Suchergebnisse

Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Belg. 324 m-7

Young seventeen-year-old Joelito Fil?rtiga was taken from his family home in Asunci?n, Paraguay, brutally tortured, and murdered by the Paraguayan police. Breaking Silence is the inside story of the quest for justice by his fatherùthe true target of the policeùParaguayan artist and philanthropist Dr. Joel Fil?rtiga. That cruel death, and the subsequent uncompromising struggle by Joelito's father and family, led to an unprecedented sea change in international law and human rights. The author, Richard Alan White, first became acquainted with the Fil?rtiga family in the mid-1970s while doing research for his dissertation on Paraguayan independence. Answering a distressed letter from Joelito's father, he returned to Paraguay and journeyed with the Fil?rtiga family on their long and difficult road to redress. White gives the reader a compelling first-hand, participant-observer perspective, taking us into the family with him, to give witness to not only their agony and sorrow, but their resolute strength as wellùstrength that led to a groundbreaking 10 million legal decision in Fil?rtiga v. Pe?a. (Americo Norberto Pe?a-Irala was the Paraguayan police officer responsible for Joelito's abduction and murder, whom the Fil?rtigas had arrested after finding him hiding in Brooklyn.) That landmark decision, based on the almost obscure Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, ruled that U.S. courts could accept jurisdiction in international casesùrecognizing the right of foreign human rights victims to sueùeven though the alleged violation occurred in another country by a non-American and against a non-American. So fundamentally has the Fil?rtiga precedent changed the landscape of international human rights law, that it has served as the basis for nearly 100 progeny suits, and grown to encompass not only human rights abuses, but also violations of international

Covers a fascinating period of Theodore Roosevelt's life, his first six years in Washington. Roosevelt the Reformer sheds light on an important chapter in the biography of the flamboyant 26th president of the United States. From 1889 to 1895-before he was a Rough Rider in the Spanish-American War and before he oversaw the building of the Panama Canal and won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize-"Teddy" Roosevelt served as one of three civil service commissioners. This was a significant period of his life because he matured politically and learned how to navigate through Washington politics. He sparred with powerful cabinet officers and congressmen and survived their attempts to destroy him. He cultivated important friendships and allegiances, flourished intellectually, and strengthened his progressive views of social justice, racial theory, and foreign relations. It was a period altogether significant to the honing of administrative talent and intellectual acuity of the future president. Richard White Jr. situates young Roosevelt within the exciting events of the Gilded Age, the Victorian era, and the gay nineties. He describes Roosevelt's relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and adversaries. Many of these people, such as Henry Cabot Lodge, Cecil Spring-Rice, Alfred Mahan, Henry Adams, and John Hay would significantly influence Roosevelt when he later occupied the White House. White explores TR's accomplishments in civil service reform, the effect of the commission experience on his presidency a decade later, and his administrative legacy. In addition to Harvard University's immense collection of Roosevelt correspondence, White drew from original sources such as the Civil Service Commission files in the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the National Park Service Roosevelt Historical Site at Sagamore Hill, and the records of the