Amicus Brief Before the US Supreme Court on the Non-Extraterritoriality of the Alien Tort Statute

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sienho Yee
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
Alien Tort Statute

scholarly journals Litigation Dilemmas: Lessons from the Marcos Human Rights Class Action

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (02) ◽  
pp. 479-508
Author(s):  
Nate Ela
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Class Action ◽  
Legal Mobilization ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Alien Tort Statute

How do activist plaintiffs experience the process of human rights litigation under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS)? Answering this question is key to understanding the impact on transnational legal mobilization of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., in which the US Supreme Court sharply limited the scope of the ATS. Yet sociolegal scholars know remarkably little about the experiences of ATS litigants, before or after Kiobel. This article describes how activist litigants in a landmark ATS class action against former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos faced a series of strategic dilemmas, and how disagreements over how to resolve those dilemmas played into divisions between activists and organizations on the Philippine left. The article develops an analytical framework focused on litigation dilemmas to explain how and why activists who pursue ATS litigation as an opportunity for legal mobilization may also encounter strategic dilemmas that contribute to dissension within a social movement.

scholarly journals CORPORATE HUMAN RIGHTS ACCOUNTABILITY: THE OBJECTIONS OF WESTERN GOVERNMENTS TO THE ALIEN TORT STATUTE

2014 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 665-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uta Kohl
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
International Law ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Accountability ◽  
Alien Tort Statute

AbstractThe almost two decade-long bonanza of civil litigation concerning gross human rights violations committed by corporations under the US Alien Tort Statute 1789 was scaled back by the US Supreme Court in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum in April 2013. The court restricted the territorial reach of human rights claims against transnational corporations by holding that the presumption against extra-territoriality applied to the Act. Thus Shell, the Dutch/British defendant, and the role it played in the brutal suppression by the Nigerian military of the Ogoni peoples' protest movement against the environmental devastation caused by oil exploration, lay outside the territorial scope of the Act. Legal accountability must lie in a State with a stronger connection with the dispute. While this article briefly engages with the Supreme Court decision, its main focus is on the attitude of Western governments to the corporate human rights litigation under the ATS as articulated in their amicus briefs. In these briefs they objected to the statute's excessive extraterritoriality and horizontal application of human rights to artificial non-State actors. In these two respects corporate ATS litigation created significant inroads into the conventional State-centric approach to human rights and thus provided an opportunity for more effective human rights enjoyment. This article tests the validity of the objections of Western governments to corporate human rights obligations under the ATS against the norms of public international law and against the substantive demands arising out of the shortfalls of the international human rights enforcement.

Insult of Public Officials

2021 ◽  
pp. 388-409
Author(s):  
Christoph Bezemek
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
Structural Differences

This chapter assesses public insult, looking at the closely related question of ‘fighting words’ and the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire. While Chaplinsky’s ‘fighting words’ exception has withered in the United States, it had found a home in Europe where insult laws are widely accepted both by the European Court of Human Rights and in domestic jurisdictions. However, the approach of the European Court is structurally different, turning not on a narrowly defined categorical exception but upon case-by-case proportionality analysis of a kind that the US Supreme Court would eschew. Considering the question of insult to public officials, the chapter focuses again on structural differences in doctrine. Expanding the focus to include the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR), it shows that each proceeds on a rather different conception of ‘public figure’.

Religious Neutrality and the Government’s Freedom of Speech in the Jurisprudence of the us Supreme Court

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
András Koltay
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
The Government ◽  
Hard Cases

The issue of the use of religious symbols by the State, the Government, the Municipalities and Courts has emerged as a practical constitutional problem during the last quarter of a century. Contradictory examples of us Supreme Court jurisprudence prove that this issue is among the constitutional ‘hard cases’. The relatively recent appearance of the problem clearly indicates the ways in which American social conditions have changed and the transformation of us society’s attitude to religion.

Judges and Policy Making Authority in the United States and the European Union

ICL Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonios E. Kouroutakis
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
European Court Of Justice ◽  
Judicial Activism ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court

AbstractInstitutions such as the US Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice in due time have developed a status of supremacy through judicial activism. The main target of the article is to identify the judicial activism exercised by these Courts and to reason its need in the legal order. In the first part the US Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice are placed in the overall polity that they belong to and the development of their status and their characteristics are analyzed. The major concern of the first part is to examine how those declared their supremacy and focus on major cases and their reason­ing.In the second part the extent of the judicial supremacy in each legal order is discussed and its effects in the decision making process are examined. The assumption that judicial activ­ism is acceptable only if it expresses consensus in the legal order is tested and it is argued that up to an extent, Judicial Activism does not distort the political agenda when it ex­presses the consensus of the legal system. Finally, it is argued that when such activism exceeds the boundaries of the consensus, the other actors in the legal system would even­tually react and would limit such activism.

Judicial Review

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-68
Author(s):  
Jeffrey S. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
The State ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Court Case ◽  
State Laws ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
Us Constitution

The conventional account of judicial review starts with a US Supreme Court case, Marbury v. Madison. But judicial review in truth starts with the state courts and the state constitutions, not the US Supreme Court and the US Constitution. Before the US Constitution existed, the state courts established American judicial review and were the first courts to wrestle with the complexities of exercising it. Judicial review also is foremost a structural story, not an individual-rights story. The delegation of power to the judiciary to decide the meaning of our constitutions laid the groundwork for the growth in power of American courts—especially the federal courts, which have become the go-to answer for so many who-decides questions in American government over the last seventy-five years. This chapter begins a search for insights in resolving the dilemma of judicial review by looking at how the state courts innovated the concept and the ways they initially practiced it. It shows that the early state courts were deferential to the democratic branches of government. They rarely invalidated state laws and did so only when these laws violated a clear constitutional rule. That approach offers lessons for federal and state courts alike.

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