scholarly journals The alien tort statute of 1789 and international human rights violations: Kiobel v. royal dutch petroleum co.

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
Paula Alexander Becker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Foreign Governments ◽  
Petroleum Development ◽  
Alien Tort Statute

Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. involves an action under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). The case was brought in the United States, Southern District of New York, by the widow of Dr. Barinem Kiobel, a Nigerian activist and member of the Ogoni tribe, and others for human rights violations committed in the Niger River Delta. Defendants include Royal Dutch Petroleum, Shell Transport and Trading Co., and Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria. Although the human rights violations including murder and torture were allegedly committed by the Nigerian military government, it is claimed that the Royal Dutch Petroleum defendants aided and abetted the Nigerian military in the human rights violations. The plaintiffs had engaged in protests about the environmental damage caused by the Royal Dutch Petroleum defendants in the area of the Niger Delta and the plight of the Ogoni people in Ogoniland. At the trial level, the court decided that certain claims involving violations of the Law of Nations could be heard by the court. However, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided that there is a presumption against extraterritoriality in the application of the ATS, and that “mere presence” of a defendant corporation in the United States is insufficient for a court to assume jurisdiction. However, the question remains: What corporate presence would serve as a sufficient basis for a court to assume jurisdiction under the ATS? Given the possibility that corporations could, and perhaps in the future will, be found liable for human rights violations occurring in foreign locales even after Kiobel, prudent risk management behooves corporations and their counsel to monitor whether human rights violations are occurring in connection with their operations, even when those human rights violations are committed by foreign governments or their agents.

scholarly journals The Merida Initiative and the Tort Claims Act: Human Rights Violations and Foreign Non-Contractual Civil Liability in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pastora Melgar Manzanilla ◽  
Daniel Márquez Gómez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Civil Liability ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Victim Protection ◽  
Alien Tort Statute ◽  
Tort Claims

This article discusses the possibility that Mexican victims of human rights violations may take advantage of the contents of the Alien Tort Claims Act to sue Mexican officials for extra-contractual civil liability in the event that they suffer damages derived from the use of firearms, technology, or otherwise, linked to the Merida Initiative. We analyze the Merida Initiative to Combat Illicit Narcotics and Reduce Organized Crime Authorization Act of 2008, and the Alien Tort Claims Act, also known as the Alien Tort Statute. We also refer to related Acts such as the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act, as well as to cases that help to understand the scope and limitations of the Alien Tort Claims Act. We conclude that the Merida Initiative and the resources allocated under it have deepened human rights violations in Mexico, and that the Alien Tort Claims Act could be invoked by Mexicans victims of such violations and of the “war” against drug trafficking under the framework of the Merida Initiative.

Human Rights Violations in Ethiopia: The Case for Permanent Adjustment of Immigration Status for Ethiopians in the United States

1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Immigration Status ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The World

Ethiopia is one of the oldest countries in the world. Except for a brief five year period of Italian occupation (1936-41), Ethiopia, in the span of its thousands of years of existence, was never conquered and administered by a foreign power. Therefore, the tradition of permanent emigration or seeking asylum in foreign countries is an alien concept to the Ethiopian people.Ancient and medieval Ethiopia is depicted as having existed in isolation from contemporaneous states and empires. This attribution of isolationism, compactly expressed by Edward Gibbon’s oft quoted statement that “the Ethiopians slept nearly a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten,” is not at all borne by historical facts.

The Psychosis of Permanent War

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-51
Author(s):  
Chris Hedges
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
The Rule Of Law

In this no-holds-barred essay, former New York Times Middle East correspondent and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges examines how the United States’ staunch support provides Israel with impunity to visit mayhem on a population which it subjugates and holds captive. Notwithstanding occasional and momentary criticism, the official U.S. cheerleading stance is not only an embarrassing spectacle, Hedges argues, it is also a violation of international law, and an illustration of the disfiguring and poisonous effect of the psychosis of permanent war characteristic of both countries. The author goes on to conclude that the reality of its actions against the Palestinians, both current and historical, exposes the fiction that Israel stands for the rule of law and human rights, and gives the lie to the myth of the Jewish state and that of its sponsor, the United States.

scholarly journals Cuba now

1990 ◽  
Vol 64 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 41-49
Author(s):  
Catherine A. Sunshine
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Grove Press ◽  
Imperial State

[First paragraph]The Cuba reader: the making of a revolutionary society. PHILIP BRENNER, WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE, DONNA RICH, and DANIEL SIEGEL (eds.). New York: Grove Press, 1989. xxxv + 564 pp. (Paper US $14.95). Cuba: the test of time. JEAN STUBBS. London: Latin America Bureau, 1989. xvii + 142 pp. (Paper UK £3.95). Cuba: politics, economics and society. MAX AZICRI. London: Pinter Publishers Ltd., 1988. xxiii + 276 pp. (Cloth US $35.00, Paper US $12.50). Cuba libre: breaking the chains? PETER MARSHALL. Boston: Faber & Faber, 1987. viii + 300 pp. (Cloth US $18.95). The closest of enemies: a personal and diplomatic account of U.S.-Cuban relations since 1957. WAYNE S. SMITH. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987. 308 pp. (Paper US $8.95). Imperial state and revolution: the United States and Cuba, 1952-1986. MORRIS H. MORLEY. New Rochelle, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ix + 571 pp. (Paper US $16.95, Cloth US $59.50). From confrontation to negotiation: U.S. relations with Cuba. PHILIP BRENNER. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988. x + 118 pp. (Cloth US $30.00, Paper US $9.95).Nineteen eighty-eight marked the completion of the Cuban revolution's third decade. Several events that year suggested that Cubans might finally look forward to a lessening of the island's international isolation, if not its domestic economic woes. The revolution had survived eight years of hostility from the Reagan administration. Washington's attempts to secure international censure of Cuba on human rights grounds had culminated in the visit of a United Nations delegation, at Havana's invitation and with relatively little damage to Cuba's image. Fidel Castro's visits to Ecuador and Mexico to attend the inaugurations of two Latin American presidents underscored Cuba's reinsertion into the hemispheric community. Finally, Cuban military successes against South African troops in Angola and Cuba's role in the subsequent negotiations over Angola and Namibia were a source of pride.

Scottsboro—and Collapse

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Horne
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Black America ◽  
The World

This chapter focuses on the Scottsboro campaign. Buoyed by massive global support, the Scottsboro campaign took black America and then the nation by storm. Patterson asserted accurately in early 1934 that Scottsboro “has raised the question of international working class solidarity to its highest level.” Thus, he said beamingly, “Every Negro worker and toiling slave on the land breathes freer because of the activities of the ILD,” while the “southern landlord lynchers have learned to curse its name and to dread the presence of its organizations.” The main point, he stressed, was “a new understanding of the term—international working class solidarity.” Moreover, as a result of this case, “The world began to act on the [mal]treatment of [the] Negro.” This was particularly true in the aftermath of 1945, when the United States found it necessary to more effectively charge Moscow with human-rights violations—in part to counter Moscow's charges about Washington's deficiencies in this crucial realm.

Reviving Human Rights Litigation After Kiobel

2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (4) ◽  
pp. 858-863 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Grosswald Curran ◽  
David Sloss
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Death Knell ◽  
Alien Tort Statute

In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., the Supreme Court held that “the presumption against extraterritoriality applies to claims under the [Alien Tort Statute (ATS)], and that nothing in the statute rebuts that presumption.” The Court preserved the possibility that claims arising from conduct outside the United States might be actionable under the ATS “where the claims touch and concern the territory of the United States ... with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritorial application.” However, the Court’s decision apparently sounds the death knell for “foreign-cubed” human rights claims under the ATS—that is, cases in which foreign defendants committed human rights abuses against foreign plaintiffs in foreign countries.

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