Source: http://www.ejiltalk.org/2016/05/
Timestamp: 2017-02-21 16:39:25
Document Index: 596632937

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1350', 'Art. 3', 'UKSC ', 'UKSC ', 'Art.15', 'Art.15', '§1605']

EJIL: Talk! – 2016 – May Archive Analysis
Home 2016 May	Whose Security is it Anyway? Towards a Treaty Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
Published on May 31, 2016 Author: Maya Brehm	On Friday, 13 May 2016, the UN’s Open Ended Working Group (OEWG), convened pursuant to UNGA resolution 70/33 (7 Dec 2015) and mandated, inter alia, to “substantively address concrete effective legal measures, legal provisions and norms that would need to be concluded to attain and maintain a world without nuclear weapons”, closed its second session with a majority of states calling for negotiations of a legally binding instrument (or instruments) to prohibit nuclear weapons to start in 2017.
Although (or perhaps because) the nuclear-armed states have chosen not to play ball, for the first time in decades, a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons is a real possibility. The OEWG, which will meet for a third time in August to agree on recommendations to the UNGA, and the ensuing tug-of-war in the UNGA’s First Committee in October, offer an historic opportunity for multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations to take a big step forward. The reframing of nuclear disarmament as a humanitarian concern has been instrumental in generating strong momentum in support of negotiations. This post surveys some of the legal controversies that arose during the OEWG and explains why, from a humanitarian disarmament perspective, a treaty prohibition of nuclear weapons is both imperative and an effective disarmament measure, even without the participation of the nuclear-armed states.
Open to all, the OEWG’s May session has been attended by 100 states, as well as international organizations and civil society representatives, including survivors of the atomic bombings. None of the nuclear-armed states, i.e. the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) recognized under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) –China, France, Russia, the UK and the US – nor the DPRK, India, Israel or Pakistan, participated, casting further doubt on the good faith performance of nuclear disarmament obligations by the respondents in the RMI cases pending before the ICJ.
There is general agreement that the ultimate objective is a world free of nuclear weapons. To that end, all states parties to the NPT (and arguably, all states) have a legal duty to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament” pursuant to Art. VI, NPT and customary international law. Views diverge, however, on the pathways, means and urgency with which this goal should be attained. Read the rest of this entry…
Filed under: Arms Control, EJIL Analysis, Nuclear Weapons, Treaty Law Tags: Arms Race, Disarmament, Nuclear Weapons	1 Comment	Corporate Liability Debate still Alive and Kicking in US Courts
Published on May 30, 2016 Author: Basak Baglayan	While various bodies of the UN continuously work on the issue of the human rights law obligations of multinational corporations, the US courts have been grappling with the question as to whether such entities can be held liable for violations before domestic courts. While some observers lamented the death of the corporate liability debate following the 2013 Supreme Court decision Kiobel II, it appears that the discussion is still very much alive. Continuous disagreement among US courts shows that corporate liability for human rights violations is a complicated issue, as a matter of both domestic and international law.
The Arab Bank Case
In December 2015, a panel of the US Court of Appeals (Second Circuit) ruled on the case of Arab Bank, which concerned claims brought against Arab Bank PLC for its alleged role in financing and facilitating armed attacks that took place in Israel between January 1995 and July 2005. The plaintiffs alleged that Arab Bankʹs involvement with payments to the families of ‘martyrs’ incentivized and encouraged suicide bombings and other killings that harmed the plaintiffs. In its judgment, the Second Circuit confirmed the position taken in Kiobel I (2010), in which it held that corporations cannot be held liable under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS, 28 U.S. Code § 1350).
Arab Bank was heard by a different panel of the same Court of Appeals that had issued Kiobel I. The panel struggled in deciding whether to follow the Court’s own precedent (Kiobel I) or the subsequent Kiobel II decision of the Supreme Court. In that much-debated decision, the Supreme Court affirmed Kiobel I, but on different grounds, namely that a presumption against extraterritoriality applies to ATS cases, without discussing the original question of corporate liability. The Arab Bank panel identified several ways in which Kiobel II had “cast a shadow on Kiobel I”. It nevertheless decided to follow its own precedent in Kiobel I and left it to “either an en banc sitting of [the Second Circuit] or an eventual Supreme Court review to overrule Kiobel I”.
The latest development occurred on 9 May 2016, when seven of the thirteen judges of the Second Circuit rejected a petition for an en banc review of the Arab Bank case. Read the rest of this entry…
Filed under: Customary International Law, EJIL Analysis, Human Rights, International Law and Domestic Law, Non-State Actors Tags: corporate liability	2 Comments	Announcements: Job Openings at Keele University; Lex Petrolea – Reality or Myth?; AgLaw Colloquium CfS Extension
Published on May 29, 2016 Author: Mary Guest	1. Job Openings at Keele University. Keele University is recruiting (at least) two lecturers, with international law listed as ‘highly desirable’. The job advert is available here and the closing date for applications is 10 June 2016. Please contact Mario Prost (m.prost {at} keele.ac(.)uk) for informal enquiries.
Filed under: Announcements and Events Comments Off on Announcements: Job Openings at Keele University; Lex Petrolea – Reality or Myth?; AgLaw Colloquium CfS Extension	The USA and Re-Appointment at the WTO: A ‘Legitimacy Crisis’?
Published on May 27, 2016 Author: Arman Sarvarian & Filippo Fontanelli	In recent weeks, it has been reported (for example, here, here, here and here) that the WTO faces a ‘legitimacy crisis’ in the wake of US opposition to the re-appointment to a second, four-year term of Mr Seung Wha Chang (South Korea) to the Appellate Body. In a joint statement of 12 May, US Permanent Representative to the WTO, Ambassador Michael Punke, and USTR General Counsel Tim Reif declared:
The United States is strongly opposed to appellate body members deviating from their appropriate role by restricting the rights or expanding trade agreement obligations […] The United States will not support any individual with a record of restricting trade agreement rights or expanding trade agreement obligations.
In their view, the Appellate Body member exceeded his powers during his mandate, and breached Art. 3(2) of the Dispute Settlement Understanding, which states that ‘[the] Appellate Body cannot add to or diminish the rights and obligations provided in the [agreements of the WTO].’ In other words, Mr Chang is accused of undue judicial activism.
In response, South Korea has reportedly declared its opposition to the re-appointment of any Appellate Body members. As a result, their number would fall from seven to five by June, since another member, Ms Yuejiao Zhang (China), finishes her second term on 31 May, and the Selection Committee has been unable to propose a candidate that would enjoy the membership’s consensus. All six sitting members of the Appellate Body have publicly supported Professor Chang (see here) praising his ‘independence and integrity’ and voicing their disquiet about the implications of the US position. The USA has chastised this move as another instance of undue judicial interference.
This standoff raises questions of general interest on procedures for the appointment of ‘judges’ Read the rest of this entry…
Filed under: EJIL Analysis, International Legal Profession, WTO Dispute Settlement Body Tags: Judiciary, WTO	4 Comments	The Empire Strikes Back: Yukos-Russia, 1-1
Published on May 26, 2016 Author: Johannes Fahner	In the latest chapter to the ever fascinating Yukos dispute, Russia recently secured a victory in the District Court of The Hague, which set aside the US $ 50 billion awards issued two years ago by an arbitral tribunal constituted under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT). The crucial issue was whether Russia was bound to arbitrate under the ECT’s provisional application clause. The arbitral tribunal, comprised of Y. Fortier, C. Poncet, and S. Schwebel, said ‘yes’; three Judges of The Hague District Court, D. Aarts, I.A.M. Kroft and H.F.M. Hofhuis, said ‘no’. It will be argued here that the District Court put too much emphasis on the domestic constitutional legality of the ECT’s provisional application, at the expense of investors who were entitled to believe that Russia had agreed to such provisional application.
Earlier Episodes of the Dispute
The dispute between the now defunct oil company Yukos and Russia has grown into a protracted legal battle, involving a number of investment arbitration tribunals, the European Court of Human Rights, and domestic courts in various jurisdictions. At one point the largest oil company in Russia, Yukos was liquidated in 2006 by the Russian authorities in the process of enforcing tax reassessments, which allegedly demonstrated that Yukos had engaged in large-scale tax evasion. According to Yukos and many international observers, the tax reassessments were a pretext for regaining control over the Yukos imperium and bringing down its influential CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Foreign shareholders of Yukos have brought investment arbitration claims against Russia under various treaties, including the 1989 UK-Russia BIT (award), the 1991 Spain-Russia BIT (award), and the ECT. The investors have been largely successful, obtaining their biggest win on 18 July 2014, when a tribunal constituted under the auspices of the Permanent Court of Arbitration issued three awards granting a total of US $ 50 billion to the claimants, on the ground that Russia had breached the expropriation provision of the ECT (Article 13). These awards have now been set aside by The Hague District Court (some reactions here and an analysis of the consequences here).
Whereas previous battles focused on whether the Russian tax reassessments and subsequent enforcement measures were mala fide, the crucial issue at the current stage is whether the arbitration clause of the ECT (Article 26) was actually applicable with regard to Russia, which signed but never ratified the treaty, and withdrew from it in 2009 (not the only Member State to do so).
Pursuant to Article 45 ECT, a signatory State agrees to apply the treaty provisionally ‘pending its entry into force’, ‘to the extent that such provisional application is not inconsistent with its constitution, laws or regulations’ (para. 1) and if that State had not objected to provisional application at the moment of signing (para. 2(a)). Given the fact that Russia had not issued such an objection (unlike Norway, Iceland and Australia), the dispute focused on whether a provisional application of the ECT was consistent with Russian law.
Consistency of What: the Piecemeal v. the All-or-Nothing Approach
In spite of its apparently casual wording, Article 45(1) or ‘the Limitation Clause’ raises complicated questions of interpretation. A first point of disagreement between the arbitral tribunal and the Hague District Court is what exactly needs to be consistent with Russian law: the idea of provisional treaty application as such, or the provisional application of specific treaty provisions. According to the court (5.18), the issue of consistency should be assessed separately for any treaty provision to be applied provisionally (‘piecemeal approach’), and not for the entire treaty as a whole (‘all-or-nothing approach’), as the tribunal had found (like the tribunal in Kardassopoulos v. Georgia). While the tribunal and the court emphasized different textual elements of Article 45(1), their conclusions also demonstrate different preoccupations. According to the tribunal, the piecemeal approach would ‘create unacceptable uncertainty in international affairs’, allowing a State to opt out of provisional application at any time, in particular after a dispute had arisen (para. 315 Interim Awards). The court, on the other hand, emphasized that Article 45(1) serves to avoid conflicts between domestic law and international obligations (5.19). The provision might indeed cause some uncertainty, but this was the choice of the States party to the ECT and apparently justified by the wish to prevent inconsistencies between international and domestic law.
What Constitutes an Inconsistency?
On the basis of its piecemeal approach, the Hague District Court focused on whether the arbitration clause of the ECT was consistent with Russian law. In this context, the Yukos shareholders argued that an inconsistency between Article 26 and domestic law could only exist in the form of an explicit prohibition under Russian law. The court took a wider approach, ruling that a provisional application of the ECT’s arbitration clause would also be inconsistent with Russian law if there would be no legal basis for this type of dispute settlement. The court would also find an inconsistency if investor-state arbitration did ‘not harmonise with the legal system’ or if it were ‘irreconcilable with the starting points and principles that have been laid down in or can be derived from legislation’ (5.33).
Applying this framework of analysis, the court found that Russian law did not provide ‘a separate legal base’ for investor-State arbitration (5.58). It did not attach much weight to the fact that in 1996 the Russian government had stated that the provisions of the ECT were ‘consistent with Russian legislation’ (5.60). Instead, the court pointed at the history of the ratification of some other investment treaties, demonstrating a parliamentary concern that Russian law did not contain a legal basis for investment arbitration (5.64).
State Sovereignty v. the Legitimate Expectations of the Investor
Provisional application is an exception to the normal rules on how treaties enter into force (reports of the ILC’s Special Rapporteur here). Whereas the period between signing and ratifying normally allows States to reconsider the matter and verify whether domestic law needs to be adapted, a provisional application provision purports to bind States already while these assessments are being made. This is a serious intrusion into State sovereignty, which explains why the ECT contains a Limitation Clause and why it allows signatories to opt out by means of a declaration.
State sovereignty, however, is not the only interest at stake in the context of provisional application, and needs to be balanced against the legitimate expectations of other parties and, in the case of the ECT, investors. When Russia signed the ECT without making a declaration under Article 45(2), it might be thought that it created a presumption of compatibility between the ECT and domestic law. Neither the tribunal nor the court followed the shareholders’ argument that the absence of a declaration under Article 45(2) precluded Russia from invoking the Limitation Clause. However, Russia’s choice not to signal any objections to provisional application but to wait until a claim was filed, sheds doubts on the credibility of the defence. This is even more problematic because the alleged inconsistency concerns ambiguous provisions that seem to allow for legitimate disagreement as to whether they allow investor-State arbitration.
The Hague District Court put a strong emphasis on the importance of the domestic separation of powers. Noting that only the Russian Parliament possesses legislative powers, the court concluded that parliamentary approval was necessary for the creation of a form of dispute resolution which did not have a legal basis in Russian law (5.93). This argument seems to revert back to the question of whether the principle of provisional application is acceptable as such. One could reply that the choice to adopt a provisional application provision in a treaty already means that the signatory States temporarily circumvent the domestic separation of powers, and that they may have good reasons to do so.
Tribunals v. Courts
It is tempting to consider other, more fundamental reasons why the Hague District Court might have decided to set aside the awards. First, since Article 45(1) makes provisional application conditional on domestic law, the court may have felt a need to defer to Russia’s interpretation of its own laws and to follow its argument of inconsistency. Second, it is probable that a court in the Netherlands – with its strong tradition of parliamentary sovereignty – is relatively susceptible to Russia’s arguments concerning the domestic separation of powers. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it is striking that the arbitral tribunal on the one hand and the District Court on the other seem to approach the State in a different manner. The court appears well-disposed towards the State, sharing Russia’s alleged concern over the domestic constitutionality of the provisional application of the ECT, whereas the tribunal is more critical, suggesting doubts as to whether Russia’s invocation of Article 45(1) is sincere and credible. Arguably, the different approaches demonstrate differences between the preoccupations of arbitral tribunals and courts (not only within host states) and the ways in which they balance State sovereignty against investor interests.
Filed under: EJIL Analysis, International Economic Law, International Law and Domestic Law, Investor-State Arbitration Tribunals 5 Comments	Extra-Territorial Claims in the “Spider’s Web” of the Law? UK Supreme Court Judgment in Ministry of Defence v Iraqi Civilians
Published on May 25, 2016 Author: Monica Feria-Tinta	Over the past decade, the direction of travel of jurisprudence by English courts has significantly departed from an earlier position that considered the acts of the UK government in the exercise of foreign relations to be a non-justiciable area, and shifted towards scrutiny of the impact of UK foreign policy decisions on individuals (see Al Rawi v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs [2008] QB 289; the Binyam Mohamed case, and more recently the discussion of crown act of state doctrine in Serdar Mohammed v Secretary of State for Defence). After all, as stated by Lord Sumption back in an address at the London School of Economics in 2012, “the acts of the executive are by definition justiciable in its own courts”. The most significant factor for such a shift, as Lord Sumption noted, was the enactment into English Law of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”).
Despite this shift in the judicial attitude with regard to review of acts of the executive in foreign affairs, jurisdictional issues (ratione temporis) and time bars are proving to be hurdles in the path of claimants bringing claims with regard to acts engaged in by the UK government extraterritorially. The recent Supreme Court decision in Keyu and others v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs [2015] UKSC 69 (“the Batang Kali massacre case” on which see this previous post) dealt with a temporal jurisdictional obstacle. The Supreme Court’s 12 May 2016 decision in Ministry of Defence (Respondent) v Iraqi Civilians (Appellant) [2016] UKSC 25 (“The Iraqi civilians case”) is another example of a hurdle faced by claimants, this time in the guise of a time bar. While the Batang Kali massacre case was concerned with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of public international law rules, (quite centrally, with the duties Article 2 ECHR imposes on the UK in the context of inquiries), the decision in the Iraqi civilians case concerned English private international law, and turned on a point of interpretation of The Foreign Limitation Periods Act 1984.
In the Iraqi civilians case, the Supreme Court gave judgment in relation to 14 lead claimants (in claims by over 600 Iraqi citizens), who had alleged unlawful detention and/or physical maltreatment at the hands of British armed forces in Iraq between 2003 and 2009.
The Supreme Court held, applying Iraqi limitation law, that the claims of the Iraqi civilians in England were time-barred. It dismissed the appeal. This post addresses the central holding of this case. Read the rest of this entry…
Filed under: EJIL Analysis, International Law and Domestic Law, Iraq Tags: Iraq, private international law	Comments Off on Extra-Territorial Claims in the “Spider’s Web” of the Law? UK Supreme Court Judgment in Ministry of Defence v Iraqi Civilians	Conferring ‘Market Economy Status’ to China in the EU – A Mission Impossible?
Published on May 23, 2016 Author: David Kleimann	On May 9 of this year, the German and French ministries responsible for trade and economic affairs posted a joint letter to EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström. The document outlines “Common Core Demands from Germany and France on modernizing Trade Defence Instruments (TDI) of the European Union”. Among others, it requests that “the EU must further explore and use the possibilities of China’s WTO Accession Protocol not to use the standard calculation methodology to the extent the producers under investigation can not clearly show that market economy conditions prevail in the industry producing the like product with regard to the manufacture, production and sale of that product [emphasis added].”
The phrase highlighted in this quote is identical to language contained in Art.15(a)(ii) of China’s Accession Protocol (CAP) to the WTO. The provision is set to expire on December 11, 2016. This very fact has generated fierce debates in Europe and the United States that increasingly conflate the legal with the political dimension of the issue. The purpose of this post, in this context, is to scrutinize the legal effect of the expiry of the said provision on EU anti-dumping law and practice vis-à-vis China.
Three days after the Franco-German initiative, the European Parliament (EP) passed a resolution on “China Market Economy Status” with broad inter-party support amidst manifestations of steel workers and trade union leaders outside the plenary in Strasbourg. “[A]s long as China does not meet all five EU criteria required to qualify as a market economy”, the resolution states, “the EU should use a non-standard methodology in antidumping and antisubsidy investigations on Chinese imports (…), in accordance with and giving full effect to those parts of Section 15 of China’s Accession Protocol which provides room for the application of the non-standard methodology”. In consequence, the EP “calls on the Commission to make a proposal in line with this principle”.
This post questions the legal assumptions that the political positions quoted above rely on. The remainder of this post demonstrates that Art.15 CAP does not, after December 11, 2016, allow for the use of non-standard methodologies for price comparisons in anti-dumping investigations that are inconsistent with the provisions of the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement (ADA). Should the Union follow the path to protectionism recommended by Berlin, Paris, and the EP, the EU will unmistakably violate its obligations under the ADA. In order to comply with its WTO obligations after December 11, 2016, in contrast, EU institutions need to bring EU secondary legislation and future anti-dumping measures against Chinese producers into conformity with the ADA. It is beyond doubt otherwise that the EU will be subject to a larger number of unfavorable legal decisions adopted by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). In the aftermath of these decisions, in case of non-compliance, the EU will be confronted with hefty retaliatory measures authored by China and authorized by the WTO DSB.
Filed under: EJIL Analysis Comments Off on Conferring ‘Market Economy Status’ to China in the EU – A Mission Impossible?	Announcements: Inaugural lecture and workshop in Maastricht; CfS Melbourne Journal of International Law; CfS Groningen Journal of International Law
Published on May 22, 2016 Author: Mary Guest	1. Inaugural lecture and workshop in Maastricht. The workshop ‘A State-Centric International Legal System?’ will run from 27 May 2016 at the School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University. It brings together leading scholars in international law, human rights and EU law. They will debate the challenges of a state-centric design of international law. The debate will be divided into two panels. One will address state-centrism in international law from the perspective of the rules governing the use of force, while the other one will be conceptual in nature. The debate will be critically discussed and moderated by members of the Maastricht Law Faculty. Confirmed speakers include Prof Erika de Wet (Pretoria), Prof Katja Ziegler (Leicester), Prof Jean d’Aspremont (Manchester), Prof Cedric Ryngaert (Utrecht), Dr Christina Eckes (Amsterdam) and Prof Cees Flinterman (Maastricht). The workshop will be followed by Prof Vidmar’s inaugural lecture: Wrongfulness, Responsibility and Defences in International Law. Participation is free of charge, but please register
2. Melbourne Journal of International Law Call for Submissions. The Editors of the Melbourne Journal of International Law (‘MJIL’), Australia’s premier generalist international law journal, are now inviting submissions for volume 17(2) by 1 July 2016. This issue will have a special focus on the legal implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and space will also be available for articles on other issues of international law. Submissions and inquiries should be directed to law-mjil {at} unimelb.edu(.)au. For more information, please see here.
Filed under: Announcements and Events Comments Off on Announcements: Inaugural lecture and workshop in Maastricht; CfS Melbourne Journal of International Law; CfS Groningen Journal of International Law	Leap Ahead or More of the Same? The European Commission’s Proposed Revisions to the Dublin System
Published on May 20, 2016 Author: Jean-Pierre Gauci	On 4 May, 2016, the European Commission published a series of proposals in the field of Home Affairs, including proposed revisions to the contentious Dublin Regulation. This package of proposals signals the start of a process of revising the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), the recast instruments which came into force over the last two years. The need for such an upgrade is evidenced by the EU Member States’ disappointing response to the so-called ‘migration crisis’, but is also necessitated by fundamental flaws in the legal output stemming from the political compromise that led to the second version of the CEAS. Analysis of the EC’s proposed revisions reveal, however, that they would do little to remedy these flaws and are unlikely to gain support, not least due to a lack of solidarity among Member States.
Before evaluating the proposal, it ought to be noted that, of all the regional developments in the field of forced migration, the EU has by far the greatest law making competence (when compared to other regional bodies), as well as some of the more advanced instruments. The principles of protection that guide a regional response are incorporated in a series of binding instruments covering both substantive and procedural issues. This builds on the right to asylum explicitly guaranteed in Article 18 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. The last 12 months have seen significant pressure put on both European solidarity and the right to asylum from the number of applications received and from the response of both the EU (as an institution) and its individual Member States.
The Dublin System is possibly one of the most widely criticised elements of the CEAS—it is also widely misunderstood by the public, misrepresented by the media and misapplied by States. Furthermore, it is a flawed instrument that places excessive burdens on the Member States at Europe’s periphery, ignores the asylum seekers’ desires (and the linked agency to move farther), and (wrongly) assumes equal levels of protection across the various EU Member States. The system’s application has restrictions applied from its own founding legislation and through decisions of both the Strasbourg and Luxembourg Courts. An official evaluation of the Dublin system (to which the Commission Proposal refers) found that the underlying aim of reducing secondary movements has clearly failed, with 24% of applicants in 2014 having already sought asylum elsewhere (this figure does not even include people who whilst having been in other countries were not formally in the asylum system). Moreover, the regulation has limited impact on the distribution of applicants within the EU, given that net transfers in Dublin procedures are very few. The recent proposal by the EC aims to address some of these weaknesses but, in my view, fails to do so effectively.
Filed under: EJIL Analysis, European Union, Human Rights, Migration Comments Off on Leap Ahead or More of the Same? The European Commission’s Proposed Revisions to the Dublin System	Is there a place for sovereign immunity in the fight against terrorism? The US Supreme Court says ‘no’ in Bank Markazi v. Peterson
Published on May 19, 2016 Author: Victor Grandaubert	The US Supreme Court’s judgment of 20 April 2016 in the case of Bank Markazi, aka The Central Bank of Iran, Petitioner v. Deborah Peterson, et al. highlights the increasingly isolated nature of US practice on sovereign immunity. As well as addressing issues of constitutional law, the judgment is also significant from an international law perspective; the highest jurisdiction of the US took a dangerous step toward the effective application of its terrorism exception to sovereign immunity.
The terrorism exception was introduced to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) by an amendment made in 1996, and then further revised in 2008. 28 U.S.C. §1605A reads:
A foreign state shall not be immune from the jurisdiction of courts of the United States or of the States in any case […] in which money damages are sought against a foreign state for personal injury or death that was caused by an act of torture, extrajudicial killing, aircraft sabotage, hostage taking, or the provision of material support or resources for such an act if such act or provision of material support or resources is engaged in by an official, employee, or agent of such foreign state while acting within the scope of his or her office, employment, or agency.
The court can hear a case under this provision provided the foreign State has been designated as a State sponsoring terrorism by the Department of State and the claimant or the victim was at the time of the act a US national. This law aims at providing justice for victims through massive civil liability judgments, punishing foreign States committing or sponsoring terrorism, and discouraging them from doing so in the future.
In this post I focus not on the content of the judgment, but rather on the impact of US practice, which has recently seen all assets of the Iranian Central Bank located in the US subject to execution, on international law. Read the rest of this entry…
Filed under: EJIL Analysis, International Law and Domestic Law, Iran, State Immunity, Terrorism Tags: Immunity from Execution, Terrorism Exception	12 Comments	Page 1 of 3123
Maya BrehmMaya Brehm is a researcher in weapons law at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and a lecturer at the Geneva Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action. Her recent work focuses on the humanitarian impact of explosive weapons and on the legal constraints on the use of autonomous weapon systems.About EJIL:Talk! Welcome to EJIL:Talk! the blog of the European Journal of International Law.
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Author: Dapo Akande & Zachary Vermeer	Sharing Responsibility for UN Targeted Sanctions
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Author: Francesco Messineo	The Obligation of African Union States to Implement ICC Arrest Warrants
Author: Max Du Plessis & Chris Gevers	Self-Defense and Non-State Actors: Indeterminacy and the Jus ad Bellum
Author: Marko Milanovic	Prosecutions of US Officials for Torture? Some Issues
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