[Thomas H. Lee is the Leitner Family Professor of Law at Fordham Law School and a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School in 2012-13.]

The Alien Tort Statute (ATS), 28 U.S. C. §1350, says that an alien may sue in federal district court “for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” The U.S. Supreme Court recently asked for briefing on the question “whether and under what circumstances the [ATS] allows courts to recognize a cause of action for violations of the law of nations occurring within the territory of a sovereign other than the United States.” Implicit in the question is a seeming concession: an alien tort occurring within foreign sovereign territory is still cognizable under the ATS if the alien plaintiff alleges violation of a U.S. treaty, such as the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT). For instance, if an alien alleges torture against another alien in a foreign country, then presumably the claim would be actionable under the ATS, despite the fact that both plaintiff and tortfeasor are aliens and the tort occurred in the territory of a foreign sovereign. In this limited sense (where a ratified treaty may be pled), even the Supreme Court seems to acknowledge a “universal jurisdiction” angle to the ATS.

In an article I published in 2006 in the Columbia Law Review, I stated the view that the Alien Tort Statute had nothing to do with universal jurisdiction; it was, I argued, a pragmatic measure enacted by the First Congress in September 1789 to let aliens sue in the federal district courts for money damages in the event of harm to their persons or property when the United States had expressly or implicitly promised the aliens that no such harm would come to them. The ATS both provides a right of action and original jurisdiction in federal district court to aliens injured under circumstances implicating U.S. sovereign responsibility; it is therefore a federal law for purposes of Article III arising-under jurisdiction. Translated to a modern context, the ATS would plausibly be available to “extraterritorial” tort actions by alien detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and non-combatant aliens harmed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen in the current war on terror. Such actions would be subject to immunities under the Federal Tort Claims Act, an after-enacted statute, with respect to most U.S. official defendants. And so the answer to the Supreme Court’s question about the extraterritorial application of the ATS is “whenever there is a tort occurring in the territory of a foreign sovereign the commission of which was the result of U.S. sovereign action or inaction when the United States had a duty under international law to prevent the injury to the alien plaintiff.” (more…)

[Eugene Kontorovich is a Professor of Law at Northwestern School of Law]

One of the peculiarities of the Alien Tort Statute is its mix of cosmopolitan conceptions of justice with American exceptionalism. Under the ATS the U.S. has been the only nation in the world allowing for universal jurisdiction (“UJ”) in civil suits. So while enforcing international law has been the justification for these suits, it has been a mode of enforcement otherwise unseen around the world.

That changed a tiny bit today with a precedent-setting decision in the Netherlands, that awarded damages in a civil suit brought by a Palestinian man against Libyan officials for torture that took place in Libya – the notorious and bizarre fraudulent persecution of foreign medical workers for infecting patients with AIDS. (And this is when Qaddafi could still be seen in polite company.)

So what does this ruling mean for the ATS, and particularly the extraterritoriality issue to be argued in Kiobel? At first, it would seem to bolster the plaintiff’s case, by making civil UJ seem (very marginally) less anomalous. But it also cuts the other way, perhaps more strongly. The argument that there is no other forum where these serious wrongs can be redressed has underpinned broad notions of the ATS, both with regards to UJ extraterritoriality and corporate liability. Now, the danger of “impunity” has abated. Now a federal judge must now ask in a UJ ATS case – why wasn’t it brought in the Netherlands? What if the Netherlands is actually physically closer to the conduct (as in Kiobel)? Isn’t the Netherlands where all the international lawyers are? Does plaintiff’s presumptive choice of forum apply to UJ cases?

[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 jurisdictional character alters the application of the presumption against extraterritoriality;
2. Whether “universal civil jurisdiction” is sufficiently recognized under international law—an issue that seemed to get attention at oral argument based on Chevron’s amicus brief; and
3. Choice of law, including as to corporate liability.

I’ll address each issue in turn, though I’ll say at the outset that I will also try to tie them together to open up what might be a new route for corporate liability grounded in an old legal discipline historically included as part of “the law of nations”; namely, private international law. Some of these preliminary thoughts will be elaborated and bolstered by other arguments in an amicus brief Anthony D’Amato and I intend to file in support of neither side. (more…)

[Eugene Kontorovich is a Professor of Law at Northwestern School of Law]

The extraterritoriality analysis starts with piracy, which has gotten significant play in the courts of appeals’ extraterritoriality cases like Doe v. Exxon and Rio Tinto (as well as in the Kiobel oral arguments on corporate liability). Because Sosa held that piracy would be actionable under the ATS, it is clear that the battle over extraterritoriality in Kiobel will be a naval engagement. It is true that piracy occurs extraterritorially, and under the current piracy statute, can be prosecuted even with no connection to the U.S. But proponents of foreign-cubed draw precisely the wrong inferences from piracy’s exceptional status.

Piracy was not any old international crime: it has its own separate constitutional provision: Congress can punish “piracies and felonies on the high seas, and Offenses against the law of nations.” Thus whatever is true of “piracy” is not necessarily true of other “Offenses” that can be reached under the ATS: these are separate, though related, Art. I powers. The Constitution’s singling out of piracy is striking and demands explanation, because it creates a double-redundancy. Does anything make piracy different from other high seas felonies and international law offenses? Yes: it was the only universally cognizable offense at the time.

Starting with this textual observation, I have explained that Congress can at most only use universal jurisdiction over offenses that clearly have that status in international law (see The “Define and Punish” Clause and the Limits of Universal Jurisdiction, 103 Northwestern University Law Review 149 (2009)). There is evidence for this not just in the structure of the clause, but in grand jury instructions of Wilson and Story, the pronouncements of Marshall, and important judicial and Congressional precedents from the early Republic. For example, in U.S. v. Furlong, the Supreme Court in 1820 found that a statute that purported to punish “murder” by “any person” on the high seas does not apply universally because it is not a UJ crime.

Because murder was not universally cognizable, such “an offense committed by a foreign upon a foreign ship” is a matter in which “Congress ha[s] nor right to interfere.” The Court suggested this limitation was Constitutional, noting such universal regulation would exceed “the punishing powers of the body the enacted it,” i.e. go beyond the Define and Punish clause. Or as Marshall put it in 1800: “[T]he people of the United States have no jurisdiction over offenses committed on board a foreign ship against a foreign nation. Of consequence, in framing a Government for themselves, they cannot have passed this jurisdiction to that Government.” (more…)

[Eugene Kontorovich is a Professor of Law at Northwestern School of Law]

The new issue in Kiobel is not mere extraterritoriality, but rather universality. There are constitutional limits on universal jurisdiction (UJ); at most it can only be used for those “Piracies” and “Offenses” that have UJ status in international law. But Congress has not “defined” any offenses in the ATS. It delegated the task to the courts, but the courts must use this mandate narrowly and cautiously, as the “Define” power was given to Congress precisely because international law was too “deficient and vague” to be a common law rule.

Lower courts have discussed the application of the Alien Tort Statute to so-called “foreign cubed” cases – where the parties are foreigners and the conduct takes place abroad – as a matter of extraterritoriality, a term that suggests the presumption of statutory construction against extraterritorial application. While there is a presumption against extraterritoriality, the application of U.S. law to conduct abroad is not uncommon. Yet even the most controversial or aggressive use of extraterritoriality typically involves the regulation of American conduct abroad, or at least conduct that has substantial effects in American or on particularly American interests. But this is not the extraterritoriality of Kiobel, which like many ATS cases have no connection to the U.S. whatsoever. Such universally extraterritorial scope is certainly only found in the face of the clearest statement of congressional intent, such as in the unusual Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act.

Universal jurisdiction, of the kind asserted in Kiobel, is exceedingly rare and poses much greater problems than mere extraterritoriality. It raises the question of where the federal government, supposedly one of limited powers internally, gets the authority to regulate conduct with no domestic nexus, and have federal courts sit as little world courts.

As shall be seen, Supreme Court precedents clearly apply presumptions of extraterritoriality to statutes dealing with international law violations, even universal ones. Some have argued that the Supreme Court implicitly OK’d ATS extraterritoriality in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, its previous major encounter with the statute. Sosa itself involved conduct in Mexico –but it was the abduction from that country by the D.E.A. and its local contractors of a man involved in torturing a federal agent to death, so that he could stand trial in the U.S. Foreign-cubed that is not: few cases could have a tighter nexus with America.

In the oral arguments on corporate liability, Justice Ginsburg suggested that Sosa OK’d extraterritoriality by citing favorably Filartiga, the break-out 1980 Second Circuit case that turned to the ATS into a tool for human rights litigation. Sosa quoted Filartiga’s famous analogy between modern human rights UJ and its precursors: “the torturer has become-like the pirate and slave trader before him-hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind [a phrase that was law of nations shorthand for piracy’s universal cognizability].” Never mind that piracy serves as poor model for modern UJ; Sosa’s quote from Filartiga is hardly decisive. The issue was not before the Court, and secondly, it could be that the ATS allows for UJ for a few norms like torture, but perhaps not for others like extrajudicial killing.

[Eugene Kontorovich is Professor of Law at Northwestern School of Law]

Today the Supreme Court takes on the scope of the Commerce Clause in the historic healthcare cases. The case raises the question of whether there are any substantive limits to the federal government’s domestic regulatory power. But another case soon to be (re)argued before the Court, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell, manages to raise an even broader question: Are there any substantive limits to the federal government’s power to regulate matters occurring outside and having nothing do with the United States? Surprisingly, the latter question has not been generally regarded as a constitutional one.

The Supreme Court has expanded the issues under consideration in Kiobel, originally about corporate liability under the Alien Tort Statute, to include the extraterritorial application of the law. Like corporate liability, extraterritoriality had for decades just been assumed by the lower courts hearing ATS cases: now it will be fully explored.

These posts cross-posted on Volokh Conspiracy, will focus on the constitutional/federal courts issues involved, and of course explore the early piracy precedents of the Supreme Court to get traction on the issues. In short: before thinking about the ATS, one must consider the constitutional basis for universal jurisdiction – which is quite narrow. Furthermore, there are some good reasons derived both from the constitution and precedent for interpreting the ATS narrowly, as not exercising whatever universal jurisdiction power the federal government does have.

Before turning to the merits, it is amusing to note the strange bedfellows ATS doctrine makes. The litigation and accompanying academic debate over the meaning and scope of the Alien Tort Statute has been a marvel of surprising ideological transpositions, and more reversals of traditional roles than All’s Well That Ends Well. On the issue of corporate liability, liberals (crudely speaking) urge the Court look to parochial U.S. law, and conservatives (still crudely speaking) favor the adoption of a rule from international law and practice. Then the Court asks for new arguments on extraterritoriality. Now the conservatives point to U.S. law – the judge-made presumption against extraterritoriality – and liberals point to the international status of the offenses. It is like a game of Twister.

Neither position is fully correct. There may be a place for extraterritoriality in ATS cases, but in a much narrower class of cases then where it is currently applied. The following two posts will draw on much of my prior work, and I hope the reader forgives me not recapitulating the entire argument of those articles here.

So I leave the country and the blogosphere for a few months, and what happens?  (Well, beside that “war” in Libya), circuit courts have gone all negative on my argument against corporate liability under the Alien Tort Statute.  In addition to the D.C. Circuit’s recent decision, the Seventh Circuit (speaking through Judge Posner) went out of its way to reject the argument while ultimately affirming the district court’s dismissal of the ATS lawsuit.

Posner is Posner, and it should not really be surprising that he would find a formal argument in favor of constraining judicial lawmaking powers unattractive.  To be sure, he genuflects to a new argument proffered by plaintiffs, claiming that because the post-WWII tribunals acted to dissolve some Nazi-supporting companies, the Nuremberg and associated tribunals provides authority for holding corporations liable under customary international law.  But that is not all that important to Posner’s argument, and he only devotes a single paragraph to that precedent.

Why does Posner ultimately reject the Kiobel no-corporate liability argument?  Although he is a bit unclear, I think his argument ultimately boils down to two conclusions.  One: there is no practical argument against holding corporations civilly or criminally liable under customary international law, and the lack of international authority on this question hardly undermines this practical point; Two: the question of corporate liability is ultimately one of procedure and enforcement and left to the discretion of domestic law.

I think Judge Posner is ultimately wrong here, but as usual, I find his analysis insightful and persuasive.  His analysis is not really that different, but a lot easier to follow than Judge Rogers’ lengthy decision in the D.C. Circuit.

I have more thoughts on this, but having really been back in the U.S. for less than 24 hours, it will have to await some more sleep.  In any event, these two decisions make it seem more and more likely that cert will be granted for Kiobel. And now that I’m back, surely it’s time for the no-corporate liability argument will make a comeback.

I’ve now had a chance to read a little more closely the decision, majority and concurrence, in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (issued today by a 2nd Circuit panel of Judge Cabranes writing for himself and Judge Wood, and a concurrence in the judgment by Judge Leval).  On second reading, it still looks to me like a blockbuster opinion, both because of the ringing tone of the Cabranes decision and the equally strong language of a concurrence that, on the key point of corporate liability, amounts to a dissent.  With circuits having gone different directions on this issue, this perhaps tees up a SCOTUS review that would revisit its last, delphic pronouncement on the Alien Tort Statute in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain. Here are a few thoughts that add to, but also partly revise and extend, things I said in my earlier post today. (more…)

[I posted this about the same time that Ken posted his discussion of the same case below, which is definitely worth reading. Please forgive any repetitions. But we are both on the same page.]

In a blockbuster opinion that could spell the end of the vast bulk of Alien Tort Statute litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has held that corporations cannot be liable for violations of customary international law under the Alien Tort Statute.  The decision, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, dismisses an ATS lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell for allegedly aiding and abetting the Nigerian government in the commission of serious human rights violations.  Writing for two members of the panel, Judge Jose Cabranes held that (in my very quick and dirty summary):

1) International Law governs the scope of liability for violations of international law, hence the question of whether a corporation is liable for violating international law is itself governed by international law.

2) Under Supreme Court precedent, the Alien Tort Statute requires courts to apply norms of international law, and not domestic law, to the scope of defendants’ liabilities. Such norms must be “specific, universal, and obligatory.”

3) Under international law, corporations are not liable for violations, and any such norm of corporate liability is far from “specific, universal, and obligatory.”

I should note that one judge on the panel, Pierre Leval, took sharp exception to this holding in his concurring opinion. It is worth noting that his criticism is not on the question of whether corporations are liable for violations of international law, but whether international law should even govern this question.

I have an article coming out later this fall in the Virginia Journal of International Law which takes the same position on this question as Judge Cabranes. So I am both pleased that someone agrees with me, and horrified that I may have to seriously revise and update that article. Judge Cabranes’ analysis is very strong on points two and three above.  Indeed, I don’t think Judge Leval or the plaintiffs in this case seriously challenged these points.  The only bone of contention is with point one, whether international law is indeed the governing law for the question of corporate liability. And I assume that will be the main issue if this case (as I fully expect), an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is made to this decision.

But taking a step back, what I find fascinating is that there appears to be no serious argument left that customary international law can impose duties on private corporations.  I think this is right, and foreign academics, most notably James Crawford, have strongly rejected corporate liability.  But I think the vast weight of U.S. legal academic opinion has gone the other way on this point.  I have personally participated on at least three conferences where I was the only one arguing against corporate liability.

In any event, I will have more thoughts about this case and this issue soon. There is a lot here to digest and think about.  The bottom line for litigants though:  The wave of ATS lawsuits against corporations is, at least for the moment, DEAD in the Second Circuit.  And I wouldn’t feel good about ATS suits in other circuits either.

I don’t know about this lawsuit, presumably filed under the Alien Tort Statute, but it should be interesting.*

A Northwestern University law professor has sued the Hungarian State Railways on behalf of Jews deported to camps during World War II.

Anthony D’Amato, who teaches international law, is seeking compensation for property stolen from Hungarian Jews, the Chicago Tribune reports. In a brief filed last week in federal court in Chicago, D’Amato said the state railways were complicit in the Holocaust and that Jews leaving Hungary for Auschwitz and other concentration camps had to leave their suitcases behind when they were loaded into boxcars.

My prediction: this suit goes nowhere. But maybe I should take a look at the complaint first. Does anyone have a copy by any chance?

*UPDATE: Thanks to reader C. Jenks for a copy of the complaint here.  It is pretty well done (it even includes photos). But it faces some serious obstacles.  One interesting problem: the lawsuit is against a state-owned corporation, and the idea is that this state-corporation’s immunity has been waived by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. This is a tricky argument, and I expect this to be the main focus of the dissent.

An additional puzzle about the Alien Tort Statute is that there seems to be no satisfactory account, so far as I know, of the US government response to ATS cases.

Sometimes the US government responds with a statement of interest; sometimes it does not.  Even when it does offer a statement of interest, my anecdotal impression (if there was data collected, I’d be very interested) is that the US government often responds late in the proceedings.  So far as I can tell – indeed, I’ve never heard anyone contradict this – there is very little about the USG response in ATS proceedings to suggest that it seeks to protect executive power or authority or authoritative expertise in pronouncing on international law or the foreign policy interests of the executive in ensuring, as a matter of principle, that these matters remain with the executive and not the courts.  There is little if anything in USG behavior to suggest that successive administrations since Filartiga have taken a stand on principle of seeking to rein in or otherwise narrow the ambit of the courts in these matters.  That seems to be true across decades and multiple administrations of each party.  I find this puzzling …

If I were to sit down and sketch out in a single sentence or two each the current approaches (“theories” is way too strong for what I mean here) to finding corporate liability in the ATS, what would they be?  I give it a shot as bullet points below; I welcome any additions, if you were trying to give a short but reasonably comprehensive list of litigation approaches in favor of finding the possibility of corporate liability.

One thing I (can’t speak for others) took away from the Harvard meeting, as well as discussions with 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 the ATS, signing on to an accumulation of precedents without signing onto a theory of why.  Reining in ATS liability, insofar as they were inclined to do it, would come either as limits on what substantive acts would count or else, as in the 2nd Circuit’s latest Talisman ruling, as limits on secondary liability.  But I came away from recent discussions with an inchoate sense – not a clear set of reasons – that the corporate liability issue itself was not so settled as I might have thought.

Whether that is so or not, it made me think that having some bullet point list in my head of the main lines of argument in favor of corporate liability was a useful exercise.  Feel free to add any more you like in the comments.  The reason I stress here arguments in favor is that, as someone who thinks it is not the case, it is harder for me to think of the arguments for corporate liability.  The affirmative arguments against corporate liability seem to be mostly variants of saying, the ATS requires as a threshold matter that there be a violation of international law.  Corporations are not things that are capable of violating international law, and there can’t be a violation without a violator upon which law imposes liability; hence no violation of international law and no US action in tort.

The principal way of complicating this as an argument against corporate liability is to say, in addition:  There are two hurdles to finding an international law violation – two axes, if you like.  You have to make the move from individual to corporate liability.  Separate and independently, you have to make the move from criminal law to civil law.  Neither one of these is well founded in international law, and you have to satisfy each in order to show an international law violation.  (Represented as a diagram, the two axes produce four quadrants and it’s fun to frame it that way, but I’ve not managed to figure out how to do graphs like that on Wordpress.)  One might disagree with those axes, of course, but they are what I think I see in defense arguments (including my own expert declaration in the Agent Orange case) and defense-side expert statements, at least disaggregating a bit.  There is then a long debate over what to take as constituting “international law” and evidence thereof, but leave that aside.  That said as the basis of anti-corporate liability arguments, what’s the summary list of pro-corporate liability arguments? ….