and the country with which she's expected to oppose any U.S. dialogue, Cuba. _____________________________

* A far cry from the "leadership" posts women tended to hold not so long ago -- more than 1 Congresswoman was chair of the House Beauty Shop Committee.

On September 8

On this day in ...
... 1565 (445 years ago today),"with many banners spread, to the sound of trumpets and salutes of artillery," according to a contemporary journal, a Spanish "general took formal possession of the country in the name of his Majesty" -- the country being what is now the United States. The landing took place at what is now St. Augustine (right), a city on the northeastern coast of Florida. (credit for 1589 map) The event marked establishment of the 1st continuously occupied European settlement in North America, then inhabited by the peoples now called Native Americans.


(Prior September 8 posts are here, here, and here.)

State Efforts on Climate Change

Florida’s governor released drafts of three new executive orders that would attempt to address the state’s greenhouse gas emissions more aggressively. One of them is modeled on California’s vehicle emissions regulations, an approach that an increasing number of states are attempting. These regulations face preemption problems, an issue that California has tried to address through a long-neglected waiver request to the EPA. Governor Schwarzenegger has indicated that he will file suit under the Clean Air Act and Administrative Procedure Act if the EPA fails to act upon its request by the end of October, 2007.
As noted on the Warming Law blog, the Supreme Court’s ruling Massachusetts v. EPA helps to create a more fertile environment for state action on climate change. But these developments, especially in the broader context of state and local behavior, raise interesting questions about international and transnational regulation of climate change, as I have argued in recent scholarship. Namely, when we face problems like climate change that are foundationally multiscalar and can only be addressed through action by a range of state and nonstate actors at multiple levels of governance, what is the most appropriate way for law to treat them? And more specific to this example, how should executive, legislative, and judicial action by states—combined with their participation in national and international policy networks—fit within a model of international legal governance?

Elian Gonzalez redux?

Though some attempt to play it down, there are some disturbing parallels between the Elian Gonzalez saga and the recent case in which Florida’s Department of Children and Families is seeking to give custody to a Cuban-American family rather than a young girl’s father, still living in Cuba. In Elian’s case, he arrived in the United States after most of the occupants of the boat, including his mother, died at sea. The federal government ultimately decided that the then-five year old boy could not seek asylum through his distant Miami relatives and returned him to his father in Cuba. The saga and the famous picture of federal agents taking custody of the boy may have swayed enough Cuban-American votes to affect the 2000 vote in Florida. (Can we hold Elian responsible for the George W. Bush presidency?) (The opponents of returning him were right about one thing: he became a useful symbol for the Castro regime, though there was surely no resolution that would allow him a normal life out of the media spotlight.)
The new case is a state case, triggered by the removal of the girl from the custody of her mother, after she stopped taking her psychiatric medicine. Because of the different legal context, less is known. The dependency court judge has issued a gag order and it is unclear how any information was leaked to the local Miami paper. But there seems to be a disturbing parallel distortion of the usual legal standards because the father is a Cuban in Cuba.
Ordinarily a parent has a right to custody absent a showing of harm to a child; the test is not, as reported, whether another family is “more fit” than the father to raise her, as child welfare authorities are quoted as saying; the Supreme Court in Troxel v Granville indicated that the US Constitution requires such deference. The Florida officials seem disposed to avoid this rule by suggesting that the father may be unfit because he did not act in Cuba to safeguard the child from the mother’s abusive behavior. Whether that is even true depends on facts about what happened on the island – yet the stories do not indicate if she were abusive then, only that she was in the United States after she “stopped taking her psychiatric medicine” at some time after she arrived. Similarly, the same authorities, who seem to think they can know what happened years ago in Cuba, have simultaneously expressed unwillingness to place the child with her father because they are distrustful of the home study done in Cuba by an independent agency. Meanwhile, the father may be disadvantaged because of legal impediments – whether from US or Cuban authorities – that have prevented him from appearing in person at the Florida court hearings.
As a feminist and a student of transnational family law, I wonder if the “best interests of the child” requires or permits American agencies and courts to apply our law to cases involving foreign parents, uninflected by a recognition of different laws and cultures. It may indeed be true that the father has neglected or abandoned his daughter under criteria that are not parochial, or that his home is sufficiently bad that his daughter should instead be placed with legal strangers by an American agency whose record of protecting children, while recognizing the the interests of parents leaves much to be desired.
There is reason for concern, however. The Hague Convention on Child Abduction would have provided significant protection for the father, if Cuba were a party. It might yet provide a model for what the Florida courts could do in the interests of comity. Then again, this isn’t simply a transnational family law dispute – it may, unavoidably, be another chapter in the battle of the Cuban government vs. the Cuban exile community in South Florida.

(Posted by Mary I. Coombs under the name of her transnational foremother, Charming Betsy)