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Stewart Mini-Symposium: A Response to Beth Stephens

[James G. Stewart is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at Allard Hall, University of British Columbia. His new article, The Turn to Corporate Criminal Liability for International Crimes: Transcending the Alien Tort Statute, can be found here.] Professor Beth Stephens was a pioneer in thinking about corporate accountability under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), and a guiding light for all those emerging into a scholarly field that seemed strangely tolerant of a world without accountability in the corporate realm. When economists and political scientists problematized accountability as too costly or controversial, hers was the authoritative voice reminding us that a world without accountability is perverse. Thus, it is a great honor for me that she agreed to criticize my recent contribution to our common attempt at promoting accountability where there is usually (almost) none. To begin, I fear that Stephens may have misunderstood my central claim, for which I should take some responsibility. At different points, I get the impression that my article registered with her as a full-throated attack on the ATS and all those who worked so hard to develop it, as if I believed that the entire history of the Statute amounts to little more than a misguided blunder next to the flawless system of corporate criminal accountability for international crimes that was always waiting in plain sight to be deployed. This is far from my position, so I begin by clarifying this misunderstanding in case it has tainted her view of my argument, before addressing some of her more substantive concerns. I am very much for the ATS, before and after Kiobel. My project is purely comparative. At the beginning of my article, I confirm as much by stating “I prefer to isolate the upsides of corporate criminal liability for international crimes relative to ATS litigation, in the hope of identifying a form of accountability that will operate in a more cohesive and principled fashion with the ATS and other mechanisms moving forward. This, in other words, is a comparison not critique of the ATS, which I view as hugely important.” Although I gesture at this position once or twice later, I suspect that I needed to weave the point into much more of my argument to avoid being misunderstood by my kin. If my piece gives the impression that I view my ATS friends and colleagues as “short-sighted” in a pejorative sense, this is an unwelcome outcome I attempted to guard against in my drafting. In writing the paper, I was careful to insist that ATS scholars and practitioners “understandably” left out ideas that emanate from the criminal law. My recurrent use of the word “understandably” was intended to recognize that there was never any obvious reason that even the most brilliant experts in ATS would also be familiar with the intricacies of, say, the German theory of aiding and abetting. How could they know? If these issues bubble to the surface of these discussions now, it’s only because German theory has permeated ICL in ways that are largely unthinkable for American civil litigation. No one can see around corners. There is a deeper insight in this history that is so crucial for questions about corporate responsibility moving forward. David Kennedy is right that we all unavoidably have our intellectual blindspots. To deal with my own, I have tried hard within the article to call repeatedly for alternative, contradictory, interdisciplinary perspectives as part of my wider campaign for greater scholarly investment in these hugely important global questions. At the same time, I have also actively sought out the frank criticism of the world’s leading scholars (in slightly different fields) who see these things differently, as this series of blogs attests. I don’t believe that any meaningful attempt at regulating something as colossal as global commerce can afford to do otherwise—there’s too much our individual disciplinary biases blind us to. Next, Stephens argues that the “discovery” metaphor I employ to describe the recent debut of corporate criminal liability for international crimes in practice unjustifiably leaves out the valuable work of organizations like the International Commission of Jurists and the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable on these questions, but I very much see them as part of the discovery not separate from it.

Stewart Mini-Symposium: Two Cheers for Stewart

[Beth Stephens is a Professor at Rutgers Law.] Two cheers for James Stewart and his forthcoming article, The Turn to Corporate Criminal Liability for International Crimes: Transcending the Alien Tort Statute. Stewart offers an enthusiastic endorsement of what could be an extremely effective mechanism to hold corporations accountable for egregious human rights abuses: domestic criminal prosecutions in their home states. Stewart’s comparative analysis of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) is less sure-footed, however, and, for that failing, I withhold my third cheer. Stewart ranges wide through criminal law theory and practice to defend the viability and desirability of domestic criminal prosecutions for international law crimes. He explains that many states already have the domestic statutes necessary to authorize criminal prosecution of domestic corporations for international law violations such as war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in other states. This statutory foundation, along with the focus on prosecuting domestic corporations, should mitigate concerns about extraterritoriality such as those that have arisen in both civil claims under the Alien Tort Statute and universal jurisdiction prosecutions against natural persons. Criminal prosecutions, he explains, also tap into a rich set of liability standards that are potentially well-suited to the complex interactions of a corporation and its employees. Stewart correctly identifies some of the weaknesses of ATS litigation and the commentary it triggered. But many of those weaknesses result from applying an idiosyncratic eighteenth century statute to modern human rights abuses. For example, Stewart decries a rather unproductive dispute over the content of the international law standards governing aiding and abetting. He does not acknowledge, however, that the debate was triggered by the sui generis structure of the ATS, which grants jurisdiction over violations of international law, but provides no guidance as to a host of crucial issues, including the appropriate standards of liability. Moreover, commentators and some judges suggested applying a flexible federal common law liability standard to ATS cases, which might have resembled the analysis he favors. Many courts rejected that approach, however, leading to the narrow debate over the meaning of knowledge and purpose in international law. The “vociferous interest in complicity” that Stewart decries [24] was a product of the minimalist structure of the ATS and judicial decisions that further limited the range of possibilities, not lack of interest in or ignorance of alternative liability approaches. Crucially, similar statutory gaps and judicial bottlenecks are likely to arise in domestic criminal prosecutions, as each legal system applies its particular statutes, procedural rules, and theories of liability. These problems, of course, are consequences of a domestic law response to human rights abuses. But, having failed to recognize the impact of its domestic law origins on the trajectory of the ATS, Stewart also fails to grapple with the likely impact of idiosyncratic domestic law variations on the local criminal prosecutions that he favors.

Stewart Mini-Symposium: A Response to Steven Ratner

[James G. Stewart is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at Allard Hall, University of British Columbia. His new article, The Turn to Corporate Criminal Liability for International Crimes: Transcending the Alien Tort Statute, can be found here.]

Steven Ratner enjoys the unequalled distinction of being one of the world’s leading scholars in both international criminal justice and the theory of corporate responsibility for human rights violations. As such, it is a great privilege to engage with his criticisms of my recent paper. Ratner offers three core criticisms of my article, protesting that corporate criminality is not quite the promising terrain I posit. To my reading, the first of these criticisms amalgamates an array of shorter points that I treat briefly given space constraints, whereas the latter two deal more with retribution as a basis for corporate accountability and the limits of ICL as a vehicle for ensuring accountability in the field of business and human rights. I deal with each of these three sets of thoughtful criticisms in turn.

Ratner’s first category raises a cluster of shorter objections. In the interests of space, I respond to several briefly here in bullet form, without I hope seeming dismissive of important questions that require far greater discussion than I can deliver presently:

• Ratner suggests that my article is a “response to the demise of the ATS vehicle.” Actually, this research spans eight years and would still hold true if the US Supreme Court had reached the diametrically opposite conclusion in Kiobel. Mostly, it is a reply to the experience of investigating atrocities in Africa, not a response to the demise of the ATS at all.
• Ratner argues that “ICL is not an alternative to the ATS” and Kiobel does “not call for switching to criminal liability.” I agree. I do not argue for “switching,” but place a great deal of emphasis on thinking of ICL as part of a very wide set of regulatory initiatives and projects. I compare ICL and ATS to dispel the assumption that the two frameworks will have the same problems.
• Ratner suggests that I think “conceptual problems in the ATS caselaw somehow doom civil liability.” This is not my view. I am careful to insist that “nothing here is an attack on the ATS as such—I view it as an important form of accountability—I merely join others in positing that it frequently needs supplementing with something stronger.”
• Ratner argues “why assume states will pass criminal statutes (even covering obvious international crimes) covering conduct of their companies abroad”. Mostly, this horse has already bolted. As the paper shows, most states have already passed this legislation. In this sense, corporate criminal liability for international crimes mimics the ATS—both involve the “discovery” of a latent legal framework waiting to be employed;
• Ratner argues that “it is not clear how switching to the ICL model eliminates… the very problem that Kiobel addressed. i.e., the extraterritorial reach of domestic law.” Although I acknowledge not addressing extraterritoriality in depth in my introduction, I do cite evidence from a comparative survey which concluded that 11 of 16 states surveyed have jurisdiction over international crimes perpetrated by their nationals overseas.
• Ratner also objects that “if we think… diversity of criminal law accomplice liability standards is suboptimal, then states will need to incorporate not merely the definitions of crimes in international law into their domestic law, but also an international notion of accomplice liability.” I address this question in this paper under the sub-heading Toward a Moral Theory of Accomplice Liability, and within a separate piece recently on pluralism in international criminal law.

In his second set of criticisms,

Stewart Mini-Symposium: From the ATS to Corporate Criminality under ICL — Mind the Gap

[Steven Ratner is the Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.] James Stewart’s “The Turn to Corporate Criminal Liability for International Crimes” provides an important contribution in the ongoing debates regarding corporate accountability for human rights violations, a debate that has assumed even greater prominence since the publication of the UN’s Guiding Principles and an ongoing process of discussions within the UN on new strategies for businesses to respect human rights. Stewart makes three compelling points with which I think most observers of the topic would agree. First, many human rights advocates and scholars have had far too much faith in the ATS as a vehicle for accountability, leading to undue disappointment in its limited scope after Kiobel. Second, the ATS jurisprudence was marred by doctrinal confusion, the straitjacket of identifying norms as customary international law, and concerns that courts were acting at odds with legislative and executive branch policy. Third, international criminal law (ICL) offers a potentially useful tool for corporate accountability in overcoming some of the difficulties of the ATS. The acceptance of corporate criminality in many states offers a domestic law mechanism for trying corporations. Despite my agreement with the thrust of the piece and the need to tackle what has remained a marginal method of corporate accountability, I think corporate criminality is not quite the promising terrain for corporate accountability that Stewart’s analysis suggests, for three different reasons. Ÿ First, the link between the ATS and ICL that dominates the piece (e.g., calling them “brother[s]-in-arms”) -- and thus views ICL as a response to the demise of the ATS vehicle – seems somewhat strained. The ATS was and remains a uniquely American statute – there is none other like it in the world – and despite great faith in it by some, my sense is that sophisticated human rights advocates never saw it as the major forum for even judicial accountability of corporations. ICL is not an alternative to the ATS; it is an alternative to other forms of corporate responsibility, including civil responsibility, loss of reputation, and other ways that corporations can be held to account for any human rights violations. The post-Kiobel constraints on the ATS, and the conceptual confusion before Kiobel, thus do not themselves call for switching to criminal liability. Most obviously, civil liability may be viable in other venues, as seen in the other lawsuit against Shell, in the Dutch courts. Moreover, even if we think the conceptual problems in the ATS caselaw somehow doom civil liability, it is not clear how switching to the ICL model eliminates one serious problem with all efforts by home states to regulate corporations through national law -- the very problem that Kiobel addressed, i.e., the extraterritorial reach of domestic law. While international crimes are subject to universal jurisdiction, universal jurisdiction is still only permissive and not mandatory. The duty, if there is one, for states to punish all international crimes (e.g., as suggested in the preamble to the ICC Statute) is a very weak one; the only clear duties are those in specific treaties like the Torture or Disappearances Conventions. So why assume that states will pass criminal statutes (even covering obvious international crimes) covering conduct by their companies abroad, let alone that they will criminalize conduct by foreign companies against foreigners abroad? Though certainly states have interests in regulating much overseas corporate conduct (making the Kiobel majority’s presumption completely antiquated), they still have many reasons not to criminalize extraterritorial human rights abuses, either by individuals and corporations. True, states have shown the political will to criminalize some corporate conduct abroad through the UN Corruption Convention, but that took thirty years of American pressure, dictated by a commercially driven desire to level the playing field. It is also not clear how the move to ICL eliminates one of the other problems that Stewart thoughtfully identifies regarding the ATS caselaw – the muddied notion of accomplice liability. Although domestic criminal laws define degrees of complicity, they vary significantly throughout the world. That is not a problem if we are content with a corporate criminality regime that tolerates significant diversity across states, but in that case, why not just rely on diverse notions of civil or even administrative liability around the world? If, on the other hand, we think such diversity of criminal law accomplice liability standards is suboptimal, then states will need to incorporate not merely the definitions of crimes in international law into their domestic law, but also an international notion of accomplice liability.

Stewart Mini-Symposium: A Response to Samuel Moyn

[James G. Stewart is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at Allard Hall, University of British Columbia. His new article, The Turn to Corporate Criminal Liability for International Crimes: Transcending the Alien Tort Statute, can be found here.]

We occupy a curious point in history. Despite an understanding that corporations enabled slavery, were at the vanguard of colonialism, either fuelled or instigated the Second World War, and now provide key inputs to modern atrocities of all stripes, there is very nearly zero accountability for corporate violations of basic human rights norms. What a pleasure, then, to have Samuel Moyn critically reflect on this sorry state of affairs we have inherited and whether corporate criminal liability for international crimes will mark an important departure from everything that came before or merely a new mechanism for distracting our gaze from the obvious structural misalignments that inhibit human dignity most acutely.

I find Moyn’s assertion that our ancestors were more ambitious that us an attractive one. In the same breath, I often muse with students how significant it is that we live during the initial years of a permanent international criminal court, itself an unspeakably ambitious project. In 1872, Gustave Moynier, the Swiss jurist and founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross proposed an international institution of precisely this sort, which was later revisited in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and then the Genocide Convention of 1948. So, with respect to our ambitions for international criminal justice, we fare fairly well in a comparison with our ancestors. Moreover, for better or worse, we have definitely outstripped them in terms of execution.

Importantly, the rise of the international criminal justice we have brought about isn’t limited to international institutions; instead, it has seeped into national courts in a remarkable process of transnational acculturation. Quite suddenly, state legislatures found themselves implementing international crimes into their domestic criminal codes, national law enforcement agencies are creating specialist war crimes units with increasing frequency, and cases involving international crimes are arguably as numerous locally as they are internationally. This past summer, I even sat through the Blackwater trial in Washington D.C. (see initial commentary here), partly out of a sense that even the United States was slowly surrendering to the trend.

The question for present purposes is, will the march of international criminal justice halt at the doors of businesses or extend to and engulf the commercial sides of atrocity, too? Will WWII cases against “industrialists” (an archaic term that I think distances these historical precedents from contemporary realities) remain quaint relics of experimentalism in the immediate post war, or will they have some salience to the plain legal parallels with modern warfare, especially in Africa? Whatever the future holds in these respects, there’s no doubt that the past has much to still teach us.

On that score, Moyn’s recitation of the traditional history of corporations in Nazi Germany is disputable. In an outstanding new thesis, Grietje Baars argues that the standard narrative of “industrialists” as auxiliaries to Hitler’s expansionism gets the relationships backwards. “Industrialists,” according to Baars, either enjoyed ascendancy over Hitler or existed in a far more horizontal relationship with leaders of the Nazi Party than historians have let on. As the Nuremberg Judgment itself recounts, “In November 1932 a petition, signed by leading industrialists and financiers, had been presented to President Hindenburg, calling upon him to entrust the Chancellorship to Hitler.” (Nuremberg Judgment, p. 177). If accurate, this history helps highlight the limitations of focusing on complicity alone within the business and human rights discourse, and brings home the importance of thinking very seriously about our topic.

In his kind response to my article, Moyn rightly recognizes that I see ICL as supplementary to other regulatory strategies, including the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). He writes that “I agree with Stewart that it would be dubious, not to mention counterfactual, to suppose that a focus on atrocity (whether through criminal law or civil liability) somehow rules out bigger regulatory ambition.” Nonetheless, he sees two provisos, which I address now in turn.

Stewart Mini-Symposium: The Ambitious Past of Corporate Regulation

[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 had asked, how could he find for the plaintiffs? In response, a bevy of renowned historians filed an amicus brief on appeal to the United States Supreme Court, contending that the reason Judge Cabranes had failed to find civil liability was because the Allies had been willing to destroy the corporations that participated in Nazi evil. The greater included the lesser: if they could go that far, would they really have rejected civil liability for corporate atrocities? Then another group of historians, including Jonathan Bush, filed an amicus brief not so ardently focused on serving the human rights movement (though not opposing it either). No longer indentured to the instrumental if understandable project of reading the past for present ends, these historians revealed that our ancestors were more ambitious than we are. In their treatment of corporations, Bush and his colleagues said, the Allies hadn’t really been interested in atrocities anyway, or merely aimed at the low bar of sanctioning them. Rather, Nuremberg lawyers had been New Dealers; they had thought a lot about corporations, especially in the antitrust context; and it was this thinking that motivated them to break up (not destroy) I.G. Farben and take the other steps they did. More generally, an attitude of politically organizing business properly to avoid aggressive war mostly prevailed, not atrocity consciousness for the sake of victims seeking compensation. It was one of those things that seemed self-evident as soon as the historians said it, even if the insight got lost in the shuffle of the litigation, with its necessarily opportunistic attitude toward the past. Yet the prospect that opened in the midst of the litigation wasn’t merely self-evident, it was exciting. In the old days, corporations were regulated in the name of a theory of the healthy role they could and must play in a democracy. They were not simply unbound — as they have been since the conservative legal movement set the terms of corporate law nationally and internationally — and then at most taxed after the fact when they went awry. Granted, the corpse of ATS may twitch for a long time and – who knows? – may one day find itself resurrected under different political circumstances. It is to his great credit, however, that James G. Stewart has turned away from searching frantically for signs of life in the fallen statute, in order to explore other fruitful approaches. Anyway, how much good did the ATS do, even before it was cut down? (Full disclosure: I have been flamed on this blog simply for raising this question, as if the burden weren’t on advocates of the ATS strategy to prove how much difference it has made, and to consider it in relation to other possible political and legal strategies.) I won’t comment much on Stewart’s alternative, corporate criminal liability, in part because his other respondents know a lot more about the details. His reading of the tea leaves of the Argor-Heraeus case seems speculative but impressive, and his assessment of the doctrinal possibilities of criminal liability relative to the ATS strategy is interesting. As Stewart points out, a civil liability strategy merely taxing corporations (especially when the tax is simply passed on to their consumers) looks insufficient if it doesn’t provide the social condemnation law secures through criminal opprobrium. Stewart might even be right that if we have to choose, the criminal strategy is normatively superior. Of course, in an ideal world, it would be better to have both, since a now potentially lost civil liability in theory should exist: victims may need and deserve the monetary compensation too.

Mini-Symposium: James Stewart’s The Turn to Corporate Criminal Liability for International Crimes–Transcending the Alien Tort Statute

This week we will host a mini-symposium on James G. Stewart's latest article, The Turn to Corporate Criminal Liability for International Crimes: Transcending the Alien Tort Statute. James has been an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at Allard Hall, University of British Columbia, where he as been since 2009. Previously he was an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School...