Post by jeffolie on Apr 17, 2013 10:00:51 GMT -6
Supreme Court blocks overseas human rights cases from U.S. courts
April 17, 2013
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has declared that American courts will not be the world’s forum for deciding suits alleging human rights abuses by corporations and foreign tyrants on foreign soil.
In a 9-0 decision, the high court tossed out a major lawsuit brought by Nigerians against Royal Dutch Petroleum for conspiring with the Nigerian regime in a campaign of rape, torture and murder in the oil-rich delta in the early 1990s.
This suit had become a test of whether American courts could serve as a judicial forum for victims of gross human rights abuses abroad. These claims were filed under the recently rediscovered Alien Tort Statute of 1789, which opened the courts to claims based on the “laws of nations.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in an opinion that was joined by four other justices, moved to limit the interpretation of that law in a decision that will be welcomed by corporate America.
Roberts invoked the “presumption against extraterritorial application” in holding the 1789 law does not open the courthouse door to hearing legal claims based on conduct outside of this country. “United States laws governs domestically, but do not rule the world,” he said.
Speaking in the court, Roberts said most of these human rights suits involve “foreign plaintiffs suing foreign defendants for conduct that took place on foreign soil.” There is no reason to believe the first Congress wanted to make American courts as the forum for deciding disputes from around the world, he said.
Since the mid-1980s, however, human rights lawyers have invoked the Alien Tort Statute as a way to win justice for victims of foreign atrocities. The Center for Constitutional Rights called the law “a vital tool for holding individuals, corporations and governments accountable for international human rights violations, such as torture, genocide and war crimes.”
But corporate leaders here and around the world have urged the Supreme Court to rein in the law. They say the corporations increasingly found themselves being targeted by suits claiming they had aided or abetted rights abuses in foreign lands.
Today’s opinion by the chief justice appears to block most but not all such claims being heard in U.S. courts. Justice Anthony Kennedy in a concurring opinion noted that the Torture Victim Protection Act would allows suits against officials who commit acts of torture abroad.
Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Kennedy joined the Roberts opinion in the case of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch.
The four liberal justices said they agreed that the suit against Royal Dutch should be thrown out. “Mere corporate presence” in the United States is not enough to justify suing a multinational corporation here, said Justice Stephen Breyer. But he said the court majority had gone too far in closing U.S. courts to deciding suits involving abuses abroad.
Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice, called the decision “a blow to decades of human rights law.”
www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-supreme-court-overseas-human-rights-20130417,0,6638680.story