Law Commons^™

Brown, The Civil Rights Movement, And The Silent Litigation Revolution, Stephen C. Yeazell

Vanderbilt Law Review

One doubts that Robert Carter, Thurgood Marshall, Spottswood Robinson, Jack Greenberg and the rest of the legal team that argued Brown v. Board of Education spent much time thinking about mass torts. Nonetheless, it is entirely appropriate that a commemoration of their achievements include not only that topic but also international human rights and health care, as well as the more expected ones of education and social welfare. Brown was part of a revolution, and revolutions often have collateral effects as important as their immediate consequences. The civil rights movement followed the same pattern.

As an immediate consequence, that movement …

Laying One Bankrupt Critique To Rest: "Sosa V. Alvarez-Machain" And The Future Of International Human Rights Litigation In U.S. Courts, Ralph G. Steinhardt

Vanderbilt Law Review

In offering a form of civil redress to the victims of international human rights violations, litigation under the Alien Tort Statute ("ATS") has come to reflect in microcosm the ways that international law and practice have changed in the last half century. Specifically, the successful ATS cases since the Second Circuit's seminal decision in Fildrtiga v. Peia-Irala illustrate the blurring of certain structural distinctions that had long given international law its characteristic shape, especially the distinctions between public and private international law, between treaties and custom, between state and nonstate actors, between international and domestic law, and between lex lata …