During a briefing at the Democratic National Convention, Tyson provided few details about the proposal, such as whether sanctions could be imposed on nations found to be in violation of the body's environmental rules.
The Handschu guidelines came out of landmark lawsuit the lawyers filed and a subsequent 1985 court settlement that set strict time limits for investigations, imposed rules on the kinds of records police could keep and created a three-person body to oversee such investigations.
Historians, meanwhile, note that in past ages, as well as in countries such as Saudi Arabia today, the relatively thin bodyof accepted sharia laws has in practice needed bolstering by secular rules.