City by City, Local Domestic Violence Resolutions Bring Human Rights Home

In 2011, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a favorable decision for the petitioner in Lenahan v. United States.  The Commission found that the United States violated Jessica Lenahan’s human rights when it endorsed the failure of Castle Rock, Colorado to enforce Lenahan’s order of protection against her estranged husband — a failure that led to the tragic deaths of Lenahan’s three daughters.

Yet that decision would have remained just words on a page were it not for the determination of Lenahan, her litigation team, and advocates around the country, particularly law school clinics and students, to use this decision to make a real difference on the ground.  Advocates mounted a novel strategy to implement the IACHR decision at the local level, resolution-by-resolution, in U.S. cities.  Five years after the favorable IACHR decision, there are now 28 local resolutions or proclamations adopted across the country.   The most recent resolutions, from such disparate cities as Dallas, Texas (2015), and Iowa City, Iowa (2016), are available with the rest on the tracking  webpage developed by the Cornell Gender Justice Clinic, the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, and the Miami Law Human Rights Clinic.   

In addition to promoting the resolutions, advocates are also working on next steps in their implementation.  For example, the Cornell clinic recently released a Model Domestic Violence and the Workplace policy and toolkit for public and private employers, an idea that grew out of discussions with legislators during the resolution process.

Kudos to the many advocates, law professors, law students and Jessica Lenahan herself, who for the past five years have continued to expand the impact of the IACHR’s decision through their dogged commitment to protect women’s human rights to be free from violence.