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The Political Branches And The Law Of Nations, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia
The Political Branches And The Law Of Nations, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia
Anthony J. Bellia
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the U.S. Supreme Court went out of its way to follow background rules of the law of nations, particularly the law of state-state relations. As we have recently argued, the Court followed the law of nations because adherence to such law preserved the constitutional prerogatives of the political branches to conduct foreign relations and decide momentous questions of war and peace. Although we focused primarily on the extent to which the Constitution obligated courts to follow the law of nations in the early republic, the explanation we offered rested on an important, …
The Alien Tort Statute And The Law Of Nations, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia
The Alien Tort Statute And The Law Of Nations, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia
Anthony J. Bellia
Courts and scholars have struggled to identify the original meaning of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). As enacted in 1789, the ATS provided "[t]hat the district courts...shall...have cognizance...of all causes where an alien sues for tort only in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." The statute was rarely invoked for almost two centuries. In the 1980s, lower federal courts began reading the statute expansively to allow foreign citizens to sue other foreign citizens for all violations of modern customary international law that occurred outside the United States. In 2004, the Supreme Court took …