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Search: Kiobel

19 Apr

[Doug Cassel is an Emeritus Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School.] The unanimous jurisdictional ruling of the United Kingdom Supreme Court in Vedanta Resources PLC and another v Lungowe and others , issued April 10, is the most important judicial decision in the field of business and human rights since the jurisdictional ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum in 2013.  But the difference between the two cases is night and day: whereas Kiobel drastically curtailed the jurisdiction of US courts, Vedanta...
19.04.19 | |

21 Nov

Last week the Ninth Circuit issued a controversial opinion in Mujica v. Airscan, Inc., that sharply limits the scope of human rights litigation. The claims in Mujica arose in Colombia and allegedly implicate corporate collusion with the Colombian military. Following Kiobel the common consensus was that Alien Tort Statute litigation would be severely curtailed based on the presumption against extraterritoriality. Not surprisingly, the Ninth Circuit rejected the Plaintiffs’ claims, finding that where the only connection to the United States was the Defendants’ nationality, the claims do not “touch and concern”...
21.11.14 | |

31 Mar

This week many of our readers will have attended ASIL’s 106th Annual Meeting. If you weren’t in Washington DC, we brought you Harold Hongju Koh’s statement regarding Syria (with the possibility to comment here). Deborah Pearlstein drew conclusions for further research from the panel on international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Via ASIL Cables, you could also read Joanne Mariner’s summary of the 2012 Grotius Lecture and Tai-Heng Cheng’s interview with James Crawford. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Kiobel to reopen the argument on...
31.03.12 | |

24 Nov

[Samuel Moyn is professor of law and history at Harvard University. He is on Twitter at @peiresc.] During the absorbing litigation that led to the death of Alien Tort Statute litigation a couple of years ago, one of the most fascinating moments occurred late, and it has not been mentioned since. In the Second Circuit phase of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Judge José Cabranes had contended that the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg proved there was no norm in customary international law of corporate civil liability. If so, he...
24.11.14 | |

01 May

...National courts rarely if ever address such issues, and thus the decision is important both for its rarity and for what it says. In this post, I’ll address issues relevant to the substance – Israel’s presence in the West Bank. In the next post I’ll deal with the “Kiobel” issues raised by the case – corporate liability, the value of American ATS cases, and so forth. I should note at the outset that what follows is based on a rough translation of the opinion and my vague French; I would...
01.05.13 | |

26 Nov

...limits his call for criminal prosecutions to those filed against local corporations. Claims against domestic corporations may survive Kiobel, which left open the possibility that some claims might “touch and concern the United States with sufficient force” to overcome the presumption against extraterritoriality. It is not yet clear what degree of domestic conduct by a U.S. corporation is sufficient to trigger ATS jurisdiction. Most inexplicably, Stewart ignores the role of the ATS as part of a global accountability movement that views criminal prosecutions as a key option. He criticizes (unnamed)...
26.11.14 | |

11 Apr

...Court in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell: the fact that other countries do not permit similar civil suits does not mean the United States should also close its courthouse doors. In fact, it is a good reason to keep them open. But I found Judge Leval’s advice for foreign countries that might enact their own version of the ATS most interesting and revealing. Human rights advocates should try to allay predictable objections to countries’ opening their courts. They should start by drafting proposed legislation with modest and realistic goals, building...
11.04.13 | |

02 Oct

Oral arguments were heard yesterday for the second time before the US Supreme Court in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum; the transcript can be found here. You can already read the preliminary thoughts from a few of our regulars Roger, Deborah and Peter, and as Julian mentioned, starting today, we will have a roundtable discussion from a variety of guest contributors about their thoughts on the re-argumentation. Amid sanctions from Western nations, Iran’s rial currency plunged more than 25% in the last week. Geopolitics and resources have put maritime disputes,...
02.10.12 | |

01 Nov

...be found guilty of crimes. Several cases involve the charge that a multinational corporation aided and abetted the governments of Myanmar and South Africa in violating human rights. Several courts have upheld the idea that they could be but the Court of Appeals opinion in Kiobel has gone against the stream.The NMT cases do not clarify this; corporate managers but not their employers were found guilty then. Thus Nuremberg lives, making its presence felt right down to today.The NMTs also live in another sense: the Harvard Law School library is...
01.11.11 | |

16 Jul

[Zachary Clopton is the Public Law Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.] For decades, scholars and practitioners of international law in the United States have focused on the federal courts. The combination of diversity, alienage, federal question, and Alien Tort Statute (ATS) jurisdiction largely justified this focus. But in the wake of decisions such as Morrison and Kiobel, some of these scholars and practitioners have turned to state courts and state law to vindicate international norms (1, 2). To give one example, New York state courts are adjudicating...
16.07.14 | |

21 Sep

...the first day of oral arguments. A German court has ruled in favor of Microsoft on a patent case involving the sale of several Motorola products in Germany and the US. ASIL has posted an Insight entitled The UN Arms Trade Treaty: Temporarily Holstered (.pdf). As the US Supreme Court readies for new rounds of oral argument in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum on October 1, International Law Grrls offers a post discussing the assorted viewpoints in the case. And for those looking for something to watch perhaps over the...
21.09.12 | |

20 Feb

...the broadest possible grounds so as to preserve executive flexibility to the greatest extend possible.” After the executive branch takes a position in the context of litigation, that interpretation can be quite difficult to change. I witnessed this dynamic first hand when I served as Harold’s Counselor on International Law at the State Department and participated in the interagency process that produced the two amicus briefs for the United States in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. With respect to the question of corporate liability for human rights violations, which posed...
20.02.18 | |