Source: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1036814.html
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FLORES v. SOUTHERN PERU COPPER CORPORATION, Docket No. 02-9008., August 29, 2003 - US 2nd Circuit | FindLaw
Rodolfo Ullonoa FLORES, Luisa Torres Cheequiezol, on behalf of Veronica Velazco Torres, Maxima Quispe Canargo, on behalf of William Angelo Caronado, Elena Casilla, on behalf of Henry Anderson Casilla; David Bacangel Aguilar; Juana Jaillita Manani; Able Valdivia Acevedo and Mario Herrera, for the Estate of Mario Vitaliano Herrera Salinas, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. SOUTHERN PERU COPPER CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellee.
Docket No. 02-9008.
Argued: April 15, 2003. -- August 29, 2003
Wallace A. Showman, Taub & Showman LLP, New York, N.Y. (Malcolm S. Taub, Taub & Showman, New York, NY, Andrew C. Shirrmeister III and Dana S. Speer, Houston, TX, on the brief), for Plaintiffs-Appellants. Peter J. Nickles (Thomas L. Cubbage III, of counsel, Oscar M. Garibaldi and Elie Honig, on the brief), Covington & Burling, Washington, D.C., for Defendant-Appellee. Richard L. Herz, EarthRights International, Washington, D.C., for Amici Curiae International Law Scholars.
The question presented is whether plaintiffs' claims are actionable under the Alien Tort Claims Act (“ATCA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1350.1 Plaintiffs in this case are residents of Ilo, Peru, and the representatives of deceased Ilo residents. They brought personal injury claims under the ATCA against Southern Peru Copper Corporation (“SPCC”), a United States company, alleging that pollution from SPCC's copper mining, refining, and smelting operations in and around Ilo caused plaintiffs' or their decedents' severe lung disease. The ATCA states that “[t]he district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 1350. Plaintiffs claimed that defendant's conduct violates the “law of nations”-commonly referred to as “international law” or, when limited to non-treaty law, as “customary international law.”2 In particular, they asserted that defendant infringed upon their customary international law “right to life,” “right to health,” and right to “sustainable development.”The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Charles S. Haight, Jr., Judge), held that plaintiffs had failed to establish subject matter jurisdiction or to state a claim under the ATCA because they had not alleged a violation of customary international law-i.e., that they had not “demonstrated that high levels of environmental pollution within a nation's borders, causing harm to human life, health, and development, violate well-established, universally recognized norms of international law.” Flores v. Southern Peru Copper Corp., 253 F.Supp.2d 510, 525 (S.D.N.Y.2002) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court further held that even if plaintiffs had alleged a violation of customary international law, the case would have to be dismissed on forum non conveniens grounds because Peru provides an adequate alternative forum for plaintiffs' claims and because the relevant public and private interest factors weigh heavily in favor of the Peruvian forum. Id. at 544. Accordingly, the District Court granted defendant's motion to dismiss.BackgroundI. Statement of the CaseIn reviewing a ruling on a motion to dismiss, we accept as true all well-pleaded factual allegations set forth in the complaint. See, e.g., Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957); Resnik v. Swartz, 303 F.3d 147, 150-51 (2d Cir.2002). We recount below only such facts as are necessary to our disposition of this appeal.Plaintiffs in this case are residents of Ilo, Peru, and the representatives of deceased Ilo residents. Defendant, SPCC, is a United States corporation headquartered in Arizona with its principal place of operations in Peru. It is majority-owned by Asarco Incorporated (“Asarco”), a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Peru. Asarco is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Grupo Mexico, S.A. de C.V., which is a Mexican corporation with its principal place of business in Mexico City. SPCC has operated copper mining, refining, and smelting operations in and around Ilo since 1960.SPCC's operations emit large quantities of sulfur dioxide and very fine particles of heavy metals into the local air and water. Plaintiffs claim that these emissions have caused their respiratory illnesses and that this “egregious and deadly” local pollution constitutes a customary international law offense because it violates the “right to life,” “right to health,” and right to “sustainable development.” Am. Compl. ¶ 1, 59-75.3 SPCC's activities, as well as their environmental impact, are regulated by the government of Peru. Since 1960, commissions of the Peruvian government have conducted annual or semi-annual reviews of the impact of SPCC's activities on the ecology and agriculture of the region. These commissions have found that SPCC's activities have inflicted environmental damage affecting agriculture in the Ilo Valley and have required SPCC to pay fines and restitution to area farmers. In addition to imposing fines and permitting area residents to seek restitution, the government of Peru also has required SPCC to modify its operations in order to abate pollution and other environmental damage. Under the direction of Peru's Ministry of Energy and Mines (“MEM”), SPCC has conducted studies to ascertain the environmental impact of its operations and the technical and economic feasibility of abating that impact.4 SPCC is required to meet levels of emissions and discharges set by the MEM under Peruvian environmental laws enacted in 1993, and is subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of Peru.5 II. Proceedings Before the District CourtA. Procedural HistoryPlaintiffs commenced this action by filing a complaint on December 28, 2000. They filed an Amended Complaint on February 7, 2001. On March 5, 2001, SPCC filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim, arguing that plaintiffs failed to allege a violation of the law of nations. SPCC also moved to dismiss the Amended Complaint on the grounds of forum non conveniens and international comity, and moved, in the alternative, for summary judgment pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 56. While these motions were pending, the District Court requested, and the parties provided, extensive supplemental briefing to apprise the Court fully of all relevant questions of customary international law and of the adequacy of the Peruvian forum.B. The District Court's OpinionOn July 16, 2002, the District Court filed a comprehensive and scholarly opinion in which it carefully analyzed plaintiffs' claims and documentary evidence. The District Court held that plaintiffs had failed to state a claim under the ATCA because they had not pleaded a violation of any cognizable principle of customary international law. Flores, 253 F.Supp.2d at 525. The Court noted that it did not need to reach the question of forum non conveniens because it had determined that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction, but it nonetheless concluded that, even if plaintiffs had pleaded a violation of customary international law, dismissal on the ground of forum non conveniens would have been appropriate. Id. at 544.In its analysis, the District Court discussed the requirements for a claim under the ATCA. It noted that “[t]he ATCA provides for federal court jurisdiction where a plaintiff's claim involves a violation of [i] a treaty of the United States or [ii] the law of nations, which consists of rules that ‘command the general assent of civilized nations.’ ” Id. at 513-14 (quoting Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F.2d 876, 881 (2d Cir.1980) (internal quotation marks omitted)). Because plaintiffs did not claim any violation of a United States treaty, the Court turned to the issue of whether plaintiffs had alleged a violation of customary international law. Id. at 514. The District Court noted that, in order to allege a violation of customary international law, “a plaintiff must demonstrate that a defendant's alleged conduct violated ‘well-established, universally recognized norms of international law.’ ” Flores, 253 F.Supp.2d at 514 (quoting Filartiga, 630 F.2d at 888; citing Kadic v. Karadzic, 70 F.3d 232, 239 (2d Cir.1995)).The District Court rejected plaintiff's suggestion that, “in order to distinguish ordinary torts from torts that violate [customary] international law, courts should ‘make a factual inquiry into whether the allegations rise to the level of egregiousness and intentionality required to state a claim under international law.’ ” Flores, 253 F.Supp.2d at 522. It held that “[p]laintiffs' suggested approach-a factual assessment to determine whether the defendant's alleged conduct is ‘shockingly egregious'-would displace the agreement of nations as the source of customary international law and substitute for it the consciences and sensibilities of individual judges.” Id. at 523. Instead, the Court applied our instruction in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F.2d 876 (2d Cir.1980), that courts should seek “to determine whether a rule is well-established and universally recognized ‘by consulting the works of jurists, writing professedly on public law; or by the general usage and practice of nations; or by judicial decisions recognizing and enforcing that law.’ ” Flores, 253 F.Supp.2d at 514 (quoting Filartiga, 630 F.2d at 880 (quoting United States v. Smith, 18 U.S. (5 Wheat.) 153, 160-61, 5 L.Ed. 57 (1820)) (internal quotation marks omitted)).In analyzing whether the conduct alleged violated well-established and universally recognized rules of customary international law, the District Court examined ATCA cases from both inside and outside of this Circuit presenting similar claims. The District Court turned first to a decision from the Southern District of New York, Aguinda v. Texaco, Inc., 142 F.Supp.2d 534 (S.D.N.Y.2001), in which citizens of Peru and Ecuador sued Texaco under the ATCA for damages resulting from alleged severe, intra-national environmental pollution, claiming that such pollution constituted a violation of the law of nations. The district court in Aguinda ultimately granted defendant's motion to dismiss on forum non conveniens grounds, but noted that “the specific claim plaintiffs purport to bring under the ATCA-that the Consortium's oil extraction activities violated evolving environmental norms of customary international law ․-lacks any meaningful precedential support and appears extremely unlikely to survive a motion to dismiss.” Aguinda, 142 F.Supp.2d at 552. We affirmed the decision on the ground of forum non conveniens. Aguinda, 303 F.3d 470 (2d Cir.2002).The District Court then looked to another case from the Southern District of New York, Amlon Metals, Inc. v. FMC Corp., 775 F.Supp. 668 (S.D.N.Y.1991), which had rejected the notion that environmental torts can violate customary international law. Flores, 253 F.Supp.2d at 516. In support of their claim that delivery of deliberately-mislabeled toxic waste violates customary international law, the Amlon Metals plaintiffs relied on documents similar to, and in some cases the same as, those relied on by plaintiffs here to support analogous claims that the SPCC's alleged environmental torts violate the rights to life and health. Amlon Metals, 775 F.Supp. at 671. In particular, the Amlon Metals plaintiffs relied on the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment (“Stockholm Declaration” or “Stockholm Principles”), United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, Sweden, June 16, 1972, 11 I.L.M. 1416, and on the Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States (“Restatement (Third)”) § 602(2) (1987).6 The Amlon Metals Court rejected the Stockholm Principles as evidence of customary international law because they “do not set forth any specific proscriptions, but rather refer only in a general sense to the responsibility of nations,” and it rejected the relevant passage of the Restatement (Third) because it does not “constitute a statement of universally recognized principles of international law.” Amlon Metals, 775 F.Supp. at 671.7 The District Court also analyzed a recent Fifth Circuit case, Beanal v. Freeport-McMoran, Inc., 197 F.3d 161 (5th Cir.1999). Flores, 253 F.Supp.2d at 517. In Beanal, as in the instant case, a citizen of a foreign State (Indonesia) brought suit under the ATCA against U.S.-owned corporations operating in that State, alleging that its mining activities caused damage to human health and to the environment in violation of customary international law. Beanal, 197 F.3d at 163.8 Like the plaintiffs here, the Beanal plaintiff relied on several resolutions of the United Nations (“U.N.”), an affidavit of an international law professor, and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 13, 1992, Principle 1, 31 I.L.M. 874. Beanal, 197 F.3d at 167. The Fifth Circuit held that the plaintiff had not demonstrated the existence of a rule of customary international law applicable to the alleged actions, explaining that the plaintiff hadfail[ed] to show that these treaties and agreements enjoy universal acceptance in the international community. The sources of international law cited by Beanal ․ merely refer to a general sense of environmental responsibility and state abstract rights and liberties devoid of articulable or discernable standards and regulations to identify practices that constitute international environmental abuses or torts․ Furthermore, the argument to abstain from interfering in a sovereign's environmental practices carries persuasive force especially when the alleged environmental torts and abuses occur within the sovereign's borders and do not affect neighboring countries.Id.After examining the above cases, the District Court reviewed in detail plaintiffs' voluminous submissions, which included the declarations of multinational organizations, non-ratified treaties, and “brief”-like affidavits of law professors, and found them indistinguishable from those that other courts have deemed to be insufficient evidence of a customary international law rule against intra-national environmental pollution. Flores, 253 F.Supp.2d at 519.The District Court also rejected plaintiffs' argument that the cases discussed above are distinguishable because the claims at issue in those cases were based on asserted customary international law prohibitions on environmental pollution, rather than on the broader customary international law rights to life and health. The Court concluded that, no matter how plaintiffs specifically defined the alleged customary international law violations, “plaintiffs ha[d] not demonstrated that high levels of environmental pollution ․ violate any well-established rules of customary international law.” Flores, 253 F.Supp.2d at 519. The Court held that the submissions presented by plaintiffs were insufficient to substantiate a violation of customary international law because the “documents speak in terms of ‘rights,’ but they do not identify any prohibited conduct that is relevant to this case.” Id.The District Court ultimately concluded that plaintiffs' claims should be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and because plaintiffs had failed to state a claim under the ATCA. In order to facilitate appellate review, the District Court also considered defendant's alternative argument that plaintiff's claims should be dismissed pursuant to the doctrine of forum non conveniens. After extensively analyzing the relevant factors, the Court concluded that, even if plaintiffs had stated a claim under the ATCA, the case would have to be dismissed on forum non conveniens grounds. Id. at 544.9 The Court declined to reach defendant's arguments with respect to international comity.On appeal, plaintiffs claim that the District Court erred in declining to recognize customary international law rights to life and health and in concluding that such rights were not sufficiently determinate to constitute “well-established, universally recognized norms of international law.” Filartiga, 630 F.2d at 888. They also challenge the District Court's refusal to accord sufficient probative value to the numerous professorial affidavits, conventions, and declarations of multinational organizations that plaintiffs submitted in support of their claims. With respect to defendant's forum non conveniens claim, plaintiffs claim that the District Court erred in concluding that Peru provides an adequate alternative forum.DiscussionI. Standard of Review We review de novo a district court's grant of a motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. See, e.g., AmBase Corp. v. City Investing Co. Liquidating Trust, 326 F.3d 63, 71-72 (2d Cir.2003); SEC v. Berger, 322 F.3d 187, 191 (2d Cir.2003). “[A] complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.” Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957). A district court's decision to dismiss a case on the ground of forum non conveniens “lies wholly within the broad discretion of the district court and may be overturned only when we believe that discretion has been clearly abused.” Iragorri v. United Techs. Corp., 274 F.3d 65, 72 (2d Cir.2001) (en banc) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).II. The Alien Tort Claims ActA. History of the ATCAThe Alien Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, states in full: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” Id. This language is derived with little alteration from the first congressional statute on the judiciary, the Judiciary Act of 1789, ch. 20, § 9(b), 1 Stat. 73, 76-77 (codified as amended at 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (2000)).10 On its face, the statute specifies that, to state a claim, plaintiffs must (i) be “aliens,” (ii) claiming damages for a “tort only,” (iii) resulting from a violation “of the law of nations” or of “a treaty of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 1350; see Kadic, 70 F.3d at 238; Filartiga, 630 F.2d at 887. The intended purpose and scope of the ATCA never have been definitively established by legal historians or by the Supreme Court, and the ATCA lacks a legislative history that could provide courts with guidance as to its intended meaning.11 Some scholars have posited that Congress intended the ATCA only to address claims arising out of the law of prize, which governs the right to intercept enemy merchant vessels during wartime.12 Others have argued that the ATCA provides a remedy only for those violations of international law recognized in 1789, when the ATCA was first enacted-namely, claims arising under the law of prize, offenses against ambassadors,13 and acts of piracy.14 Still others contend that the ATCA was intended to provide a broad remedy for all torts in violation of international law, as that body of law might evolve over time.15 In sum, as Judge Henry J. Friendly, a distinguished student and practitioner of international law before his appointment to the federal bench, wrote for our Court in IIT v. Vencap, Ltd., 519 F.2d 1001 (2d Cir.1975), the ATCA “is a kind of legal Lohengrin ․ no one seems to know whence it came.” Id. at 1015.16 1. The Filartiga DecisionQuestions regarding the purpose and scope of the ATCA did not attract substantial judicial attention until the latter part of the Twentieth Century, when the ATCA was first recognized by a federal appellate court as a viable basis for relief in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F.2d 876 (2d Cir.1980). In an opinion by Judge Irving R. Kaufman, our Court held that the ATCA afforded subject matter jurisdiction over the claim of two citizens of Paraguay that a former Paraguayan police inspector-general tortured and killed a member of their family in Paraguay in violation of the customary international law prohibition against official torture. Id. at 880, 884. By allowing the plaintiffs' claim to proceed, the Filartiga Court not only held that the ATCA provides a jurisdictional basis for suit, but also recognized the existence of a private right of action for aliens only seeking to remedy violations of customary international law or of a treaty of the United States.17 In determining whether the plaintiffs had alleged a violation of the law of nations, the Filartiga Court first identified the appropriate sources of customary international law, holding that “[t]he law of nations ‘may be ascertained by consulting the works of jurists, writing professedly on public law; or by the general usage and practice of nations; or by judicial decisions recognising and enforcing that law.’ ” Id. at 880 (quoting United States v. Smith, 18 U.S. (5 Wheat.) 153, 160-61, 5 L.Ed. 57 (1820)). Then, addressing the issue of the ATCA's scope, it determined that, in considering whether a plaintiff has alleged a violation of customary international law, a court “must interpret international law not as it was in 1789, but as it has evolved and exists among the nations of the world today.” Id. at 881; accord Kadic, 70 F.3d at 241; Kadic v. Karadzic, 74 F.3d 377, 378 (2d Cir.1996) (denying petition for rehearing). In order for a principle to have “ripened ․ into ‘a settled rule of international law,’ ” it must command “ ‘the general assent of civilized nations.’ ” Filartiga, 630 F.2d at 881 (quoting Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 694, 20 S.Ct. 290, 44 L.Ed. 320 (1900)).The Filartiga Court distinguished previous ATCA cases on the ground that “earlier cases did not involve such well-established, universally recognized norms of international law that are here at issue.” Id. at 888. It held that conduct violates such norms of customary international law “only where the nations of the world have demonstrated that the wrong is of mutual, and not merely several, concern, by means of express international accords[.]” Id. (citing Vencap, 519 F.2d at 1015) (emphases added). The Filartiga Court concluded that acts of torture committed by State officials violate “established norms of the international law of human rights, and hence the law of nations.” Filartiga, 630 F.2d at 880.Although Filartiga involved only the conduct of State officials, since then another panel of our Court held, in Kadic v. Karadzic, 70 F.3d 232 (2d Cir.1995), that ATCA claims may sometimes be brought against private actors. The Court concluded in Kadic that certain activities are of “universal concern” and therefore constitute violations of customary international law not only when they are committed by state actors, but also when they are committed by private individuals. Kadic, 70 F.3d at 239-40. In particular, it determined that acts of piracy, slave trading, war crimes, and genocide violate customary international law regardless of whether they are undertaken by state or private actors, whereas acts of official torture and “summary execution” constitute violations of customary international law only when committed by state officials or under color of law. Kadic, 70 F.3d at 239-4318 .2. Reception of FilartigaFilartiga's interpretation of the ATCA as permitting private causes of action for recently identified violations of customary international law has been controversial.19 The Ninth and Eleventh Circuits have followed Filartiga in recognizing a private cause of action under the ATCA. See Abebe-Jira v. Negewo, 72 F.3d 844, 848 (11th Cir.1996) (holding that “the Alien Tort Claims Act establishes a federal forum where courts may fashion domestic common law remedies to give effect to violations of customary international law”); Hilao v. Estate of Marcos (In re Estate of Ferdinand Marcos, Human Rights Litig.), 25 F.3d 1467, 1475 (9th Cir.1994) (“We thus join the Second Circuit in concluding that the [ATCA] creates a cause of action for violations of specific, universal and obligatory international human rights standards[.]”).However, the District of Columbia Circuit has criticized Filartiga in concurring opinions in both Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F.2d 774 (D.C.Cir.1984) (Bork, J., concurring, and Robb, J., concurring), and Al Odah v. United States, 321 F.3d 1134, 1146 (D.C.Cir.2003) (Randolph, J., concurring). The concurring opinions of Judge Bork and Judge Robb in Tel-Oren and the concurring opinion of Judge Randolph in Al Odah reject Filartiga's holding that the ATCA creates a private right of action for violations of United States treaties or customary international law. See Al Odah, 321 F.3d at 1146-47 (Randolph, J., concurring); Tel-Oren, 726 F.2d at 811 (Bork, J., concurring); id. at 826 (Robb, J., concurring). The rejection of Filartiga's understanding of the ATCA by two of the three judges on the Tel-Oren panel suggests that the law of the District of Columbia Circuit stands in contrast to that of our Circuit and of the other Circuits that have followed our holding in Filartiga. See Al Odah, 321 F.3d at 1146 (Randolph, J., concurring) (“The meaning of § 1350 has been an open question in our court. But what § 1350 does not mean has been decided. In the Tel-Oren case both Judge Bork and Judge Robb, in their separate concurring opinions, rejected the Second Circuit's Filartiga decision ․” (internal citations omitted)).Judge Bork in Tel-Oren and Judge Randolph in Al Odah construed the ATCA to be purely jurisdictional and rejected the position that customary international law is part of general federal common law that courts may apply absent a specific statutory grant. See Al Odah, 321 F.3d at 1146-47 (Randolph, J., concurring); Tel-Oren, 726 F.2d at 801, 811 (Bork, J., concurring). According to Judge Randolph, “[t]o hold that the [ATCA] creates a cause of action ․, as the Filartiga [line of] decisions indicate[s], would be to grant aliens greater rights in the nation's courts than American citizens enjoy.” Al Odah, 321 F.3d at 1146. But see Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (cited in full and discussed below) (granting a cause of action to American citizens who are victims of torture abroad). Judge Robb in Tel-Oren took a different position, arguing that the political question doctrine prohibits courts from “determin[ing] the international status of terrorist acts” at issue in that case. See Tel-Oren, 726 F.2d at 823 (Robb, J., concurring).In Al Odah, Judge Randolph went further in his criticism of Filartiga, maintaining that our Circuit's interpretation of the ATCA renders the statute unconstitutional because it permits the federal courts to define the law of nations. Al Odah, 321 F.3d at 1147 (Randolph, J., concurring). According to Judge Randolph, the Constitution grants exclusively to Congress the authority to “define and punish ․ Offences against the Law of Nations.” Id. (quoting U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 10) (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis added). Analyzing the legislative history of this clause, commonly referred to as the “Define and Punish Clause,” Judge Randolph noted that “the Framers' original draft merely stated that Congress had the power to punish offenses against the law of nations, but when Gouverneur Morris ․ objected that the law of nations was ‘often too vague and deficient to be a rule,’ the clause was amended to its present form [which also gives Congress power to define such offenses].” Al Odah, 321 F.3d at 1147 (citation omitted) (emphasis added). “[I]n light of the history” of the Define and Punish Clause, Judge Randolph argued, “it [is] abundantly clear that Congress-not the Judiciary-is to determine, through legislation, what international law is and what violations of it ought to be cognizable in the courts.” Id. Yet Judge Randolph noted that “under Filartiga, it is the courts, not Congress who decide both questions.” Id.The Supreme Court has not yet addressed whether the ATCA permits a cause of action for violations of customary international law as that body of law has evolved since 1789, or, indeed, whether Filartiga's interpretation of the ATCA is consistent with the Constitution. The Court has only once considered a claim brought under the ATCA, in Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess Shipping Corp., 488 U.S. 428, 109 S.Ct. 683, 102 L.Ed.2d 818 (1989), and, in that case, it dismissed the plaintiffs' claims on sovereign immunity grounds, holding that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1330, 1602-11, bars most suits against foreign sovereigns, including those brought under the ATCA. Amerada Hess, 488 U.S. at 434-35, 109 S.Ct. 683.Nor has Congress wholly clarified the scope and meaning of the ATCA. However, following our Court's decision in Filartiga, Congress did pass the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (“TVPA”), Pub.L. No. 102-256, 106 Stat. 73 (enacted March 12, 1992) (codified as Note to 28 U.S.C. § 1350), which created a cause of action for individuals subjected to official torture or extrajudicial executions.