ASHINGTON,
June 29 - A Supreme Court decision on Tuesday kept federal courts open to
lawsuits by foreigners who allege that they were victims of serious human
rights violations anywhere in the world.
The decision interpreting the Alien Tort Statute came as a relief to
human rights organizations that had feared the court would accept the Bush
administration's invitation to narrow the application of the 215-year-old
law.
At the same time, the result was a sharp disappointment to international
business interests, which have been alarmed by increasing use of the law to
sue multinational corporations for human rights violations and had looked to
the Supreme Court to curb the trend.
The case before the court did not involve a corporate defendant, and the
6-to-3 decision did not conclusively resolve the status of such cases. That
opportunity may come soon, because lower courts with corporate cases on
their dockets have been deferring decisions while waiting to see how the
Supreme Court would rule in this case.
A case brought on behalf of residents of Myanmar charging the Unocal
Corporation with human rights violations in connection with a gas pipeline
project has already been argued before the federal appeals court in San
Francisco and could reach the Supreme Court quickly.
The case before the justices was an appeal of an earlier ruling by the
same appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit. That court permitted a Mexican doctor, Humberto Álvarez-Machain, to
use the Alien Tort Statute to sue a Mexican who helped the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration to kidnap him from his office in Guadalajara and
bring him to the United States to stand trial for murder. A grand jury had
indicted Dr. Álvarez-Machain in the murder of a federal narcotics agent,
Enrique Camarena-Salazar. He was acquitted at his 1992 trial.
The Alien Tort Statute, which was among the laws enacted by the First
Congress in 1789, provides jurisdiction in federal district courts "of any
civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law
of nations or a treaty of the United States." The meaning of this statutory
language, including the odd phrase "for a tort only," is obscure and the law
was scarcely used until lower federal courts began applying it in
international human rights cases in the 1980's.
In Dr. Álvarez-Machain's case, the Ninth Circuit found that the
cross-border kidnapping violated international law and was thus the type of
injury for which a foreigner could sue in federal court. A jury awarded the
doctor a $25,000 judgment against the Mexican defendant, José Francisco
Sosa, who then appealed to the Supreme Court.
In the decision on Tuesday, the last day of the Supreme Court's term, all
nine justices voted to overturn the Ninth Circuit's judgment. "A single
illegal detention of less than a day, followed by the transfer of custody to
lawful authorities and a prompt arraignment, violates no norm of customary
international law" and was not the type of egregious human rights violation
that the Alien Tort Statute was intended to cover, Justice David H. Souter
wrote for the court.
But the specific fate of Dr. Álvarez-Machain's lawsuit was not what made
this case, Sosa v. Álvarez-Machain, No 03-339, one of the most closely
watched on the court's docket. What mattered for future cases was the
court's broader interpretation of the statute.
The Bush administration had urged the court to hear the case and to rule
that the Alien Tort Statute did nothing more than define an aspect of the
federal courts' original jurisdiction, without conferring an ability to
bring private lawsuits or to invoke modern notions of international law.
There was "no basis," the administration's brief said, to view the law as
having established "a roaming cause of action that permits aliens to come to
United States courts and recover money damages for violations of
international law anywhere around the globe." Congress had to specifically
provide a basis for suing under the law, the brief said.
Justice Souter's majority opinion rejected that argument. He said that
while the law should be applied with "judicial caution," it should also be
interpreted as its authors intended it. He said the First Congress, "which
reflected the understanding of the framing generation and included some of
the framers, assumed that federal courts could properly identify some
international norms as enforceable" under the law it wrote. "It would take
some explaining to say now that federal courts must avert their gaze
entirely from any international norm intended to protect individuals," he
added.
Justice Souter said that in the 18th century, there were three offenses
that were seen as violating the contemporary concept of international law:
violation of a promise to give "safe conduct,", piracy and "infringement of
the rights of ambassadors." Calling these offenses "paradigms," he said that
the Alien Tort Statute should be interpreted today as applying to their
modern equivalents: international norms with "definite content and
acceptance among civilized nations."
Human rights lawyers said Tuesday that while this analysis did not extend
to the brief detention of Dr. Álvarez-Machain, it would cover universally
recognized violations like torture, genocide, slavery and prolonged
arbitrary detention.
"These are core human rights claims," Paul L. Hoffman, who argued in the
court for Dr. Álvarez-Machain and who also represents the plaintiffs in the
Unocal lawsuit, said in an interview. "The court has accepted that
international law evolves and that this law has contemporary meaning."
Dissenting from this portion of the opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said
the majority had adopted "a 20th-century invention of internationalist law
professors and human-rights advocates" and opened the door to an
"illegitimate lawmaking endeavor" by federal judges.
"American law - the law made by the people's democratically elected
representatives - does not recognize a category of activity that is so
universally disapproved by other nations that it is automatically unlawful
here, and automatically gives rise to a private action for money damages in
federal court," Justice Scalia said. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and
Justice Clarence Thomas signed his opinion.
Echoing that criticism, Robin Conrad, a lawyer with the United States
Chamber of Commerce, expressed the disappointment of international business
interests with the decision. In an interview, she said the ruling "leaves
far too much discretion to courts" and creates "an ever-expanding universe
of judge-made law." Ms. Conrad added: "We didn't succeed in cutting these
cases off at the pass. We're back to square one."
Justice Souter's densely worded, 45-page opinion contained numerous words
of caution for lower courts in handling future cases. He said courts should
be sensitive to the foreign policy implications of cases under the Alien
Tort Statute, citing in particular cases now pending against corporations
that cooperated with the apartheid regime in South Africa.
The South African government has opposed these lawsuits on the ground
that they interfere with its own post-apartheid approach to reconciliation
and reconstruction, and the State Department has endorsed South Africa's
view. "In such cases, there is a strong argument that federal courts should
give serious weight to the executive branch's view of the case's impact on
foreign policy," Justice Souter said.