International Humanitarian Law Commons^™

Corporate Liability For Human Rights Violations: The Future Of The Alien Tort Claims Act, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This paper addresses complex legal issues in light of and in the context of Jesner v. Arab Bank, a case involving the scope of corporate liability for human rights abuses under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). Part I provides a brief overview of the Jesner case. Part II outlines the case Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. and its holding. Part III discusses Kiobel's shortcomings, including the vagueness of its "touch and concern" test and its failure to specify which law—international or domestic—applies to the issue of corporate liability under the ATCA. Part IV then proposes other …

Sequencing Peace And Justice In Syria, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Since 2011, the conflict in Syria has caused the death of hundreds of thousands of individuals and the displacement of millions. Efforts to refer the Syrian situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) have consistently failed despite well-documented reports about the commission of serious crimes in Syria, including the use of chemical weapons against civilians, torture, the use of child soldiers, and crimes of sexual violence.

This Article explores whether the dual goals of peace and justice can be reconciled in the Syrian context and how these goals may be properly sequenced in order to potentially achieve long-lasting peace in …

Jesner V. Arab Bank, Rebecca Hamilton

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The exclusion of transnational human rights litigation from U.S. federal courts is, for most practical purposes, now complete. On April 24, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a 5–4 ruling in Jesner v. Arab Bank, deciding that foreign corporations cannot be sued under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).

Finding The Forum That Fits: Child Immigrants And Fair Process, Lenni Benson

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Talking Foreign Policy: Jesner V. Arab Bank, Milena Sterio, Thomas Buergenthal, Carsten Stahn, Avidan Cover, Timothy Webster, Michael P. Scharf

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Talking Foreign Policy is a one-hour radio program, hosted by Case Western Reserve University School of Law Co-Dean Michael Scharf, in which experts discuss the salient foreign policy issues of the day. Dean Scharf created Talking Foreign Policy to break down complex foreign policy topics that are prominent in the day-to-day news cycles yet difficult to understand.

This broadcast featured:

• Judge Thomas Buergenthal, the youngest survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, who went on to become the Dean of American University Law School, to serve for twelve years as a judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and then …

The Effect Of International Ngos On Influencing Domestic Policy And Law, Ashley Macarchuk

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis attempts to understand the impact of international human rights and environmental NGOs on affecting domestic policy and law. In particular, it looks at how State-NGO relations, civil society, and accountability affect the success of international NGOs in enacting change in domestic policy. The focus is on four countries with some of the largest human rights and environmental abuses: Argentina, China, India, and Russia. Through these countries, this thesis shows that NGOs have the most influence when State-NGO relations are strong, civil society is active, and NGOs are accountable to both the State and citizens. A key component to …

Rape And Sexual Violence Used As A Weapon Of War And Genocide, Larissa Peltola

CMC Senior Theses

Rape and other forms of sexual violence have been used against civilian populations since the advent of armed conflict. However, recent scholarship within the last few decades proves that rape is not a byproduct of war or a result of transgressions by a few “bad apples,” rather, rape and sexual violence are used as strategic, systematic, and calculated tools of war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Rape has also been used as a means of preventing future generations of children of “undesirable” groups from being born. Rape and sexual violence are also used with the purpose of intimidating women and their …

Lessons For The Treaty Process From The International Law Commission And International Environmental Law, Sara L. Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The chapter examines Amnesty case studies in order to document the state practice identified and the gaps that need to be filled. The chapter will then consider the work of the ILC in its progressive codification of the law on prevention and loss allocation with respect to transboundary harm arising from hazardous activities, culminating in draft Articles8 and draft Principles,9 respectively, in 2001 and 2006. The modest claim of this chapter is that as the key United Nations body responsible for the progressive development and codification of international law, the work of the ILC should surely be of relevance to …

Implementing Shared-Use Of Mining Infrastructure To Achieve The Sustainable Development Goals, Perrine Toledano, Nicolas Maennling

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Many of the Sustainable Development Goals will only be achieved if the population has access to basic services, such as access to water, power, transport, and telecommunications. However, in many developing countries there is a lack of infrastructure to guarantee these services and there are insufficient public funds to finance growing needs. In resource-rich countries, the mining sector can play a key role in increasing access to infrastructure. Mining-related infrastructure is often developed to serve the exclusive need of the investors, but if it is shared and developed to serve the broader needs and uses of the host economy it …

Rethinking The Individual In International Law, Chiara Giorgetti

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The acceptance of the individual as a subject of international law has been gradual and asymmetrical. Individuals have become international law subjects in their own rights in some international legal areas, including human rights and international criminal law. This affords individuals substantive rights and obligations, as well as procedural rights. In most legal areas, however, individuals acquired substantive rights, but not direct procedural rights. In those instances, individuals need the filter of a nationality to enforce their claim and remedy in international proceedings. This Article criticizes the nationality-based approach and argues that there are better and alternative ways to provide …

Valuing Life: A Human Rights Perspective On The Calculus Of Regulation, William J. Aceves

Faculty Scholarship

How much is a human life worth? This is both a puzzling and subversive question for human rights advocates to consider. The concept of human rights is premised on the sanctity and inviolability of human life as well as the equality of all human beings. Indeed, the right to life and the corollary right to be free from the arbitrary deprivation of life constitute the defining human right. To place a price on the value of human life is, thus, unsettling. And yet, monetary valuation of human life occurs frequently. Governments use cost-benefit analysis and calculations regarding the value of …

The End Of Special Treatment For Cubans In The U.S. Immigration System: Consequences And Solutions For Cubans With Final Orders Of Removal, Lindsay Daniels

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In January 2016, former President Obama announced the end of the “Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot” Policy, which granted special immigration benefits to Cuban migrants. As part of the agreement to end this policy, the Cuban government agreed to take back its citizens with final orders of removal for criminal convictions, an action that it had refused to take for decades. This Comment will begin by exploring past and present immigration policies between the United States and Cuba, including recent developments like the normalization of relations and the impact of President Trump’s immigration policies.

This Comment will then explore possible avenues of relief …

Borders, Bans, And Courts In The European Union, Maryellen Fullerton

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Correcting An Evident Error: A Plea To Revise Jesner V. Arab Bank, Plc, William J. Aceves

Faculty Scholarship

In Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, the Supreme Court held that foreign corporations are not subject to lawsuits under the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”). Written by Justice Kennedy, the highly fractured opinion offered several reasons for its holding. Although commentators have already criticized various aspects of Justice Kennedy’s opinion, one point has not received meaningful consideration and merits correction. In his plurality opinion, Justice Kennedy attached significance to the placement of the Torture Victim Protection Act (“TVPA”) as a statutory note to the ATS in the U.S. Code. In so doing, he disregarded longstanding practice and black letter law that …

Legal Pluralism And The Threat To Human Rights In The New Plurinational State Of Bolivia, James M. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

Bolivia, the chronically poor, landlocked Andean country has long seen its indigenous populations marginalized, languishing in underdevelopment. Spanish colonialists destroyed any vestige of the vibrant, complex civilization that existed in the region – including the religious, political and legal systems in place for centuries. In December 2005, Evo Morales Ayma was the first elected President of indigenous descent. After leading the changes in the country’s Constitution, Morales continued to rule Bolivia until the writing of this Article. The New Political Constitution of Plurinational State of Bolivia of 2009 and a national law for community justice, signed into law by Morales, …

What's Your Advice, Counsel? From Distinction To Detention, Financial Support To Ground Support, And Everything In Between, Journal Staff

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

An informal summary of the discussions that took place in the Workshop Session of the 2nd IDF International Conference on the Law of Armed Conflict, held April 25-27, 2017. In this session, conference participants were given practical scenarios on a range of issues for consideration. In adherence with the Chatham House Rule, the summary is presented without reference to the identity or affiliation of the participants.

Politics, Power Dynamics, And The Limits Of Existing Self-Regulation And Oversight In Icc Preliminary Examinations, Asaf Lubin

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

Professor Lubin's contribution to volume 2 is titled, "Politics, Power Dynamics, and the Limits of Existing Self-Regulation and Oversight in ICC Preliminary Examinations," pp. 77-150.

Should the normative framework that governs the International Criminal Court’s (‘ICC’) oversight concerning preliminary examinations undergo a reform? The following chapter answers this question in the affirmative, making the claim that both self-regulation by the Office of the Prosecutor (‘OTP’) and quality control by the Pre-Trial Chamber (‘PTC’) currently suffer from significant deficiencies, thus failing to reach the optimum point on the scale between absolute prosecutorial discretion and absolute control. The chapter demonstrates some of …

Inaccessible Apexes: Comparing Access To Regional Human Rights Courts And Commissions In Europe, The Americas, And Africa Symposium: Comparing Regional Human Rights Regimes, Claudia Martin, Francoise Hampson, Frans Vilijoen

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The three well-established regional human rights systems (in Europe, the Americas, and Africa) aim to provide access to individuals to a decision and remedy based on the violation of human rights in the founding treaties. In this article, the notion of the "dispute pyramid," developed in sociolegal studies, generally, is adjusted to describe and help us better understand regional access. Access differs considerably across the three systems, and its major stumbling blocks present themselves at different stages. In the European system, most cases are dismissed at the admissibility phase. In the Inter-American system, most cases are weeded out at the …

The Peace Vs. Justice Debate And The Syrian Crisis, Paul Williams, Lisa Dicker, C. Danae Paterson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Peace negotiators often face the difficult decision of whether to pursue peace at the potential cost of achieving justice, or to pursue justice at the potential cost of achieving near term peace. There are abiding ethical and moral debates surrounding this tension between peace and justice. In Syria—where the death toll has exceeded 470,000, 11 million have been displaced, and there are over 14,000 documented cases of torture to the point of death—the peace versus justice debate is a living dilemma with which negotiators are currently grappling. This article strives to examine a timely facet of this multidimensional puzzle: how …

Enemy-Controlled Battlespace": The Contemporary Meaning And Purpose Of Additional Protocol I'S Article 44(3) Exception, Kubo Macak, Michael N. Schmitt

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The contemporary propensity for, and risk of, armed conflict taking place among the civilian population has cast a new light on several long-standing challenges to the application of international humanitarian law (IHL). One is the determination of combatant status and, more specifically, the question of when the requirement for the combatants to distinguish themselves from the civilian population may exceptionally be relaxed. In addressing this question, the Article re-examines Additional Protocol I's Article 44(3) and adopts an interpretation thereof that better comports with its object and purpose than those previously prevalent. After exposing the limitations of relying solely on drafting …