Source: https://facultyblog.law.ucdavis.edu/2018/04/default.aspx
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 07:15:57+00:00

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On April 24, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Jesner v. Arab Bank, a case raising the question whether corporations can be sued for human rights violations, including acts of terrorism, under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). For a preview of the arguments in the case, see here.
Justice Kennedy delivered the judgment of the Court, writing a broad and rambling opinion that might have foreclosed ATS liability for all corporations. But only Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas joined Kennedy’s opinion in full. Justice Alito and Justice Gorsuch joined only those parts of the opinion that were limited to foreign corporations, and their separate concurring opinions emphasized the differences between ATS suits against foreign defendants and those against U.S. defendants. The four other Justices would have permitted ATS suits against both U.S. and foreign corporations, with Justice Sotomayor writing a devastating dissent on their behalf. So while the Supreme Court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims against Arab Bank, the question of corporate liability in suits against U.S. corporations remains to be decided.
The ATS gives federal district courts jurisdiction over “any civil action by an alien for a tort only, in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” The First Congress passed the ATS in 1789 with the eighteenth century law of nations in mind. But in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (2004), the Supreme Court held that federal courts could recognize causes of action under the ATS for violations of modern human rights law that are as generally accepted and specifically defined as the eighteenth century paradigms (infringement of the rights of ambassadors, violations of safe-conducts, and piracy). In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (2013), the Supreme Court applied the presumption against extraterritoriality to ATS causes of action, holding that plaintiffs could only bring suits that “touch and concern” the United States. The plaintiffs in Jesner alleged that Arab Bank, a foreign corporation, had financed terrorist attacks in Israel by funneling money through its New York branch. The Second Circuit dismissed the claims under circuit precedent holding that only natural persons and not corporations can be sued under the ATS.
The dissent correctly observed: “Although international law determines what substantive conduct violates the law of nations, it leaves the specific rules of how to enforce international-law norms and remedy their violations to states, which may act to impose liability collectively through treaties or independently via their domestic legal systems” (p. 3). Thus, Sosa’s requirement of a generally accepted and specifically defined norm of international law refers to norms of “substantive conduct,” not “forms of liability” (pp. 3-4). Because of this distinction, the plurality’s reliance on jurisdictional limits found in the charters of international criminal tribunals (pp. 14-15) was also misplaced, the dissent explained, because it “confuses the substance of international law with how it has been enforced in particular contexts” (p. 8). In other words, limits on jurisdiction are not limits on substantive law. Assuming that the international law prohibition against terrorist financing met the Sosa standard—a question the dissent would have remanded to the Second Circuit to resolve in the first instance—“nothing in international law suggests a corporation may not violate it” (p. 7).
Perhaps because of the power of the dissent, Justices Alito and Gorsuch did not join the part of Justice Kennedy’s opinion claiming that “there is a distinction in international law between corporations and natural persons” (p. 17). And even Justice Kennedy seemed to back away from his own argument in the end, concluding that “the Court need not resolve . . . whether international law imposes liability on corporations” (p. 17-18). This makes Justice Kennedy’s mistaken approach to international law nothing more than dictum in a plurality opinion.
The only analytical parts of Justice Kennedy’s opinion that commanded a majority of the Supreme Court were those invoking separation of powers concerns against creating new causes of action (pp. 18-19) and foreign relations difficulties (pp. 25-27). Significantly each of these parts was expressly limited to suits against foreign corporations. The first concluded with the observation that “absent further action from Congress it would be inappropriate for courts to extend ATS liability to foreign corporations” (p. 19). The second said even more explicitly: “the Court holds that foreign corporations may not be defendants in suits brought under the ATS” (p. 27).
The reasons for this limitation to foreign corporations may be found in the concurring opinions written by Justices Alito and Gorsuch. Justice Alito emphasized the foreign relations implications of suits against foreign corporations: “Creating causes of action under the Alien Tort Statute against foreign corporate defendants would precipitate exactly the sort of diplomatic strife that the law was enacted to prevent” (p. 1). In a footnote, Justice Alito expressly stated, “Because this case involves a foreign corporation, we have no need to reach the question whether an alien may sue a United States corporation under the ATS” (p. 3). He could not have been clearer.
As he telegraphed at oral argument that he might, Justice Gorsuch interpreted the ATS “to require a domestic defendant” (p. 6). Here, Justice Gorsuch largely followed the approach of A.J. Bellia and Brad Clark, which I have previously criticized. But of course, this approach to the ATS does not preclude suits against U.S. corporations for violating the law of nations. Justice Gorsuch explained: “It is one thing for courts to assume the task of creating new causes of action to ensure our citizens abide by the law of nations and avoid reprisals against this country. It is altogether another thing for courts to punish foreign parties for conduct that could not be attributed to the United States and thereby risk reprisals against this country” (p. 13). ATS suits against U.S. corporations clearly fall into the former category.
After the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Kiobel, my colleague Anupam Chander observed that the impact of that decision would be to free foreign corporations, but not U.S. corporations, from the risk of being sued under the ATS. In a sense, Jesner simply makes this point explicit.
I do not want to be overly sanguine about the prospects for corporate liability in ATS suits against U.S. corporations. Justice Gorsuch wrote that Sosa’s decision to give the ATS continuing relevance by permitting a limited class of human rights claims to proceed was a mistake (pp. 2-5). Justice Alito agreed (p. 3). And even Justice Kennedy strangely suggested that “there is an argument that a proper application of Sosa would preclude courts from ever recognizing any new causes of action under the ATS” (p. 19)—a position that the majority in Sosa (including Justice Kennedy) expressly rejected. ATS suits against U.S. corporations also face a host of other obstacles, from the fact that such corporations often operate abroad through foreign subsidiaries to the standard for aiding and abetting liability. My point is simply that Jesner does not settle the question of corporate liability for U.S. corporations, and such cases constitute the bulk of litigation against corporations under the ATS.
In the last few years, the Supreme Court has decided a steady number of criminal-removal cases. In light of the Trump administration’s emphasis on the removal of “criminal aliens,” we will likely see even more criminal-removal cases in the future.
Most of the removal cases that have recently come before the court, including Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions, which was decided last term, have involved ordinary issues of statutory interpretation and deference to administrative agencies. Sessions v. Dimaya, which the court decided today in a 5-4 ruling, is different. The case began as a constitutional challenge to a criminal-removal provision in the immigration laws, which historically have been almost wholly immune from judicial review. It was originally argued last term, when the court was short-handed after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, and the justices ordered reargument, suggesting that they were divided on the merits.
A lawful immigrant from the Philippines, James Garcia Dimaya has lived in the United States since 1992. He has two residential burglary convictions, neither of which involved violence. Based on the convictions, the immigration court and the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered Dimaya removed from the United States. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit overturned the BIA’s order, finding that Section 16(b) was unconstitutionally vague. To reach that conclusion, the court relied on Johnson v. United States, in which the Supreme Court, in a 2015 opinion by Scalia, found that the Armed Career Criminal Act’s similarly worded definition of “violent felony” was so vague as to violate the due process clause.
At oral argument last October, the justices appeared to be divided as to whether this case was distinguishable from Johnson. In the end, that question was at the heart of the disagreement between the majority and dissenting justices.
In a section of the opinion not joined by Gorsuch, a plurality of the court rejected the government’s argument that “a less searching form of the void-for-vagueness doctrine applies here than in Johnson because this is not a criminal case.” Citing the 1951 case Jordan v. DeGeorge, the court noted that “we long ago held that the most exacting vagueness standard should apply to removal cases,” because the penalty of deportation is so severe.
Although he agreed with Roberts’ dissent, Thomas wrote a separate dissent to express “doubt that our practice of striking down statutes as unconstitutionally vague is consistent with the original meaning of the Due Process Clause.” He further questioned the “categorical approach” to review of the crime-based statutes, and he would have found that the statute was not unconstitutionally vague as applied to Dimaya.
In the end, the majority dutifully applied its holding in Johnson to the immigration laws. The court’s holding is consistent with its recent decisions applying routine approaches, including traditional methods of interpretation and doctrines of deference to administrative agencies, to judicial review of the immigration laws. What is different about Sessions v. Dimaya is that it applies the Constitution to the removal grounds of the immigration laws. In that sense, it continues what could be seen as a recent movement by the court toward applying ordinary constitutional norms in the immigration context. At the end of last term, for example, the court in Sessions v. Morales-Santana held that gender distinctions favoring women over men in the derivative citizenship provisions violated the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee. It remains to be seen whether and how far the court will proceed along this path.
An earlier version of this post suggested that Kennedy and Alito joined the part of Thomas’ dissent in which he expresses “doubt that our practice of striking down statutes as unconstitutionally vague is consistent with the original meaning of the Due Process Clause.” Kennedy and Alito joined Thomas’ dissent as to Parts I-C-2, II-A-1 and II-B, but not as to that statement from Thomas’ second paragraph.
Professors Lisa Ikemoto and Irene Joe were on stage, as well as Professor Cuison Villazor's daughters.

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