In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

24 Apr

[Austen Parrish is the Interim Dean and a Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles.] With Kiobel, the general mood among those in the human rights community is pessimistic. Because it curtails use of the Alien Tort Statute, viewing the decision as a loss is tempting. From this perspective, Kiobel is another indication that the Court continues to reinvent itself with a particular...

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24 Apr

Clashes have escalated on the Syria-Lebanon border, causing worries that Lebanon will be pulled further into the Syrian conflict.   The French Parliament passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage and extended the right to adopt children to same-sex couples as well, making France the 14th country in the world to do so. India is alleging that a Chinese platoon has entered its Ladakh...

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23 Apr

[Beth Stephens is a Professor at Rutgers Law] As a late-arrival to this Insta-Symposium, I find that many of my thoughts about the Kiobel opinion have already been expressed. Corporate defendants won an important victory in Kiobel, at least for foreign corporations with no more than a “mere corporate presence” in the United States. I had not predicted that the justices...

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23 Apr

Longtime readers know that I have often criticized (unfairly in many readers' eyes) the snail's pace of dispute resolution before the International Court of Justice.  I respect the ICJ as an institution, but I have never thought it has lived up to its potential as the "principal judicial organ" of the United Nations.  On the other hand, I will give...

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23 Apr

[Roger L. Phillips is an international criminal law practitioner. He also maintains Communis Hostis Omnium, a blog about maritime piracy. This post is cross-posted there.] The majority opinion in Kiobel precludes Alien Tort Statute claims for foreign conduct against foreign victims, leaving a small door for potential future claims that involve extraterritorial conduct so long as they touch and concern US territorial...

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23 Apr

In addition to the Ku/Yoo essay in Forbes, I'll just point out two more positive takes on Kiobel from FOBs (friends of the Blog). In Lawfare, John Bellinger expresses satisfaction with the Roberts opinion, and takes some credit for raising the presumption against extraterritoriality issue in government briefs during the Bush Administration and in the first round of Kiobel briefing.  He...

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23 Apr

Today at 4:00 p.m. EST, a hearing will take place in the US Senate entitled: Drone Wars: The Constitutional and Counterterrorism Implications of Targeted Killings; you can watch it on the webcast live. Lawfare has highlighted five ways to reform the targeted killing program ahead of today's hearing. A car bomb has exploded outside the French embassy in Tripoli. In an already tense diplomatic...

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23 Apr

Professor David Kaye has a thoughtful essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs analyzing the growing level of cooperation between the U.S. and the ICC.   He correctly notes that the U.S. is not only no longer actively hostile, but it has taken various steps in recent years to actively support the work of the ICC (most notably in Uganda against...

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22 Apr

This time it is about general personal jurisdiction of a foreign parent corporation based on alleged human rights violations of one subsidiary in a foreign country and unrelated activities of another subsidiary within the forum. The question presented in Daimler Chrysler AG v. Bauman is as follows: Daimler AG is a German public stock company that does not manufacture or sell...

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22 Apr

"[E]ven where the claims touch and concern the territory of the United States, they must do so with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritorial application. Corporations are often present in many countries, and it would reach too far to say that mere corporate presence suffices." That is the operative language in Kiobel. Which raises the question, if mere...

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