The COVID-19 pandemic placed a microscope over many social justice issues at the local, national, and international level. 2021 has also seen an array of global events with great impact on human rights. From the rise of human trafficking, global displacement due to civil unrest, disparities in vaccine accessibility, to challenges to women’s rights—all these issues reflect an immediate need for legal aid, advocacy, and relief for those who are the most disadvantaged. For those interested in learning about legal advocacy for the advancement of human rights and efforts to expand access to justice worldwide, HeinOnline now features the Open Society Justice Initiative database.
The Open Society Justice Initiative is a project of the Open Society Foundations, the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights. According to their website, the Open Society Foundations “established the Justice Initiative in 2003 to provide expert legal support for its broader mission and values through strategic human rights litigation and other legal work.” The Open Society Justice Initiative publishes reports, handbooks, briefing, papers, and fact sheets as part of its mission to employ litigation, advocacy, and legal empowerment to defend justice and human rights. In addition to publishing, the Justice Initiative provides expert legal support and representation in domestic and international legal procedures.
The HeinOnline Open Society Justice Initiative database currently provides access to over 300 titles of Open Society Justice Initiative publications. Topics include access to justice, citizenship, civic space, climate, corruption, criminal justice, discrimination, economic justice, national security and counterterrorism, and the rule of law. More specifically, the database’s resources focus on the following areas of law as they relate to the broader topics: pretrial detention, atrocity and/or war crimes, ethnic profiling, human rights violations, statelessness, and access to legal aid in the face of any of these traumatic situations.
Select issues of Justice Initiatives, an in-house publication by the Open Society Justice Initiative, are uploaded to the database. For example, the Arrest Rights Briefs series of Justice Initiatives features issues on The Right to Information and The Right to Legal Aid. The articles and reports found in these issues may be useful for anyone wanting to be informed about their human rights when interacting with law enforcement.
Individual works including articles, reports, and other publications produced for the Open Society Justice Initiative are also available on the database. The following offer a glimpse into the types of works that are available, which may be of interest to researchers:
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James Goldston, 2006. Ethnic Profiling and Counter-Terrorism: Trends, Dangers and Alternatives. Brussels: The Open Society Justice Initiative and the Anti-Racism and Diversity Intergroup, European Parliament. Access link.
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Open Society Justice Initiative, 2014. Presumption of Guilt: The Global Overuse of Pretrial Detention. New York: Open Society Foundations. Access link.
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Open Society Justice Initiative, 2021. Who Polices the Police? The Role of Independent Agencies in Criminal Investigations of State Agents. New York: Open Society Foundations. Access link.
As mentioned, the Open Society Justice Initiative provides domestic and international legal representation for individuals and groups affected by human rights violations. The HeinOnline Open Society Justice Initiative database provides select briefing papers and court documents from the International Criminal Court, an intergovernmental tribunal established by treaty (the Rome Statute). The Justice Initiative represents many individuals and groups before the ICC in criminal cases that involve one or more of the four international crimes established by the ICC: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Several reports and other trial documents of high-profile international criminal cases are available in the Open Society Justice Initiative database, as well as on their Voices blog in the “Case Watch” series.
HeinOnline offers many options for accessing scholarship and resources on human rights and legal advocacy. The Civil Rights and Social Justice database was also recently added and features publications focused on civil rights and social justice history. The Criminal Justice Journals database is another good place to start for researchers interested in the intersection between the law and human rights.
For information on acquiring remote access to HeinOnline through the Harris County Robert W. Hainsworth Library website, check out this blog post from September 15, 2020. If you have questions, ask a librarian for further assistance.
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