Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-07-05174/USCOURTS-caDC-07-05174-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries Company
Appellant
Salah El Din Ahmed Mohammed Idris
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 16, 2009 Decided June 8, 2010 

No. 07-5174 

EL-SHIFA PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES COMPANY AND 

SALAH EL DIN AHMED MOHAMMED IDRIS, 

APPELLANTS

v. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 01cv00731) 

Christian G. Vergonis argued the cause for appellants. 

With him on the briefs were Stephen J. Brogan, Timothy J. 

Finn, and Katherine E. Stern. 

Beth S. Brinkmann, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, 

U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for appellee. 

With her on the brief were Mark B. Stern and Dana J. Martin, 

Attorneys. 

Before: SENTELLE, Chief Judge, and GINSBURG, 

HENDERSON, ROGERS, TATEL, GARLAND, BROWN, GRIFFITH, 

and KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judges. 

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH. 

Opinion concurring in the judgment filed by Circuit 

Judge GINSBURG, with whom Circuit Judge ROGERS joins. 

Opinion concurring in the judgment filed by Circuit 

Judge KAVANAUGH, with whom Chief Judge SENTELLE joins, 

and with whom Circuit Judges GINSBURG and ROGERS join as 

to Part I. 

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: The owners of a Sudanese 

pharmaceutical plant sued the United States for unjustifiably 

destroying the plant, failing to compensate them for its 

destruction, and defaming them by asserting they had ties to 

Osama bin Laden. The district court dismissed their 

complaint. A panel of this court affirmed, holding that the 

political question doctrine barred the plaintiffs’ claims. After 

granting rehearing en banc, we now affirm the district court 

on the same ground. 

I. 

On August 7, 1998, the terrorist network headed by 

Osama bin Laden bombed United States embassies in Kenya 

and Tanzania. Hundreds were killed and thousands injured. 

On August 20, the United States responded by launching 

nearly simultaneous missile strikes against two targets: a 

terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and a factory in Sudan 

believed to be “associated with the bin Ladin network” and 

“involved in the production of materials for chemical 

weapons.” President William J. Clinton, Address to the 

Nation on Military Action Against Terrorist Sites in 

Afghanistan and Sudan, 2 PUB. PAPERS 1460, 1461 (Aug. 20, 

1998) [hereinafter Address to the Nation].

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President Clinton addressed the American people, 

explaining “the objective of this action and why it was 

necessary.” Id. at 1460. “Our target was terror; our mission 

was clear: to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated 

with and funded by Usama bin Ladin, perhaps the preeminent 

organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world 

today.” Id. “The risks from inaction, to America and the 

world, would be far greater than action,” the President 

proclaimed, “for that would embolden our enemies, leaving 

their ability and their willingness to strike us intact.” Id. at 

1461. 

In a letter to the Congress “consistent with the War 

Powers Resolution,” the President reported that the strikes 

“were a necessary and proportionate response to the imminent 

threat of further terrorist attacks against U.S. personnel and 

facilities” and “were intended to prevent and deter additional 

attacks by a clearly identified terrorist threat.” President 

William J. Clinton, Letter to Congressional Leaders Reporting 

on Military Action Against Terrorist Sites in Afghanistan and 

Sudan, 2 PUB. PAPERS 1464, 1464 (Aug. 21, 1998). The 

following day, in a radio address to the nation, President 

Clinton explained his decision to take military action, stating, 

“Our goals were to disrupt bin Ladin’s terrorist network and 

destroy elements of its infrastructure in Afghanistan and 

Sudan. And our goal was to destroy, in Sudan, the factory 

with which bin Ladin’s network is associated, which was 

producing an ingredient essential for nerve gas.” President 

William J. Clinton, The President’s Radio Address, 2 PUB.

PAPERS 1464, 1465 (Aug. 22, 1998). Citing “compelling 

evidence that the bin Ladin network was poised to strike at us 

again” and was seeking to acquire chemical weapons, the 

President declared that “we simply could not stand idly by.” 

Id. 

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Other government officials elaborated upon the 

President’s justifications for the attack on the plant. On the 

day of the strike, the Secretary of Defense stated that bin 

Laden “had some financial interest in contributing to this 

particular facility.” Compl. at 13, El-Shifa Pharm. Indus. Co. 

v. United States, 402 F. Supp. 2d 267 (D.D.C. 2005) (Civ. No. 

01-731). An unnamed “senior intelligence official” asserted at 

a press briefing, “[W]e know that bin Laden has made 

financial contributions to the Sudanese Military Industrial 

Complex[,] of which, we believe, the Shifa pharmaceutical 

plant is part.” Id. And on August 23, the National Security 

Advisor maintained that “Osama bin Laden was providing 

key financial help for the plant.” Id. 

The plaintiffs in this case are the El-Shifa Pharmaceutical 

Industries Company (El-Shifa), the owner of the plant, and 

Salah El Din Ahmed Mohammed Idris (Idris), the principal 

owner of El-Shifa. They allege that striking the plant was a 

mistake, that it “was not a chemical weapons facility, was not 

connected to bin Laden or to terrorism, and was not otherwise 

a danger to public health and safety.” Id. at 6. Instead, the 

plaintiffs contend, the plant was Sudan’s largest manufacturer 

of medicinal products, responsible for producing over half the 

pharmaceuticals used in Sudan. Because the case comes to us 

on appeal from a dismissal for lack of subject-matter 

jurisdiction, we take the plaintiffs’ allegations as true. See TriState Hosp. Supply Corp. v. United States, 341 F.3d 571, 572 

n.1 (D.C. Cir. 2003). 

According to the plaintiffs, within days of the attack, the 

press debunked the President’s assertions that the plant was 

involved with chemical weapons and associated with bin 

Laden. Confronted with their error, senior administration and 

intelligence officials backpedaled, issuing what the plaintiffs 

characterize as “revised” or “new justifications” for the strike 

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and conceding that any relationship between bin Laden and 

the plant was “indirect.” Compl. at 17–19. Although the 

United States attacked the plant without knowing who owned 

it, officials learned within three days of the strike that Idris 

was the owner. After that point, “unidentified U.S. 

government officials” began telling reporters that Idris 

maintained direct or indirect financial relations with bin 

Laden, purchased the plant on bin Laden’s behalf, acted as a 

front man or agent for bin Laden in Sudan, and had “ties” to 

bin Laden. Id. at 19–20. The plaintiffs contend that neither the 

contemporaneous nor post-hoc justifications for the attack 

were true: “All of the justifications for the attack advanced by 

the United States were based on false factual premises and 

were offered with reckless disregard of the truth based upon 

grossly incomplete research and unreasonable analysis of 

inconclusive intelligence.” Id. at 7.

This lawsuit is only one of several actions the plaintiffs 

pursued to recoup their losses. They also sued the United 

States in the Court of Federal Claims, seeking $50 million as 

just compensation under the Takings Clause of the 

Constitution. The court dismissed the suit on the ground that 

“the enemy target of military force” has no right to 

compensation for “the destruction of property designated by 

the President as enemy war-making property.” El-Shifa 

Pharm. Indus. Co. v. United States, 55 Fed. Cl. 751, 774 

(2003). The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal 

Circuit affirmed, holding that the plaintiffs’ takings claim 

raised a nonjusticiable political question. See El-Shifa Pharm. 

Indus. Co. v. United States, 378 F.3d 1346, 1361–70 (Fed. 

Cir. 2004), cert. denied, 545 U.S. 1139 (2005). On the 

legislative front, one member of the House of Representatives 

introduced a bill to compensate those who suffered injuries or 

property damage in the missile strike, see H.R. 894, 107th 

Cong. (2001), and a resolution directing the claims court to 

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investigate the matter and issue a report to the House, see

H.R. Res. 81, 107th Cong. (2001) (citing 28 U.S.C. §§ 1492, 

2509). Both the bill and the resolution died in committee. 

The plaintiffs brought this action in the United States 

District Court for the District of Columbia after the CIA 

denied their requests for compensation for the plant’s 

destruction and for a retraction of the allegations that the 

plaintiffs were involved with terrorism. The plaintiffs sought 

at least $50 million in damages under the Federal Tort Claims 

Act, claiming negligence in the government’s investigation of 

the plant’s ties to chemical weapons and Osama bin Laden 

and trespass in its destruction of the plant “without consent or 

justification.” Compl. at 27. Their complaint also included a 

claim under the law of nations seeking a judicial declaration 

that the United States violated international law by failing to 

compensate them for the unjustified destruction of their 

property. Finally, the plaintiffs claimed that the President and 

other senior officials defamed them by publishing false 

statements linking Idris and the plant to bin Laden, 

international terrorism, or chemical weapons, knowing those 

statements were false or making them with reckless disregard 

for their veracity. The plaintiffs sought extraordinary relief: 

“[a] declaration that claims made by agents of the United 

States that Mr. Idris or El-Shifa are connected to Osama bin 

Laden, terrorist groups or the production of chemical weapons 

are false and defamatory” and “[a]n order requiring the 

United States to issue a retraction [of those claims] in the 

form of a press release.” Id. at 31. 

The district court granted the government’s motion to 

dismiss the complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, 

see FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(1), concluding that sovereign 

immunity barred all of the plaintiffs’ claims. See El-Shifa, 402 

F. Supp. 2d at 270–73. The court also noted that the complaint 

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“likely present[ed] a nonjusticiable political question.” Id. at 

276. The plaintiffs filed a motion to alter the judgment with 

respect to their claims for equitable relief, which the district 

court denied. See El-Shifa Pharm. Indus. Co. v. United States, 

No. 01-731, 2007 WL 950082 (D.D.C. Mar. 28, 2007). 

The plaintiffs appealed, challenging only the dismissal of 

their claims alleging a violation of the law of nations and 

defamation. The plaintiffs have abandoned any request for 

monetary relief, but still seek a declaration that the 

government’s failure to compensate them for the destruction 

of the plant violated customary international law, a 

declaration that statements government officials made about 

them were defamatory, and an injunction requiring the 

government to retract those statements. A divided panel of 

this court affirmed the district court, holding that these claims 

are barred by the political question doctrine. See El-Shifa 

Pharm. Indus. Co. v. United States, 559 F.3d 578 (D.C. Cir. 

2009). We vacated the panel’s judgment and ordered 

rehearing en banc. See El-Shifa Pharm. Indus. Co. v. United 

States, 330 F. App’x 200 (D.C. Cir. 2009). 

II. 

“It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial 

department to say what the law is,” Marbury v. Madison, 5 

U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177 (1803), but some “[q]uestions, in 

their nature political,” are beyond the power of the courts to 

resolve, id. at 170. The political question doctrine is 

“essentially a function of the separation of powers,” Baker v. 

Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 217 (1962), and “excludes from judicial 

review those controversies which revolve around policy 

choices and value determinations constitutionally committed 

for resolution to the halls of Congress or the confines of the 

Executive Branch,” Japan Whaling Ass’n v. Am. Cetacean 

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Soc’y, 478 U.S. 221, 230 (1986). See also United States v. 

Munoz-Flores, 495 U.S. 385, 394 (1990) (explaining that the 

“doctrine is designed to restrain the Judiciary from 

inappropriate interference in the business of the other 

branches of Government”). 

That some governmental actions are beyond the reach of 

the courts reflects the Constitution’s limitation of the “judicial 

power of the United States” to “cases” or “controversies.” 

U.S. CONST. art. III; see DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 

U.S. 332, 352 (2006) (“The doctrines of mootness, ripeness, 

and political question all originate in Article III’s ‘case’ or 

‘controversy’ language, no less than standing does.”); 

Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. To Stop the War, 418 U.S. 

208, 215 (1974) (“[T]he concept of justiciability, which 

expresses the jurisdictional limitations imposed upon federal 

courts by the ‘case or controversy’ requirement of Art. III, 

embodies both the standing and political question 

doctrines . . . .”). “It is therefore familiar learning that no 

justiciable ‘controversy’ exists when parties seek adjudication 

of a political question.” Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 

516 (2007). 

In the seminal case of Baker v. Carr, the Supreme Court 

explained that a claim presents a political question if it 

involves: 

[1] a textually demonstrable constitutional 

commitment of the issue to a coordinate political 

department; or [2] a lack of judicially discoverable and 

manageable standards for resolving it; or [3] the 

impossibility of deciding without an initial policy 

determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial 

discretion; or [4] the impossibility of a court’s 

undertaking independent resolution without expressing 

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lack of the respect due coordinate branches of 

government; or [5] an unusual need for unquestioning 

adherence to a political decision already made; or 

[6] the potentiality of embarrassment from 

multifarious pronouncements by various departments 

on one question. 

369 U.S. at 217. “To find a political question, we need only 

conclude that one [of these] factor[s] is present, not all.” 

Schneider v. Kissinger, 412 F.3d 190, 194 (D.C. Cir. 2005). 

Disputes involving foreign relations, such as the one 

before us, are “quintessential sources of political questions.” 

Bancoult v. McNamara, 445 F.3d 427, 433 (D.C. Cir. 2006). 

Because these cases raise issues that “frequently turn on 

standards that defy judicial application” or “involve the 

exercise of a discretion demonstrably committed to the 

executive or legislature,” Baker, 369 U.S. at 211, “[m]atters 

intimately related to foreign policy and national security are 

rarely proper subjects for judicial intervention,” Haig v. Agee, 

453 U.S. 280, 292 (1981). “Yet it is error to suppose that 

every case or controversy which touches foreign relations lies 

beyond judicial cognizance.” Baker, 369 U.S. at 211. Even in 

the context of military action, the courts may sometimes have 

a role. See Gilligan v. Morgan, 413 U.S. 1, 11–12 (1973). 

Therefore, we must conduct “a discriminating analysis of the 

particular question posed” in the “specific case” before the 

court to determine whether the political question doctrine 

prevents a claim from going forward. Baker, 369 U.S. at 211; 

see, e.g., Wilson v. Libby, 535 F.3d 697, 703–04 (D.C. Cir. 

2008) (holding the political question doctrine did not bar a 

challenge to disclosures “identifying a previously covert 

agent” and therefore “implicat[ing] national security” because 

the plaintiffs’ claims did “not challenge[] any foreign policy 

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or national security decisions entrusted to the Executive 

Branch”). 

In undertaking this discriminating analysis, we note, for 

example, that the political question doctrine does not bar a 

claim that the government has violated the Constitution 

simply because the claim implicates foreign relations. See 

I.N.S. v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983) (holding the one-House 

legislative veto unconstitutional despite its use in matters of 

foreign affairs and the war powers). Because the judiciary is 

the “ultimate interpreter of the Constitution,” Baker, 369 U.S. 

at 211, in most instances claims alleging its violation will 

rightly be heard by the courts. See, e.g., Chadha, 462 U.S. at 

941–42 (“No policy underlying the political question doctrine 

suggests that Congress or the Executive, or both acting in 

concert and in compliance with Art. I, can decide the 

constitutionality of a statute; that is a decision for the 

courts.”). But see, e.g., Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224 

(1993) (whether Senate has violated its duty to “try” 

impeachments presents a political question); Luther v. 

Borden, 48 U.S. (7 How.) 1 (1849) (Guarantee Clause is 

enforceable only by Congress). Similarly, that a case may 

involve the conduct of the nation’s foreign affairs does not 

necessarily prevent a court from determining whether the 

Executive has exceeded the scope of prescribed statutory 

authority or failed to obey the prohibition of a statute or 

treaty. See Japan Whaling, 478 U.S. at 230 (“[O]ne of the 

Judiciary’s characteristic roles is to interpret statutes, and we 

cannot shirk this responsibility merely because” of the 

“interplay” between the statute and “the conduct of this 

Nation’s foreign relations.”); see, e.g., Trans World Airlines, 

Inc. v. Franklin Mint Corp., 466 U.S. 243, 254 n.25 (1984) 

(holding the political question doctrine does not bar 

consideration of whether a Civil Aeronautics Board order is 

inconsistent with the Warsaw Convention); see also David J. 

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Barron & Martin S. Lederman, The Commander in Chief at 

the Lowest Ebb—Framing the Problem, Doctrine, and 

Original Understanding, 121 HARV. L. REV. 689, 723 (2008) 

(“If there is a party with constitutionally sufficient standing to 

demand judicial protection from a presidential refusal to obey 

a statute during war, it is not clear why there should be a 

general rule that courts must leave the question to the political 

branches.”). 

We have consistently held, however, that courts are not a 

forum for reconsidering the wisdom of discretionary decisions 

made by the political branches in the realm of foreign policy 

or national security. In this vein, we have distinguished 

between claims requiring us to decide whether taking military 

action was “wise”—“a ‘policy choice[] and value 

determination[] constitutionally committed for resolution to 

the halls of Congress or the confines of the Executive 

Branch’”—and claims “[p]resenting purely legal issues” such 

as whether the government had legal authority to act. 

Campbell v. Clinton, 203 F.3d 19, 40 (D.C. Cir. 2000) (Tatel, 

J., concurring) (quoting Japan Whaling, 478 U.S. at 230). 

Accordingly, we have declined to adjudicate claims seeking 

only a “determination[] whether the alleged conduct should

have occurred.” Harbury v. Hayden, 522 F.3d 413, 420 (D.C. 

Cir. 2008). Despite some sweeping assertions to the contrary, 

see, e.g., Gonzalez-Vera v. Kissinger, 449 F.3d 1260, 1264 

(D.C. Cir. 2006) (“Whatever Kissinger did as National 

Security Advisor or Secretary of State can hardly be called 

anything other than foreign policy [unreviewable under the 

political question doctrine].” (internal quotation marks 

omitted)), the presence of a political question in these cases 

turns not on the nature of the government conduct under 

review but more precisely on the question the plaintiff raises 

about the challenged action. See Campbell, 203 F.3d at 40 

(Tatel, J., concurring). 

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The political question doctrine bars our review of claims 

that, regardless of how they are styled, call into question the 

prudence of the political branches in matters of foreign policy 

or national security constitutionally committed to their 

discretion. A plaintiff may not, for instance, clear the political 

question bar simply by “recasting [such] foreign policy and 

national security questions in tort terms.” Schneider, 412 F.3d 

at 197 (explaining the courts could not determine whether 

taking military action was “wrongful” as an element of a 

wrongful death claim). Likewise—and contrary to the 

position adopted by Judge Kavanaugh—a statute providing 

for judicial review does not override Article III’s requirement 

that federal courts refrain from deciding political questions. 

See Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 732 n.3 (1972) 

(“Congress may not confer jurisdiction on Art. III federal 

courts . . . to resolve ‘political questions,’ because suits of this 

character are inconsistent with the judicial function under Art. 

III.” (internal citation omitted)); cf. Gilligan, 413 U.S. at 8–9 

(stating a circuit judge “correctly read Baker v. Carr” when 

he wrote that “simply order[ing] compliance with the 

standards set by Congress” could “draw the courts into a 

nonjusticiable political question, over which we have no 

jurisdiction” (quoting Morgan v. Rhodes, 456 F.2d 608, 619 

(6th Cir. 1972) (Celebrezze, J., concurring in part and 

dissenting in part))); Chi. & S. Air Lines, Inc. v. Waterman 

S.S. Corp., 333 U.S. 103, 111 (1948) (declining to construe a 

statute to require judicial review of foreign policy decisions 

“wholly confided by our Constitution to the political 

departments of the government, Executive and Legislative”); 

Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267, 278 (2004) (plurality 

opinion) (citing Waterman for the proposition that “‘[t]he 

judicial Power’ created by Article III, § 1, of the Constitution 

is not whatever judges choose to do or even whatever

Congress chooses to assign them” (citations omitted)). For 

example, in reviewing the Secretary of State’s designation of 

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a group as a “foreign terrorist organization” under the 

Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 8 U.S.C. § 

1189 (2006), we may decide whether the government has 

followed the proper procedures, whether the organization is 

foreign, and whether it has engaged in terrorist activity, but 

we may not determine whether “the terrorist activity of the 

organization threatens the security of United States nationals 

or the national security of the United States,” id.

§ 1189(a)(1)(C). See People’s Mojahedin Org. of Iran v. U.S. 

Dep’t of State (PMOI), 182 F.3d 17, 22–24 (D.C. Cir. 1999). 

Whether this last criterion has been met presents a 

nonjusticiable political question because the Secretary’s 

assessments of whether the terrorist activities of foreign 

organizations constitute threats to the United States “are 

political judgments, ‘decisions of a kind for which the 

Judiciary has neither aptitude, facilities nor responsibility and 

have long been held to belong in the domain of political 

power not subject to judicial intrusion or inquiry.’” PMOI, 

182 F.3d at 23 (quoting Waterman, 333 U.S. at 111). Neither 

a common law nor statutory claim may require the court to 

reassess “policy choices and value determinations” the 

Constitution entrusts to the political branches alone. Japan 

Whaling, 478 U.S. at 230. 

The conclusion that the strategic choices directing the 

nation’s foreign affairs are constitutionally committed to the 

political branches reflects the institutional limitations of the 

judiciary and the lack of manageable standards to channel any 

judicial inquiry into these matters. See generally Nixon, 506 

U.S. at 228–29 (“[T]he concept of a textual commitment to a 

coordinate political department is not completely separate 

from the concept of a lack of judicially discoverable and 

manageable standards for resolving it; the lack of judicially 

manageable standards may strengthen the conclusion that 

there is a textually demonstrable commitment to a coordinate 

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branch.”). We must decline to reconsider what are essentially 

policy choices because “[t]he Judiciary is particularly ill 

suited to make such decisions, as ‘courts are fundamentally 

underequipped to formulate national policies or develop 

standards for matters not legal in nature.’” Japan Whaling, 

478 U.S. at 230 (quoting United States ex rel. Joseph v. 

Cannon, 642 F.2d 1373, 1379 (D.C. Cir. 1981)). In military 

matters in particular, the courts lack the competence to assess 

the strategic decision to deploy force or to create standards to 

determine whether the use of force was justified or wellfounded. 

The complex, subtle, and professional decisions as to 

the . . . control of a military force are essentially 

professional military judgments, subject always to 

civilian control of the Legislative and Executive 

Branches. The ultimate responsibility for these decisions 

is appropriately vested in branches of the government 

which are periodically subject to electoral accountability. 

Gilligan, 413 U.S. at 10. It is not the role of judges to secondguess, with the benefit of hindsight, another branch’s 

determination that the interests of the United States call for 

military action. 

The case at hand involves the decision to launch a 

military strike abroad. Conducting the “discriminating 

analysis of the particular question posed” by the claims the 

plaintiffs press on appeal, Baker, 369 U.S. at 211, we 

conclude that both raise nonjusticiable political questions. The 

law-of-nations claim asks the court to decide whether the 

United States’ attack on the plant was “mistaken and not 

justified.” Compl. at 30. The defamation claim similarly 

requires us to determine the factual validity of the 

government’s stated reasons for the strike. If the political 

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question doctrine means anything in the arena of national 

security and foreign relations, it means the courts cannot 

assess the merits of the President’s decision to launch an 

attack on a foreign target, and the plaintiffs ask us to do just 

that. Therefore, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of the 

plaintiffs’ law-of-nations and defamation claims. 

A. 

The plaintiffs’ complaint asserts that customary 

international law requires states to compensate foreign 

nationals for property destruction that is “mistaken and not 

justified.” The United States purportedly violated this norm 

when the CIA denied the plaintiffs’ request for compensation 

for the destruction of the plant. See id. at 29–30. Because we 

hold this claim barred by the political question doctrine, we 

need not decide whether customary international law requires 

compensation in these circumstances, or, if so, whether the 

plaintiffs have adequately stated a federal cause of action. See 

generally Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692, 725 (2004). 

We begin our analysis with the rule we have already 

identified and upon which both parties agree: courts cannot 

reconsider the wisdom of discretionary foreign policy 

decisions. See Appellants’ En Banc Br. at 22. The plaintiffs’ 

law-of-nations claim falls squarely within this prohibition 

because it would require us to declare that the bombing of the 

El-Shifa plant was “mistaken and not justified.” Whether an 

attack on a foreign target is justified—that is whether it is 

warranted or well-grounded—is a quintessential “policy 

choice[] and value determination[] constitutionally committed 

for resolution to the halls of Congress or the confines of the 

Executive Branch.” Japan Whaling, 478 U.S. at 230. The 

plaintiffs appear to recognize this. On appeal they imply that 

they need only prove the United States failed to compensate 

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them for an attack that was “mistaken.” See Appellants’ En 

Banc Br. at 49–54 & n.6; see also id. at 53 (conceding that 

“whether the attack was reasonable and justified when it 

occurred” presents a “nonjusticiable question”). By asserting 

the El-Shifa bombing was “mistaken,” the plaintiffs 

apparently mean that the United States would not have 

launched the strike if the relevant decisionmakers knew at the 

time what they allegedly know now—that the plant was 

neither involved in producing chemical weapons nor 

associated with bin Laden. See id. at 9 (describing the plant as 

“targeted in error”); id. at 14 (arguing the bombing was 

mistaken because “evidence [has] emerged that the plant was 

in fact innocent property”). But the political question doctrine 

does not permit us to mimic the constitutional role of the 

political branches by guessing how they would have 

conducted the nation’s foreign policy had they been better 

informed. Whether the circumstances warrant a military 

attack on a foreign target is a “substantive political 

judgment[] entrusted expressly to the coordinate branches of 

government,” Gilligan, 413 U.S. at 11, and using a judicial 

forum to reconsider its wisdom would be anathema to the 

separation of powers. Undertaking a counterfactual inquiry 

into how the political branches would have exercised their 

discretion had they known the facts alleged in the plaintiffs’ 

complaint would be to make a political judgment, not a legal 

one. 

Moreover, Baker’s prudential considerations counsel 

judicial restraint as well. First, the court lacks judicially 

manageable standards to adjudicate whether the attack on the 

El-Shifa plant was “mistaken and not justified.” See Baker, 

369 U.S. at 217; cf. Reno v. Am.-Arab Anti-Discrimination 

Comm., 525 U.S. 471, 490–91 (1999) (explaining the courts 

are “ill equipped to determine the[] authenticity and utterly 

unable to assess the[] adequacy” of the government’s “reasons 

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for deeming nationals of a particular country a special 

threat”). We could not decide this question without first 

fashioning out of whole cloth some standard for when 

military action is justified. The judiciary lacks the capacity for 

such a task. As we once said of a claim that certain covert 

operations were “wrongful,” “There are no [judicially] 

discoverable and manageable standards for the resolution of 

such a claim.” Schneider, 412 F.3d at 197; see also id. (“To 

determine whether drastic measures should be taken in 

matters of foreign policy and national security is not the stuff 

of adjudication, but of policymaking.”). Second, the decision 

to take military action is a “policy determination of a kind 

clearly for nonjudicial discretion.” Baker, 369 U.S. at 217. 

Such foreign policy decisions are “delicate, complex, and 

involve large elements of prophecy. . . . They are decisions of 

a kind for which the Judiciary has neither aptitude, facilities 

nor responsibility . . . .” Waterman, 333 U.S. at 111. In short, 

the decision to launch the military attack on the El-Shifa plant 

was constitutionally committed to the political branches, see, 

e.g., U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 11; id. art. II, § 2, cl. 1; see 

also Schneider, 412 F.3d at 194–95, and this court is neither 

an effective nor appropriate forum for reweighing its merits. 

See Harbury, 522 F.3d at 420. Because the plaintiffs’ law-ofnations claim requires the court to second-guess that decision, 

we conclude that it presents a nonjusticiable political 

question. 

Indeed, the law-of-nations claim suffers from flaws 

similar to those the Federal Circuit identified in the plaintiffs’ 

previous claim that the bombing was a taking because it was 

mistaken. As the Federal Circuit explained, “In 

essence . . . the [plaintiffs] are contending that the President 

failed to assure himself with a sufficient degree of certainty” 

of the factual basis for his decision to strike the plant. ElShifa, 378 F.3d at 1365. The plaintiffs would have the federal 

USCA Case #07-5174 Document #1248589 Filed: 06/08/2010 Page 17 of 45
18 

courts “provide them with an opportunity to test that 

contention, and in the process, require this court to elucidate 

the . . . standards that are to guide a President when he 

evaluates the veracity of military intelligence.” Id. This we 

cannot do. 

In refusing to declare the El-Shifa attack “mistaken and 

not justified,” we do not mean to imply that the contrary is 

true. We simply decline to answer a question outside the 

scope of our authority. By requiring that we reserve judgment, 

the political question doctrine protects the Congress and the 

Executive from judicial “invasion of their sphere,” Antolok v. 

United States, 873 F.2d 369, 383 (D.C. Cir. 1989) (opinion of 

Sentelle, J.), and guards against “the reputation of the Judicial 

Branch [being] ‘borrowed by the political Branches to cloak 

their work in the neutral colors of judicial action,’” PMOI, 

182 F.3d at 25 (quoting Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 

361, 407 (1989)). 

B. 

The plaintiffs also claim that anonymous government 

officials defamed them by making statements linking them to 

bin Laden and international terrorism. This claim fares no 

better than their law-of-nations claim. It too would require the 

court to reconsider the merits of the decision to strike the ElShifa plant by determining whether the government’s 

justifications for the attack were false. See RESTATEMENT 

(SECOND) OF TORTS § 558(a) (1977). 

We begin by noting that the court cannot judge the 

veracity of the President’s initial public explanations for the 

attack for the same reasons we cannot examine whether the 

attack was “mistaken and not justified.” The President’s 

statements justifying the attack are “inextricably intertwined” 

with a foreign policy decision constitutionally committed to 

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19 

the political branches, Bancoult, 445 F.3d at 436, because 

determining whether the President’s statements were true 

would require a determination “whether the alleged conduct 

should have occurred,” Harbury, 522 F.3d at 420. A decision 

in favor of the plaintiffs would unavoidably involve a 

rejection of the Clinton Administration’s stated justifications 

for launching the missile strike. A decision against the 

plaintiffs would affirm the wisdom of the Administration’s 

decision to attack. 

The plaintiffs maintain, however, that even if the political 

question doctrine bars review of the President’s initial 

justifications for the attack, the court may nevertheless judge 

the veracity of the subsequent justifications, which, they 

allege, offer different explanations for the strike. These 

allegedly defamatory statements are reviewable, the plaintiffs 

contend, because they do not state “the actual justification for 

the decision to attack the plant.” Appellants’ En Banc Reply 

Br. at 3. Rather, the plaintiffs allege that these statements are 

“post hoc pretext”—defamatory efforts at political damage 

control. Id.; see also Compl. at 1 (stating the action arises out 

of “false and defamatory statements made by United States 

government officials seeking to justify” the destruction of the 

plant); Compl. at 21–22 (alleging “government officials 

continued to justify their actions with statements intended to 

suggest that Mr. Idris was, in fact, associated with 

terrorism.”). According to the plaintiffs, we can review these 

later justifications for the attack because they bear no relation 

to the President’s initial justifications—that the plant was 

associated with bin Laden and involved in producing 

chemical weapons. 

We disagree. The allegedly defamatory statements cannot 

be severed from the initial justifications for the attack. The 

court cannot adjudicate the truth of the government’s later 

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20 

justifications because, despite the plaintiffs’ arguments to the 

contrary, they are fundamentally the same as the initial 

justifications. In reaching this conclusion, we need look no 

further than the plaintiffs’ complaint. Taking all of its 

allegations as true, we find no material difference between the 

allegedly defamatory statements and the President’s 

contemporaneous explanation of his decision to take military 

action. On the day the United States destroyed the El-Shifa 

plant, President Clinton told the American people that he 

ordered the strike in part because the plant was “associated 

with the bin Laden network” and was a “chemical weaponsrelated facility.” Compl. at 7, 13; see also Address to the 

Nation, 2 PUB. PAPERS at 1461; President William J. Clinton, 

Remarks in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, on Military 

Action Against Terrorist Sites in Afghanistan and Sudan, 2 

PUB. PAPERS 1460, 1460 (Aug. 20, 1998). In their prayer for 

relief, the plaintiffs describe the allegedly defamatory 

statements as “claims . . . that Mr. Idris or El-Shifa are [sic] 

connected to Osama bin Laden, terrorist groups or the 

production of chemical weapons.” Compl. at 31; see also id.

at 19 (detailing “numerous statements to news reporters 

falsely describing Salah Idris as an associate of Osama bin 

Laden and international terrorist organizations”). This 

characterization of the allegedly defamatory statements 

closely tracks the President’s own description of his reasons 

for launching the attack.

All of the allegedly defamatory statements essentially 

repeat the President’s initial justification for the strike. Each 

describes a connection between bin Laden and the plant 

through its owner, Salah Idris. For example, “U.S. 

intelligence officials” stated Idris dealt financially with 

members of Islamic Jihad, which had been “absorbed into 

[bin Laden’s] terror network.” Id. at 20. And government 

officials claimed “the owner and manager of the plant 

USCA Case #07-5174 Document #1248589 Filed: 06/08/2010 Page 20 of 45
21 

were . . . front men for bin Laden.” Id.; see also id. at 19 

(citing a “Washington official” describing Idris as “a partner 

with bin Laden in other Sudanese businesses”); id. at 19–20 

(quoting “one official” asserting that Idris “may have” 

purchased the El-Shifa plant “on bin Laden’s behalf” and 

“that he’s involved in money laundering, that he’s involved in 

representing a lot of bin Laden’s interests in Sudan”). 

Contrary to the plaintiffs’ contentions, these statements do not 

represent a break from the President’s contemporaneous 

explanation of his reasons for launching the strike. At most, 

they elaborate upon the nature of the connection between the 

plant and bin Laden—a connection the President offered on 

the day of the attack as one reason for taking military action. 

Declaring these later statements true or false would require us 

to make the same judgment about the President’s initial 

justification for the attack. 

The plaintiffs contend that Idris’s alleged ties to bin 

Laden—the factual issue at the heart of their defamation 

claim—could not have played any part in the decision to 

bomb the plant because, at the time of the strike, the United 

States thought the plant was owned by the Sudanese 

government and not by Idris. Therefore, they argue, the court 

could declare the government’s allegations that Idris was 

connected to bin Laden false without undermining the 

government’s actual justifications for the attack. See

Appellants’ En Banc Br. at 25; Appellants’ En Banc Reply 

Br. at 2–3. To be sure, at least one anonymous official had 

previously suggested the plant belonged to the Sudanese 

Military Industrial Complex. See Compl. at 13. But this is 

beside the point. As the plaintiffs conceded before the en banc

court, “[T]he owner of the plant was immaterial to [President 

Clinton’s] decision to attack the plant.” Oral Arg. Recording 

at 11:48–:51. The President explained that the United States 

targeted the plant because it was associated with bin Laden, 

USCA Case #07-5174 Document #1248589 Filed: 06/08/2010 Page 21 of 45
22 

and officials continued to assert that same rationale when they 

told reporters the plant’s owner was financially linked to bin 

Laden’s network. A court’s pronouncement that the plant’s 

owner had no financial ties to bin Laden would directly 

contradict the government’s justification for the attack by 

disclaiming the asserted association between the plant and the 

bin Laden network. 

The plaintiffs further argue that the political question 

doctrine does not block their defamation claim because “by 

the government’s own admission, the accusations challenged 

as defamatory formed no part of the decision to attack the 

plant.” Appellants’ En Banc Br. at 24 (emphasis added). But 

none of the statements quoted in the complaint imply such an 

admission. The plaintiffs rely on one statement, which 

referenced “[n]ew evidence obtained since the attack.” See id.

at 24–25 (quoting Compl. at 19). The rest of the statement, 

however, makes clear that their reliance is misplaced: “New 

evidence obtained since the attack, one official said . . . , starts 

to make the link between the plant’s current owner, 

Salaheldin Idris, and bin Laden ‘more direct.’” Compl. at 19. 

The official’s assertion that new evidence made the 

connection between bin Laden and Idris “more direct” does 

not give rise to an inference, as the plaintiffs suggest, that 

there was no prior evidence of such a nexus. Indeed, the 

statement of another anonymous official quoted in the 

complaint suggests that the newer evidence merely 

corroborated the evidence existing at the time of the attack. 

See id. at 20 (quoting an anonymous official’s statement that 

intelligence collected after the strike “increasingly points to 

ties with (Osama) bin Laden” (emphasis added)). This 

emphasizes that the veracity of the allegedly defamatory 

statements is “inextricably intertwined,” Bancoult, 445 F.3d at 

436, with the merits of the actual justifications for the attack 

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23 

and underscores the nonjusticiability of the plaintiffs’ 

defamation claim. 

C. 

 We conclude our political question analysis by 

addressing the plaintiffs’ argument that they are asking 

nothing more than that we review the government’s 

designation of them as supporters of the nation’s enemies, 

something courts have done in other contexts. See Appellants’ 

En Banc Br. at 23–30. This argument fails. 

The plaintiffs point first to cases permitting judicial 

review of the enemy status of persons detained after being 

seized by the U.S. military on the battlefield. See, e.g., 

Boumediene v. Bush, 128 S. Ct. 2229 (2008); Parhat v. Gates, 

532 F.3d 834 (D.C. Cir. 2008). But the political question 

doctrine does not preclude judicial review of prolonged 

Executive detention predicated on an enemy combatant 

determination because the Constitution specifically 

contemplates a judicial role in this area. See Boumediene, 128 

S. Ct. at 2247 (“The [Suspension] Clause protects the rights of 

the detained by affirming the duty and authority of the 

Judiciary to call the jailer to account.” (emphasis added)); 

Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 535 (2004) (discussing the 

courts’ “time-honored and constitutionally mandated roles of 

reviewing and resolving claims” of citizens challenging their 

military detention). The plaintiffs can point to no comparable 

constitutional commitment to the courts for review of a 

military decision to launch a missile at a foreign target. Cf. 

Bancoult, 445 F.3d at 437 (“[W]hile the presence of 

constitutionally-protected liberties could require us to address 

limits on the foreign policy and national security powers 

assigned to the political branches, no such constitutional 

claims are at issue in this case.”). 

USCA Case #07-5174 Document #1248589 Filed: 06/08/2010 Page 23 of 45
24 

The plaintiffs also point to another line of cases in which 

courts have reviewed Executive Branch determinations that a 

certain asset is “enemy property” or belongs to a terrorist 

organization and therefore is eligible for seizure pursuant to 

statute. See, e.g., Chai v. Dep’t of State, 466 F.3d 125 (D.C. 

Cir. 2006); Holy Land Found. for Relief & Dev. v. Ashcroft, 

333 F.3d 156 (D.C. Cir. 2003); Von Zedtwitz v. Sutherland, 26 

F.2d 525 (D.C. Cir. 1928); Bond v. United States, 2 Ct. Cl. 

529 (1866). These cases are not helpful to the plaintiffs for the 

same reasons the detainee cases are not. None required the 

courts to scrutinize a decision constitutionally committed 

wholly to the political branches. Indeed, the Supreme Court 

has suggested that judicial review of enemy-property 

designations made to effect statutorily authorized asset 

seizures is constitutionally mandated. See Societe 

Internationale pour Participations Industrielles et 

Commerciales, S. A. v. Rogers, 357 U.S. 197, 210–11 (1958) 

(“[The] summary power to seize property which is believed to 

be enemy-owned is rescued from constitutional invalidity 

under the Due Process and Just Compensation Clauses of the 

Fifth Amendment only by those provisions of the Act which 

afford a non-enemy claimant a later judicial hearing as to the 

propriety of the seizure.”); cf. Bancoult, 445 F.3d at 435 

(“[C]laims based on the most fundamental liberty and 

property rights of this country’s citizenry, such as the Takings 

and Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment, are 

justiciable, even if they implicate foreign policy decisions.” 

(internal quotation marks and citations omitted)). No 

comparable constitutional commitment to the judiciary exists 

in this case. See Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 701 (1976) 

(holding that defamation by the government, when it harms 

“reputation alone,” does not constitute a deprivation of liberty 

or property under the Due Process Clause). The plaintiffs do 

not ask whether the government’s conduct was prohibited by 

the Constitution. Instead, they seek declarations that the 

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25 

President should not have launched a military strike that the 

plaintiffs deem unwise and ill founded, and an injunction 

requiring the government to retract its justifications for the 

attack. The Constitution denies the courts the ability to grant 

such extraordinary relief. 

III. 

Our colleagues agree that the district court lacked 

jurisdiction but would affirm on a different ground. Their 

proposed alternative relies on the rule that federal courts lack 

jurisdiction to hear legally “insubstantial” claims. The 

Supreme Court and this court have applied this rule narrowly, 

setting a high bar for dismissal that plaintiffs’ claims do not 

meet. 

“Dismissal for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction because 

of the inadequacy of [a] federal claim is proper only when the 

claim is so insubstantial, implausible, foreclosed by prior 

decisions of [the Supreme] Court, or otherwise completely 

devoid of merit as not to involve a federal controversy.” Steel 

Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 89 (1998) 

(internal quotation marks omitted). But see, e.g., Rosado v. 

Wyman, 397 U.S. 397, 404 (1970) (characterizing this 

doctrine as “more ancient than analytically sound”). This 

ground for jurisdictional dismissal “is, as a general matter, 

reserved for complaints resting on truly fanciful factual

allegations,” Best v. Kelly, 39 F.3d 328, 331 n.5 (D.C. Cir. 

1994), but also has some limited application to claims resting 

on insubstantial legal theories. 

[L]egal claims may be so insubstantial as to deprive 

federal courts of jurisdiction if “prior decisions 

inescapably render the claims frivolous.” Hagans [v. 

Lavine, 415 U.S. 528, 538 (1974)]. That said, 

“previous decisions that merely render claims of 

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26 

doubtful or questionable merit do not render them 

insubstantial.” Id. Thus, to qualify as insubstantial, a 

claim’s “unsoundness [must] so clearly result[] from 

the previous decisions of [the Supreme Court] as to 

foreclose the subject and leave no room for the 

inference that the question sought to be raised can be 

the subject of controversy.” Ex parte Poresky, 290 

U.S. 30, 32 (1933) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Ord v. District of Columbia, 587 F.3d 1136, 1144 (D.C. Cir. 

2009) (some alterations in original). 

Plaintiffs’ claims are not so unsound as to warrant 

dismissal on this jurisdictional ground. There is “room for the 

inference that the question[s] sought to be raised can be the 

subject of controversy.” Poresky, 290 U.S. at 32; see, e.g., ElShifa, 559 F.3d at 591–92 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (“Some 

of our cases do imply a plaintiff may obtain a retraction from 

the United States for defamation by one of its officers. . . . 

Federal rather than D.C. common law likely governs Idris’s 

claim . . . .”). Perhaps the district court would have dismissed 

plaintiffs’ claims for failure to state a claim under Rule 

12(b)(6) had the case proceeded to the merits. But whether a 

claim is so insubstantial as to deprive the federal courts of 

jurisdiction is a “separate question from whether a complaint 

is subject to dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 

12(b)(6) for failing to state a claim on which relief may be 

granted.” Ord, 587 F.3d at 1144. The cases relied upon by the 

concurrence might “render [plaintiffs’] claims of doubtful or 

questionable merit,” but they do not “foreclose the subject” 

and therefore “do not render them insubstantial.” Id. at 1144 

(quoting Hagans, 415 U.S. at 538, and Poresky, 290 U.S. at 

32). “Jurisdiction . . . is not defeated . . . by the possibility that 

the averments might fail to state a cause of action on which 

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27 

petitioners could actually recover.” Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 

678, 682 (1946). 

IV. 

Our concurring colleagues charge the court with “sub 

silentio expand[ing] executive power.” Concurring Op. of 

Judge Ginsburg at 3 (quoting Concurring Op. of Judge 

Kavanaugh at 11). To the contrary, it is they who would work 

a sub silentio expansion. By asserting the authority to decide 

questions the Constitution reserves to Congress and the 

Executive, some would expand judicial power at the expense 

of the democratically elected branches. And by stretching 

beyond all precedent the limited category of claims so 

frivolous as not to involve a federal question, all would permit 

courts to decide the merits of disputes under the guise of a 

jurisdictional holding while sidestepping obstacles that are 

truly jurisdictional. 

Straightforward application of our precedent makes clear 

that the plaintiffs face such an obstacle here. Under the 

political question doctrine, the foreign target of a military 

strike cannot challenge in court the wisdom of retaliatory 

military action taken by the United States. Despite their 

efforts to characterize the case differently, that is just what the 

plaintiffs have asked us to do. The district court’s dismissal of 

their claims is 

Affirmed. 

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GINSBURG, Circuit Judge, with whom Circuit Judge 

ROGERS joins, concurring in the judgment: I join Part I of 

Judge Kavanaugh‟s opinion concurring in the judgment 

because the plaintiffs have not alleged a non-frivolous cause 

of action; I write separately to make an additional point about 

the opinion for the Court. That opinion expands the political 

question doctrine well beyond the bounds delineated in Baker 

v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), and the Court‟s need to 

consider whether application of the political question doctrine 

in a statutory case threatens the separation of powers arises 

only because of that unwarranted expansion.

The Court today expands the political question doctrine 

by reading into several of our recent cases something of a new 

political decision doctrine. On that approach, we are first to

identify some “conduct” or “decision” (the opinion alternates) 

constitutionally committed to the Executive and then to ask 

whether the plaintiff‟s “claim[] ... call[s] into question,” 

“require[s] the court to reassess,” or is “inextricably 

intertwined with” that Executive conduct or decision. Op. at 

12, 13, 18. If so, then the claim is non-justiciable, regardless 

whether the court would actually have to decide a political 

question in order to resolve it. 

The Court‟s approach departs sharply from that 

prescribed in Baker v. Carr, which calls for a “discriminating 

inquiry into the precise facts and posture of the particular 

case” in order to detect “a political question‟s presence,” 369 

U.S. at 217; unless there is such a question and it is 

“inextricable from the case at bar,” id., then we are to decide 

it, even if “our decision may have significant political 

overtones.” Japan Whaling Ass’n v. Am. Cetacean Soc., 478 

U.S. 221, 230 (1986); see also Campbell v. Clinton, 203 F.3d 

19, 40 (D.C. Cir. 2000) (Tatel, J., concurring) (“Resolving the 

issue in this case would require us to decide not whether the 

air campaign was wise ... but whether the President possessed 

legal authority to conduct the military operation”). The 

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2

innovation adopted by the Court contravenes the Supreme 

Court‟s teaching that “[t]he doctrine of which we treat is one 

of „political questions,‟ not one of „political cases.‟” Baker, 

369 U.S. at 217. 

If the Court today followed Baker v. Carr, then there 

would be no occasion to consider whether the application of 

the political question doctrine in a statutory case threatens the 

separation of powers by, as Judge Kavanaugh says,

“systematically favor[ing] the Executive Branch over the 

Legislative Branch,” Op. at 10. Under Baker v. Carr a 

statutory case generally does not present a non-justiciable 

political question because “the interpretation of legislation is a 

„recurring and accepted task for the federal courts.‟” Id. at 9

(quoting Japan Whaling, 478 U.S. at 230). For rare 

exceptions in which a statute called for a decision 

constitutionally committed to the President and hence not 

subject to judicial review, see Chicago & Southern Air Lines, 

Inc. v. Waterman Steamship Corp., 333 U.S. 103 (1948), and 

People’s Mojahedin Org. of Iran v. U.S. Dep’t of State, 182 

F.3d 17, 23 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (“Of the three findings mandated 

by [the Statute, Secretary of State‟s finding that an 

organization‟s terrorist activity threatens national security] ... 

is nonjusticiable”). 

Under the Court‟s new political decision doctrine, 

however, even a straightforward statutory case, presenting a 

purely legal question, is non-justiciable if deciding it could

merely reflect adversely upon a decision constitutionally 

committed to the President. Compare, e.g., Zivotofsky v. 

Sec’y of State, 571 F.3d 1227, 1234-35 (2009) (Edwards, J., 

concurring) (“The Secretary‟s first argument — that 

Zivotofsky‟s claim is a nonjusticiable political question — is 

specious. ... These questions involve commonplace issues of 

statutory and constitutional interpretation, and they are plainly 

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3

matters for the court to decide.”) with id. at 1232 (Griffith, J.,

for the court) (plaintiff “invites the courts to call into question 

the President‟s exercise of the recognition power. This we 

cannot do. We therefore hold [his statutory] claim presents a 

nonjusticiable political question because it trenches upon the 

President‟s constitutionally committed recognition power.”). 

As Judge Kavanaugh notes, such a holding “sub silentio

expand[s] executive power [at the expense of the 

legislature].” Op. at 11. The result of staying the judicial 

hand is to upset rather than to preserve the constitutional 

allocation of powers between the executive and the 

legislature.

USCA Case #07-5174 Document #1248589 Filed: 06/08/2010 Page 30 of 45
 KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judge, with whom Chief Judge 

SENTELLE joins, and with whom Circuit Judges GINSBURG 

and ROGERS join as to Part I, concurring in the judgment: 

 In August 1998, President Clinton ordered the U.S. 

military to bomb both the El-Shifa factory in Sudan and al 

Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. The goals were to kill 

leaders of al Qaeda and to destroy al Qaeda infrastructure. 

President Clinton explained to Congress and the American 

people that he ordered the bombings in furtherance of the 

Nation’s “inherent right of self-defense” in the wake of al 

Qaeda attacks on U.S. property and personnel in Kenya and 

Tanzania. As authority for the bombings, President Clinton 

cited his Commander-in-Chief power under Article II of the 

Constitution. 

Plaintiffs El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries Company 

and its owner, Salah Idris, allege that their factory in Sudan 

was wrongly destroyed in the bombings and that they were 

reputationally harmed by later Executive Branch statements 

linking them to Osama bin Laden. As relevant here, they 

have brought a federal defamation claim and an Alien Tort 

Statute claim against the United States. 

The Government correctly contends that plaintiffs have 

not alleged a cognizable cause of action; indeed, plaintiffs 

have not come close. Plaintiffs’ complaint should be 

dismissed on that basis alone, as Part I of this opinion 

explains. But the majority opinion instead relies on the 

political question doctrine to dismiss the complaint. I 

disagree with the majority opinion’s political question 

analysis, as Part II of this opinion spells out. 

I 

Federal courts lack subject matter jurisdiction over claims 

that are “so insubstantial, implausible, foreclosed by prior 

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2 

decisions of this Court, or otherwise completely devoid of 

merit as not to involve a federal controversy.” Steel Co. v. 

Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 89 (1998) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). Plaintiffs’ two claims in this case 

fall into that category. 

El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries Company operated a 

factory in Sudan that was bombed in August 1998 by the 

United States military, at the specific direction of President 

Clinton. In later press reports, anonymous U.S. Government 

officials were quoted as linking El-Shifa and its owner, Idris, 

to Osama bin Laden. El-Shifa and Salah Idris then sued the 

United States, advancing two claims of relevance here. First, 

to obtain relief for the allegedly false statements by 

Government officials that had linked plaintiffs to bin Laden, 

plaintiffs raised a federal defamation claim against the United 

States. The problem for plaintiffs is that there is no federal 

cause of action for defamation available against the United 

States. Second, plaintiffs claimed that the failure of the 

United States to compensate them for the allegedly mistaken 

bombing and destruction of their property violated a 

customary international law norm recognized under the Alien 

Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350. But plaintiffs have cited no 

customary international law norm that would require 

compensation by the United States under the Alien Tort 

Statute for mistaken war-time bombings. 

A 

 First, plaintiffs assert a federal defamation claim against 

the United States. There is no such cause of action. 

Congress has enacted a number of causes of action that 

can be brought against the United States or against 

Government officials for acts taken in their official capacities. 

USCA Case #07-5174 Document #1248589 Filed: 06/08/2010 Page 32 of 45
3 

See, e.g., Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 500 et 

seq.; Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1346; Westfall 

Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2679; Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C § 1491, 28 

U.S.C. § 1346(a)(2). But Congress has not created a 

defamation cause of action against the United States. 

Moreover, the Supreme Court has never recognized a 

federal common-law defamation cause of action against the 

United States. Indeed, the Court has not endorsed any federal 

common-law causes of action against the Government during 

the post-Erie period. And the Court several times has 

expressly declined to do so, noting that creation of new causes 

of action is a function typically best left to Congress. See, 

e.g., U.S. Postal Serv. v. Flamingo Indus., 540 U.S. 736, 744-

45 (2004); Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275, 287 (2001);

O’Melveny & Myers v. FDIC, 512 U.S. 79, 88 (1994); FDIC 

v. Meyer, 510 U.S. 471, 483-86 (1994); United States v. 

California, 507 U.S. 746, 759-60 (1993); United States v. 

Standard Oil Co., 332 U.S. 301, 313-16 (1947). 

Plaintiffs cite three cases from this Court to support their 

argument that there is a federal common-law cause of action 

for defamation available against the United States. See U.S. 

Info. Agency v. Krc, 989 F.2d 1211, 1216 (D.C. Cir. 1993); 

Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence v. Pierce, 814 F.2d 663, 672 

(D.C. Cir. 1987); Expeditions Unlimited Aquatic Enters. v. 

Smithsonian Inst., 566 F.2d 289, 294 n.16 (D.C. Cir. 1977) 

(en banc). But none of those decisions holds that there is such 

a federal common-law cause of action. 

 In this Court, plaintiffs also attempt to argue that the 

Administrative Procedure Act supplies a cause of action for 

defamation. But that, too, is wrong; the APA contains no 

cause of action for defamation. Moreover, plaintiffs cannot 

use the APA – which, as relevant here, prohibits executive 

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4 

action that is “not in accordance with law” – to vindicate a 

purported federal common-law right that does not exist. 5 

U.S.C. § 706(2)(a); see also Sea-Land Serv., Inc. v. Alaska 

R.R., 659 F.2d 243, 245 (D.C. Cir. 1981). 

 In addition to a federal common-law cause of action, 

plaintiffs might also be alleging a purported state commonlaw cause of action against the United States, although their 

complaint never quite says as much. Even so, any such statelaw cause of action may not be brought against the United 

States absent congressional authorization to that effect. Cf. 

Tarble’s Case, 80 U.S. 397, 406 (1871); Barr v. Matteo, 360 

U.S. 564, 569-71 (1959) (federal officers acting in their 

official capacities have immunity from suit, including against 

state-law defamation suits). In our constitutional system, the 

states do not regulate the Federal Government, either directly 

or through state tort law, at least absent congressional 

consent. U.S. CONST. art. VI, cl. 2. The FTCA and Westfall 

Act do expressly borrow (or permit) state tort causes of action 

against the United States in certain carefully defined 

circumstances. But those statutes do not apply here, as 

plaintiffs concede. And contrary to plaintiffs’ inventive 

arguments, the APA does not borrow state law or permit state 

law to be used as a basis for seeking injunctive or declaratory 

relief against the United States. As counsel for the 

Government succinctly and correctly stated at oral argument: 

“State tort law doesn’t run against the United States, so it’s 

not a federal law that can be pointed to as a substantive law 

which is being transgressed for an APA cause of action.” Tr. 

of Oral Arg. at 52; see In re Supreme Beef Processors, Inc., 

468 F.3d 248, 255 (5th Cir. 2006).1

 

 1

 Plaintiffs have not contended that the relevant agency actions 

were arbitrary and capricious under the APA. Even if they had, 

they would face a variety of hurdles – including 5 U.S.C. 

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5 

B 

 Plaintiffs also seek a declaration that the United States 

violated customary international law, as cognizable under the 

Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, because the United 

States failed to compensate plaintiffs for the allegedly 

mistaken destruction of their property. 

The Alien Tort Statute, or ATS, authorizes suits brought 

“by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law 

of nations or a treaty of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 1350. 

The ATS covers “a relatively modest set of actions alleging 

violations of the law of nations” – including certain norms 

established as of 1789, which the Court identified as 

“violation of safe conducts, infringement of the rights of 

ambassadors, and piracy.” Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 

U.S. 692, 720, 724 (2004). The ATS may encompass other 

established customary international law norms so long as they 

do not have “less definite content and acceptance among 

civilized nations than the historical paradigms familiar when 

§ 1350 was enacted” in 1789. Id. at 732. 

 Plaintiffs allege that the actions of the United States 

violated an established customary international law norm – 

namely, “the obligation of a government to compensate 

citizens of other nations for the mistaken destruction of their 

innocent property.” El-Shifa Br. at 49 n.6. But plaintiffs cite 

no authority suggesting that the mistaken destruction of 

property during extraterritorial war-related activities – or 

 

§ 701(a)(2), which exempts from APA review agency action that is 

committed to agency discretion by law. Furthermore, any such 

APA claim would rest on the proposition that the statements of 

anonymous officials constitute final agency action. See 5 U.S.C. § 

704. There is no support in our precedents for that conclusion. 

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6 

denial of an administrative claim seeking compensation for 

the same – violates an established norm of customary 

international law. Furthermore, “the determination whether a 

norm is sufficiently definite to support a cause of action 

should (and, indeed, inevitably must) involve an element of 

judgment about the practical consequences of making that 

cause available to litigants in the federal courts.” Sosa, 542 

U.S. at 732-33. If the plaintiffs were correct, the federal 

courts presumably would be flooded with ATS claims – at a 

minimum, claims seeking declaratory relief for alleged 

violations of customary international law norms – against the 

United States for allegedly mistaken property damage in 

every war, including the ongoing wars in Iraq and 

Afghanistan. Plaintiffs provide no persuasive reason for the 

federal judiciary to embark on such a novel and far-reaching 

endeavor in the absence of congressional direction. 

In short, plaintiffs’ attorneys have worked hard to find 

some basis in law for plaintiffs’ complaint. But they have 

located no such basis: Plaintiffs’ two claims are “so 

insubstantial, implausible, foreclosed by prior decisions of 

this Court, or otherwise completely devoid of merit as not to 

involve a federal controversy.” Steel Co., 523 U.S. at 89. 

The District Court’s judgment dismissing plaintiffs’ 

complaint should be affirmed for that reason alone. 2

 2 If a majority of the Court had been willing to dismiss 

plaintiffs’ claims on this basis for lack of subject-matter 

jurisdiction, the Court could have avoided the need to confront the 

significant constitutional question whether plaintiffs’ claims raise a 

nonjusticiable political question. Cf. Nw. Austin Mun. Util. Dist. 

No. One v. Holder, 129 S. Ct. 2504, 2513 (2009).

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II 

The straightforward approach outlined in Part I of this 

opinion would readily resolve this case. But the majority 

opinion instead relies on the notoriously “murky and 

unsettled” political question doctrine to dismiss the complaint. 

Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F.2d 774, 803 n.8 

(1984) (Bork, J., concurring). Because of the importance of 

the political question doctrine to the law of this Circuit, I 

believe it important to respond to the majority opinion and to 

explain my disagreement with its political question theory. 

The key point for purposes of my political question 

analysis is this: Plaintiffs do not allege that the Executive 

Branch violated the Constitution. Rather, plaintiffs allege that 

the Executive Branch violated congressionally enacted 

statutes that purportedly constrain the Executive. The 

Supreme Court has never applied the political question 

doctrine in cases involving statutory claims of this kind. As 

Judge Edwards has correctly explained, the proper separation 

of powers question in this sort of statutory case is whether the 

statute as applied infringes on the President’s exclusive, 

preclusive authority under Article II of the Constitution. See 

Zivotofsky v. Sec’y of State, 571 F.3d 1227, 1240-45 (D.C. 

Cir. 2009) (Edwards, J., concurring). That is a weighty 

question – and one that must be confronted directly through 

careful analysis of Article II, not resolved sub silentio in favor 

of the Executive through use of the political question doctrine. 

A 

The political question doctrine has occupied a more 

limited place in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence than is 

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sometimes assumed.3

 The Court has relied on the doctrine 

only twice in the last 50 years. See Walter Nixon v. United 

States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993); Gilligan v. Morgan, 413 U.S. 1 

(1973). The Court has invoked the doctrine in cases in which 

(i) the Constitution textually and exclusively commits 

interpretation of the relevant constitutional provision to one or 

both of the political branches or (ii) the constitutional 

provision at issue supplies no judicially manageable or 

discoverable standards for resolving the case. See Walter 

Nixon, 506 U.S. at 228. 

 3

 The Supreme Court does not decline to resolve a case on 

political question grounds simply because the dispute involves or 

would affect national security or foreign relations. Indeed, from the 

time of John Marshall to the present, the Court has decided many 

sensitive and controversial cases that had enormous national 

security or foreign policy ramifications. See, e.g., Boumediene v. 

Bush, 128 S. Ct. 2229 (2008); Medellín v. Texas, 552 U.S. 491 

(2008); Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006); Sosa v. AlvarezMachain, 542 U.S. 692 (2004); American Ins. Ass’n v. Garamendi, 

539 U.S. 396 (2003); Dames & Moore v. Regan, 453 U.S. 654 

(1981); Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116 (1958); Youngstown Sheet & 

Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952); Johnson v. Eisentrager, 

339 U.S. 763 (1950); Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 

(1944); United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304 

(1936); Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866); Prize Cases, 67 U.S. 

635 (1863); Little v. Barreme, 6 U.S. 170 (1804); see also David J. 

Barron & Martin S. Lederman, The Commander in Chief at the 

Lowest Ebb – Framing the Problem, Doctrine, and Original 

Understanding, 121 HARV. L. REV. 689, 723 (2008) (“the Supreme 

Court’s jurisprudence, stretching from early in our history through 

Youngstown to numerous contemporary war powers cases, is rife 

with instances of the Court’s resolving questions of the Executive’s 

war powers, just as it has adjudicated other separation of powers 

disputes between the political departments”). 

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9 

Importantly, the Supreme Court has invoked the political 

question doctrine only in cases alleging violations of the 

Constitution. This is a statutory case. The Supreme Court 

has never applied the political question doctrine in a case 

involving alleged statutory violations. Never. 

As the Supreme Court has explained, the interpretation of 

legislation is a “recurring and accepted task for the federal 

courts.” Japan Whaling Ass’n v. American Cetacean Soc’y, 

478 U.S. 221, 230 (1986). Under Article III of the 

Constitution, “one of the Judiciary’s characteristic roles is to 

interpret statutes, and we cannot shirk this responsibility 

merely because our decision may have significant political 

overtones.” Id.; see also 13C CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT,

ARTHUR R. MILLER & EDWARD H. COOPER, FEDERAL 

PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 3534.2, at 752 (3d ed. 2008) 

(“[I]nterpretation of statutes affecting foreign affairs is not 

likely to be barred by [the] political-question doctrine.”); 

ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, FEDERAL JURISDICTION § 1.3, at 15 (5th 

ed. 2007) (“Under current law, the political question doctrine 

consigns certain allegations of constitutional violations to the 

other branches of government for adjudication and decision, 

even if all other jurisdictional and justiciability requirements 

are met.”) (emphasis added).4

 

There is good reason the political question doctrine does 

not apply in cases alleging statutory violations. If a court 

refused to give effect to a statute that regulated Executive 

conduct, it necessarily would be holding that Congress is 

 4

 If a statute regulating private conduct provides no discernible 

standards and therefore insufficient notice of what actions are 

prohibited, the statute might be void for vagueness under the Due 

Process Clause. See Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 351 

(1964). But that is not a political question doctrine determination. 

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unable to constrain Executive conduct in the challenged 

sphere of action. As a result, the court would be ruling (at 

least implicitly) that the statute intrudes impermissibly on the 

Executive’s prerogatives under Article II of the Constitution. 

In other words, the court would be establishing that the 

asserted Executive power is exclusive and preclusive, 

meaning that Congress cannot regulate or limit that power by 

creating a cause of action or otherwise. 

Applying the political question doctrine in statutory cases 

thus would not reflect benign deference to the political 

branches. Rather, that approach would systematically favor 

the Executive Branch over the Legislative Branch – without 

the courts’ acknowledging as much or grappling with the 

critical separation of powers and Article II issues. The fact 

that use of the political question doctrine in statutory cases 

loads the dice against the Legislative Branch presumably 

explains why there is no Supreme Court precedent applying 

the doctrine in statutory cases – and why the Executive 

Branch (sometimes wary, for a variety of reasons, of 

advancing a straight Article II argument) may want the courts 

to invoke the doctrine in statutory cases of this sort. Cf. 

David J. Barron & Martin S. Lederman, The Commander in 

Chief at the Lowest Ebb – Framing the Problem, Doctrine, 

and Original Understanding, 121 HARV. L. REV. 689, 723-24 

(2008) (“One need only consider the cases that could arise in 

the contemporary setting to see that leaving the question of 

the President’s constitutional authority to defy a statutory 

restriction on his war powers to the give-and-take of the 

political branches would be quite radical in its implications. . . 

. [T]he insistence that allocation of war powers should be ‘left 

to politics’ would hardly be a neutral solution to the problem: 

it would inevitably tilt the constitutional structure decidedly in 

favor of executive supremacy.”). 

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In short, the question whether a statute intrudes on the 

Executive’s exclusive, preclusive Article II authority must be 

confronted directly through careful analysis of Article II – not 

answered by backdoor use of the political question doctrine, 

which may sub silentio expand executive power in an indirect, 

haphazard, and unprincipled manner. It is particularly 

important to confront the question directly because of the 

significance of such questions to our constitutional separation 

of powers. As Justice Jackson rightly explained, any claim of 

exclusive, preclusive Executive authority – particularly in the 

national security arena – “must be scrutinized with caution, 

for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our 

constitutional system.” Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. 

Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 638 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring). 

B 

 

The approach suggested in this opinion is consistent with 

the results, if not all the reasoning, of this Court’s recent cases 

declining to entertain certain tort suits in the national security 

arena. In those cases, as in this case, the plaintiffs asserted no 

cognizable cause of action. See Harbury v. Hayden, 522 F.3d 

413 (D.C. Cir. 2008); Gonzalez-Vera v. Kissinger, 449 F.3d 

1260 (D.C. Cir. 2006); Bancoult v. McNamara, 445 F.3d 427 

(D.C. Cir. 2006); Schneider v. Kissinger, 412 F.3d 190 (D.C. 

Cir. 2005). The Federal Tort Claims Act does not apply to 

suits for actions that occur in foreign countries or that 

encompass discretionary functions, among other exceptions. 

The Alien Tort Statute has never been held to cover suits 

against the United States or United States Government 

officials; the statute furnishes no waiver of sovereign 

immunity. And as we explained in Harbury, the Torture 

Victim Protection Act does not extend to suits against 

American officials except in the unusual case where such an 

official acts “under color of foreign law.” 

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The absence of a cause of action covering the national 

security activities at issue in Harbury, Gonzalez-Vera, 

Bancoult, Schneider, or this case is hardly surprising. The 

political branches, mindful of the need for Executive 

discretion and flexibility in national security and foreign 

affairs, are unlikely to unduly hamper the Executive’s ability 

to protect the Nation’s security and diplomatic objectives. 

See United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 

304, 320-22 (1936). Relatedly, it is well-established that 

courts must be cautious about interpreting an ambiguous 

statute to constrain or interfere with the Executive Branch’s 

conduct of national security or foreign policy. See Dep’t of 

the Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518, 529-30 (1988); United States 

v. Johnson, 481 U.S. 681, 690-91 (1987); Haig v. Agee, 453 

U.S. 280, 292 (1981); see also Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 

U.S. 692, 733 n.21 (2004).5

 And apart from all that, if a 

statute were passed that clearly limited the kind of Executive 

national security or foreign policy activities at issue in these 

cases, such a statute as applied might well violate Article II. 

Cf. Zivotofsky, 571 F.3d at 1240-45 (Edwards, J., concurring). 

The main point here is that those issues should be 

confronted directly and carefully, not resolved sub silentio in 

favor of the Executive through invocation of the political 

question doctrine in a situation where the Supreme Court has 

never seen fit to employ it. 

 5

 In cases reviewing the Executive’s designation of foreign 

terrorist organizations, we held that the statute left to the Executive 

Branch the determination whether a group threatened the security 

of the United States. See People’s Mojahedin v. Dep’t of State, 182 

F.3d 17, 23-25 (D.C. Cir. 1999). This seems a straightforward 

application of Dep’t of the Navy v. Egan’s principle of statutory 

interpretation, not any broad holding about the political question 

doctrine. 

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C 

To say that the courts must directly confront the critical 

separation of powers and Article II issues posed by this kind 

of statutory case is not to say that the Executive lacks any 

exclusive, preclusive Article II authority. The Executive 

plainly possesses a significant degree of exclusive, preclusive 

Article II power in both the domestic and national security 

arenas. See, e.g., Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. 333, 380 (1867) 

(pardon power “of the President is not subject to legislative 

control.”). 

In the national security realm, although the topic is of 

course hotly debated, most acknowledge at least some areas 

of exclusive, preclusive Presidential power – where Congress 

cannot regulate and the Executive “wins” even in Justice 

Jackson’s Youngstown Category Three. For example, courts 

have generally accepted that the President possesses 

exclusive, preclusive power under the Commander-in-Chief 

Clause of Article II to command troop movements during a 

congressionally authorized war. See Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 

548 U.S. 557, 591-92 (2006) (“neither can the President, in 

war more than in peace, intrude upon the proper authority of 

Congress, nor Congress upon the proper authority of the 

President. . . . Congress cannot direct the conduct of 

campaigns”) (quoting Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2, 139 

(1866) (separate opinion of Chase, C.J.)). 

 

This case involves President Clinton’s unilateral decision 

to bomb suspected al Qaeda targets. In the wake of the 

August 1998 al Qaeda attacks on U.S. personnel and property 

in Tanzania and Kenya, President Clinton ordered these 

attacks “in exercise” of the United States’ “inherent right of 

self-defense.” Letter to Congressional Leaders Reporting on 

Military Action Against Terrorist Sites in Afghanistan and 

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14 

Sudan, 2 PUB. PAPERS 1464 (Aug. 21, 1998). As authority for 

the bombings, President Clinton cited his Commander-inChief power under Article II. 

A statute regulating or creating a cause of action to 

challenge the President’s short-term bombing of foreign 

targets in the Nation’s self-defense (or contesting the 

Executive Branch’s subsequent statements about it as 

defamatory) might well unconstitutionally encroach on the 

President’s exclusive, preclusive Article II authority as 

Commander in Chief. Cf. Prize Cases, 67 U.S. 635, 668 

(1863) (“If a war be made by invasion of a foreign nation, the 

President is not only authorized but bound to resist force by 

force. He does not initiate the war, but is bound to accept the 

challenge without waiting for any special legislative 

authority.”); 4A Op. Off. Legal Counsel 185 (1980). 

But we need not definitively answer the sensitive and 

weighty Article II question in this case. As explained in Part I 

of this opinion, Congress has not created any cognizable 

cause of action that would apply to President Clinton’s 

decision to bomb El-Shifa or later Executive Branch 

statements about the bombing. Indeed, the only remotely 

relevant statute in this case is the War Powers Resolution, 

which seems to support the President’s authority to conduct 

unilateral military operations for at least 62 days without 

specific congressional approval. See 50 U.S.C. § 1544(b). 

Given that no cause of action exists here, the political 

question and Article II issues in this case have an abstract and 

hypothetical air to them. In these circumstances, we would be 

wise to heed Justice Jackson’s cautionary words. We should 

decline the opportunity to expound on the scope of the 

President’s exclusive, preclusive Commander-in-Chief 

authority under Article II. I respectfully disagree with the 

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15 

majority opinion’s doing so – and particularly its doing so 

indirectly through reliance on the political question doctrine. 

* * * 

 I would dismiss plaintiffs’ complaint because plaintiffs’ 

two claims are “so insubstantial, implausible, foreclosed by 

prior decisions of this Court, or otherwise completely devoid 

of merit as not to involve a federal controversy.” Steel Co. v. 

Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 89 (1998). 

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