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Search: Sosa

25 Mar

...definition of self-execution in footnote 2 may clarify our discussing going forward, even if some may quarrel with the definition used. (b) Reservations, declarations and understandings that limit or foreclose self-execution of a treaty that might otherwise have domestic effect seem acceptable to the Court. The Sosa Court also hinted as much. (c) And the idea of domestic enforcement of the awards of international tribunals does not seem to cause any great concerns, at least in the abstract. This will disappoint some who have suggested that domestication of such awards...
25.03.08 | |

19 Apr

...not competent to hear a claim arising under international law absent a statute granting such jurisdiction.” (citation omitted)); see also Sosa, 542 U.S. at 720 (“ ‘[O]ffences against this law of nations are principally incident to whole states or nations,’ and not individuals seeking relief in court.” (quoting Blackstone, 4 Commentaries 68) (alteration omitted)). Plaintiffs can point to no statute that brings their claim within our purview. The Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) is the only possible vehicle for a claim like Plaintiffs’ because no other statute recognizes a general cause...
19.04.10 | |

24 Aug

...the ATS. Indeed, this Court in Sosa clearly contemplated international norms reaching private actors, as in this case. Finally, earlier this month Professor Jack Goldsmith filed an amicus brief (2009 WL 2473873) on behalf of the American Chamber of Commerce. The summary of his argument is as follows: Corporations are not subject to international law except in a few well-defined instances (like war crimes and genocide). The lower courts have permitted plaintiffs to skirt this limitation by alleging links between corporate behavior and state behavior that, the lower courts conclude,...
24.08.09 | |

17 Jun

...the U.S. Supreme Court in the Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain case, contending that the ATS should only be invoked for cases that have a significant connection to the US. More recently, the ECtHR in Naït-Liman v. Switzerland decided that: “the prevalence of universal civil jurisdiction was not yet sufficient to indicate the emergence, far less the consolidation, of an international custom which would have obliged the Swiss courts to find that they had jurisdiction to examine the applicant’s action.” Although those remarks challenge the existence of opinio juris in relation to UCJ, they...
17.06.24 | |

17 Aug

In the first U.S. court opinion on piracy since 1820, a U.S. judge in Norfolk, Virginia has dismissed piracy charges against Somali defendants in United States v. Said. The Court held that attempted piracy is not piracy for the purposes of U.S. criminal law. (h/t Eugene Volokh). As I mentioned in an earlier post, the relevant U.S. statute criminalizing piracy leaves its definition to “the law of nations.” I guessed (wrongly) that the Court would adopt a Sosa-like approach to incorporating norms of international law into U.S. law and find...
17.08.10 | |

25 Oct

...some litigators in the area, is that the question is not settled in US courts. Sosa left it open in footnote 20, and although I would have described the leading circuit cases as having accepted the idea, I came away from various discussions with a sense that it is more open to a change in direction than I thought – and that, even absent a new Supreme Court ruling on the matter. My sense after the latest Talisman was that US courts had more or less accepted corporate liability under...
25.10.09 | |

26 Oct

...forth in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain “arise under” federal law for Article III purposes (slip op. at 19342-51). Finally, although the majority left open the question of whether knowingly as opposed to purposefully aiding and abetting an international law violation would give rise to liability under the ATS (slip op. at 19373), it held that at least purposeful aiding and abetting is actionable; Judges Pregerson and Rawlinson wrote separately in support of a knowledge standard (slip op. at 19384-89) and are (in my view) correct in pointing out that, even if...
26.10.11 | |

15 Feb

Christiana Ochoa of Indiana Law School has just published in the University of Cincinnati Law Review an interesting article entitled, Towards a Cosmopolitian Vision of International Law. The article and an abstract is available on SSRN here. The article addresses Sosa and the role of the judiciary in establishing customary international law. But it is Part VI that really caught my attention regarding participatory democracy in the formation and definition of CIL. Here is a taste: The CIL of human rights, no less than treaty law, has direct effects on...
15.02.06 | |

12 Jun

...cases on the concept of corporate aiding and abetting liability under customary international law, or at least in lawsuits brought under the U.S. Alien Tort Statute. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Sosa v. Alvarez Machain limiting such lawsuits, the number of complaints does not appear to have diminished, especially against corporations. Even Yahoo! is being sued (see here) for allegedly aiding and abetting the Chinese government’s torture of dissident journalists by turning over information that led to the individuals’ arrests. Each complaint has some merit, no doubt, but...
12.06.07 | |

01 Feb

...Medellín manifests the same separation of powers perspective as that reflected in the Court’s 2004 decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, thus supporting the “revisionist view” in the debate over the domestic status of customary international law. Professor Moore concludes that Medellín evidences the development of a uniform doctrine governing the status of both treaties and customary international law in the U.S. legal system—a doctrine under which the intent of the political branches, complemented by considerations of specificity, mutuality, practical consequences, foreign affairs effects, and alternative means of enforcement, informs the...
01.02.10 | |

02 Jun

...prospect of a trial in U.S. court for any controversial decision taken on behalf of the state. Multiple filters, including status-based immunities, the requirement of personal jurisdiction, the act of state doctrine, the political question doctrine, the exhaustion requirement in the Torture Victim Protection Act, the limited class of actionable violations under the Alien Tort Statute as interpreted by Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692 (2004), and others limit the number of cases that will actually go forward. To the extent that some continue to object to the use of...
02.06.10 | |

25 Jul

On behalf of myself and my co-editors David Sloss and William Dodge, thanks to Opinio Juris for hosting this book discussion. As readers of this blog know, the twenty-first century’s first decade was an extraordinarily active one for international law in the Supreme Court. In the debates about leading cases such as Medellin v. Texas and Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, we noticed that each side invoked the Court’s historical practices regarding international law in support and accused the other side of radical departures. Indeed, the rhetoric of the criticisms can hardly...
25.07.11 | |