Search: Kiobel

...States Supreme Court in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum in 2013”, and despite the cautionary or critical stances on issues of access to justice, pointed out by Gabrielle Holly and Lucas Roorda, Cassel might be right. Not least because this is “the first decision by any superior court in the world directly on this issue.” (McCorquodale) Indeed, it is in its clarification of the applicable standard of duty of care of parent companies in respect to the external stakeholders of their subsidiaries where the main substantive contribution of the Vedanta...

...criticism can be levied at the potential for claims of corporate abuse to be heard in either a corporation’s “home” courts or in a jurisdiction that welcomes such claims (in the wake of Kiobel it seems that the United States might no longer qualify as such a jurisdiction, although if the dispute “touches and concerns” the United States its courts might still be open). In practice they would siphon off from domestic courts disputes that might otherwise have been resolved locally. Domestic courts would then lose both the opportunity to...

The US Supreme Court begins its new term today and will hear re-argumentation in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. SCOTUS Blog offers insight into what is at stake and for whom in this case. After 10 years’ imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, Omar Khadr was repatriated to Canada, where he will serve the rest of his sentence. At the UN General Assembly, several leaders of the Muslim world questioned the Western notion of freedom of speech in light of the recent film sparking protests and violence across the Middle East. Also...

Much of my work focuses on international sources theory, not exactly the material for a scintillating, timely blogpost, and I initially thought I should probably spare you my thoughts on it. (As a footnote, an early draft of my entry-level job talk paper was titled, “Taking Opinio Juris Seriously.” I understand this had some of the OJ members on hiring committees pretty excited – Vindication! – at least until the read the piece…) But then came the cert. grant in Kiobel, the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Sarei v. Rio Tinto...

...executed Edgar Tamayo, a Mexican national, earlier this week; Roger posed the question about whether the presumption against extraterritoriality only apply to the alien tort statute or also to the underlying federal common law claims in the Kiobel decision and Kevin gave us his new e-mail address as he transitions to SOAS in London. Additionally we’ve featured stellar guest posts: one from Chantal Meloni, analyzing the latest communication to the International Criminal Court about allegations of torture carried out by UK forces against Iraqi detainees from 2004-2008; a piece from...

...Court of Justice against Chile to regain access to the Pacific Coast it lost in a 1904 Treaty concluded after the War of the Pacific of the 1880s. Eric Posner has a column on Kiobel over at Slate. Eager not to be left at a competitive disadvantage after the EU lifted economic sanctions earlier this week, the acting USTR is travelling to Myanmar to discuss a framework agreement on trade and investment. The UK has signed a mutual legal assistance agreement with Jordan, which, according to the Home Secretary, includes...

We have invited several academic luminaries to post here at Opinio Juris over the next few days about the ongoing situation in Syria. We also are going to follow in our own footsteps from our Kiobel symposium, by inviting young academics and practitioners to submit guests posts for possible publication. We can’t guarantee we will publish every post submitted, but we would love to broaden the discussion to include new and emerging voices. So if you want to write a guest post for Opinio Juris about Syria of approximately 500...

[Anthony J. Colangelo is an Assistant Professor of Law at SMU Dedman School of Law] I summarized in a previous post my arguments that the presumption against extraterritoriality should not apply to the ATS to the extent courts use international law incorporated into U.S. common law as the rule of decision. The presumption was raised explicitly by the brief of the UK and Dutch Governments in Kiobel and will likely be raised again. This post addresses three discrete but related issues that may arise going forward: 1. Whether the ATS’s...

...South China Sea support China’s broader claims using the nine dash line . Chris pointed out that Geoff Corn, Laurie Blank, Christopher Jenks, and Eric Talbot Jensen have published their full length article on the question of whether a “least harmful means” rule exists in the Law of Armed Conflict. He also posted about the approaching deadline for AJIL‘s Agora on “Transnational Human Rights Litigation after Kiobel“. Other events and announcements can be found here. Finally, you can find our roundups of the daily news here. Have a nice weekend!...

...then analyzed the plaintiffs’ argument that, under customary law, multi-national corporations should be held liable for violations of human rights. The Court referred to American Alien Tort Claims Act litigation, and specified that these cases were not relevant for the purposes of the French case as they discuss the application of American, domestic law, and because some of them have “penal” aspects. The issue of corporate liability for human rights violation is both intriguing and important, as recent discussion on the Kiobel case has amply demonstrated, but in the interest...

...foreign affairs exclusivity with respect to this case. Julian additionally analyzed the ATS in the Supreme Court’s decision in Mohamed v. Palestinian Authority and discussed how the decision may affect re-argumentation in the Kiobel case. He added a post showcasing a roundtable in DC with John Yoo, promoting their new book, Taming Globalization, and pointed out that despite China’s growth, infrastructural problems remain. Deborah Pearlstein commented on Charlie Savage’s NY Times article about executive power, and after a thought-provoking comment by Savage himself, clarified her position. Leading up to Thursday’s...

...unilateral humanitarian intervention . Ken followed up on a post by Roger last week on jurisprudence post-Kiobel, by discussing his recent essay on the resurgence of the traditional bases of jurisdiction in the Alien Tort Statute. A guest post by John Dehn also revisited an earlier post, discussing an article by Sarah Cleveland and Bill Dodge on the Offenses Clause. Finally, Jessica provided her weekly news wrap and listed events and announcements , while Julian posted a special announcement on the 2013 International Law Weekend . Many thanks to our...