Niger’s Failure to Protect Citizen from Enslavement Condemned by African Regional Court

As reported at IntLawGrrls, the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (the ECOWASCommunity Court of Justice) on Monday, October 27th, condemned member state Niger for its failure to protect its citizen Hadijatou Mani from enslavement.  Hadijatou Mani’s story is incredible, though unfortunately, probably not unusual.  At the age of 12, she was sold, for $500, to a master who exploited not only as a physical laborer but as a sexual slave, selling her into a “marriage” with a friend of his, the very man who had put Hadijatou’s mother into slavery years earlier.  Hadijatou sought to marry a different man, but when she sought legal protection, she was instead convicted of bigamy and sentenced to six months in prison.  

When it ruled in favor of Hadijatou Mani on Monday, the ECOWAS court awarded her 15,000 euros (about $19,000, according to IntLawGrrls).  An attorney for Anti-Slavery International, one of the organizations supporting Mani in her fight, observed that the victory demonstrates “that a women of the most disfavored class can make her rights recognized.  It is also a message addressed, notably, to the countries of this region.”  An important message and one that cannot be repeated often enough, given that, as the same LeMonde article reports, approximately 43,000 of Niger’s 12 million inhabitants, and 18 percent of Mauritania’s population, are enslaved.  

Cross-posted at Feminist Law Professors.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court Amends Its Rules to Permit Citation of Unpublished Opinions, with Limitations

As you probably already know, yesterday the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard the petition of the Wisconsin Judicial Council to amend Wisconsin Statue section 809.23(3), to permit citation of unpublished Wisconsin Court of Appeals opinions as persuasive authority.

Beth Hanan, managing member of Gass Weber Mullins and Vice Chair of the Wisconsin Judicial Council, kindly offered the following summary of the hearing and the court’s decision to amend the rule.  (Please note that these are Beth’s own, individual comments and are not the comments or thoughts of the Judicial Council.)

Taking a cautious step into a national trend, yesterday the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted 6:1 to permit citation of unpublished authored appellate decisions, with several limitations.  Amended Wis. Stat. (Rule) s. 809.23(3), like Fed. R. App. P. 32.1, will be prospective only.  This means that parties and courts will be able to cite those unpublished authored opinions which are released on or after the planned effective date of the amended rule, July 1, 2009.  When parties cite such opinions, they will have to file and serve copies of the opinions.  The rule specifically will  provide that parties are not required to cite unpublished opinions.  Finally, the supreme court has ordered that a committee be formed to plan the roll out of the rule and devise a means of tracking its effectiveness or particular difficulties it may create.  Those statistics will be used by the court to review the rule three years after its adoption.

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“Nucular” and “Nuclear” and So-Called Standard English

As a legal writing professor, one part of my job is to help students who didn’t grow up speaking or writing “Standard English” continue adapting their writing to meet the expectations of employers and clients.  Of course, to get through college, many students have already made changes in the way they use English.  But some students come to law school with additional work to be done.  In fact, at least for me, the effort to consciously conform my English speaking and writing patterns to expectations different from those I grew up with never really ends.  

So, like the blogger in this post at frogs and ravens (which I reached via feministlawprof), whatever criticisms I might make of Sarah Palin, jabs at her speech patterns rub me the wrong way.  As frogs and ravens points out, “How you pronounce a word says nothing about your character, your intelligence, your values, or your education.  All it says is whether you are (a) one of the lucky people who grew up speaking ‘the right way’ as your native accent, (b) one of the people who did not, or (c) one of the people who did not and makes a conscious effort to abandon the speech patterns of their childhood to fit in with the expectations of others.”  And it seems somewhat ironic, and, well, dumb, that the prejudice against “regional and working-class accents” enables a candidate “to distance herself from her upper-middle-class lifestyle, her position of power, and her lofty ambitions” just by the way she pronounces words.

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