Talk:Seddie/@comment-4233280-20120529183909/@comment-3247345-20120530034650

Well, a criminal defense lawyer fights for a criminal defendant's human rights. In some cases a personal injury lawyer helps seek damages for human rights violations. For example, police brutality is rampant in this country. The cops like to brutalize minorities in particular. You could specialize in civil rights litigation, where you sue police departments in federal court under civil rights legislation. There's a lot of money in that kind of work because the awards tend to be large and you get a portion of the award. International law is also a possibility, but international law is a joke. It's also very competitive because demand for international lawyers is tiny. There's two way you could go with international law. You could be an international lawyer for the state department, where you represent the US before international treaty monitoring bodies and defend against accusations of human rights violations before international tribunals. The other way to go is to represent people who claim to be victims of human rights abuses before international tribunals. But the thing is, it's pretty much pointless. The only international tribunal the US government allows its citizens to appeal to is the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Whenever the IACHR finds against the US and awards damages, the US governent just ignores it. So if you're representing the government, it doesn't matter if you lose your case because the goverment won't obey the international tribunal. If you're representing the victim, you're wasting your time because even if you win the government won't obey the verdict. If you're representing the US before treaty monitoring bodies, you're basically there to present a report about how the US is giving effect to the treaty in question (like the International Convenanant on Civil and Political Rights). There you're there to find legal justifications for the US position on how to interpret the treaty. You're basically parroting the US goverment line in that case while the treaty body criticizes the government. As for trying to enforce human rights treaties in state and federal court, don't bother. They're non self executing, which mean they can't be enforced in court. In short, international law is a joke because there's no way to enforce judgments of international tribunals.