Opinion ID: 175476
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Sosa and Our Precedents Require Us to Look to International Law to Determine the Scope of Liability

Text: In Sosa the Supreme Court instructed the lower federal courts to consider whether international law extends the scope of liability for a violation of a given norm to the perpetrator being sued, if the defendant is a private actor such as a corporation or individual. Sosa, 542 U.S. at 732 n. 20, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (emphasis added). That language requires that we look to international law to determine our jurisdiction over ATS claims against a particular class of defendant, such as corporations. [30] That conclusion is reinforced by Justice Breyer's reformulation of the issue in his concurring opinion: The norm [of international law] must extend liability to the type of perpetrator ( e.g., a private actor) the plaintiff seeks to sue. See id. at 760, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (Breyer, J., concurring) (emphasis added) (citing id. at 732 n. 20, 124 S.Ct. 2739 majority opinion). The Supreme Court's instruction to look to international law to determine the scope of liability under the ATS did not involve a revolutionary interpretation of the statutein fact, it had long been the law of this Circuit. In Filartiga, we had looked to international law to determine our jurisdiction and to delineate the type of defendant who could be sued. See 630 F.2d at 889 ([T]he question of federal jurisdiction under the Alien Tort Statute ... requires consideration of the law of nations.); id. at 880 (In light of the universal condemnation of torture in numerous international agreements, and the renunciation of torture as an instrument of official policy by virtually all of the nations of the world (in principle if not in practice), we find that an act of torture committed by a state official against one held in detention violates established norms of the international law of human rights, and hence the law of nations. (emphasis added)); see also Khulumani, 504 F.3d at 269 (Katzmann, J., concurring) (We have repeatedly emphasized that the scope of the [ATS's] jurisdictional grant should be determined by reference to international law.). Likewise, in Kadic v. Karadzi&cacute;, 70 F.3d 232 (2d Cir.1995) (Newman, J.), and in Judge Harry T. Edwards's notable concurring opinion in Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F.2d 774, 775 (D.C.Cir.1984) (Edwards, J., concurring)both cited with approval by the Supreme Court in Sosa international law provided the rules by which the court decided whether certain conduct violated the law of nations when committed by non-state actors. In Kadic, we held that a private actor could be liable under the law of nations for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, 70 F.3d at 239-241, but in Tel-Oren, Judge Edwards expressed the view that a private actor could not be liable for torture under the ATS, 726 F.2d at 791-95 (Edwards, J., concurring); see also, e.g., Flores, 414 F.3d at 254-66 (looking to customary international law for the applicable norms). Since Sosa, we have continued to adhere to the method prescribed in Sosa footnote 20 by looking to customary international law to determine both whether certain conduct leads to ATS liability and whether the scope of liability under the ATS extends to the defendant being sued. As recently as our decision of 2009 in Presbyterian Church, this same panel (including Judge Leval) declared that footnote 20 of Sosa, while nominally concerned with the liability of non-state actors, supports the broader principle that the scope of liability for ATS violations should be derived from international law. 582 F.3d at 258 (footnote omitted); see also id. at 261 n. 12 (noting that the court need not reach ... the question of `whether international law extends the scope of liability' to corporations (quoting Sosa, 542 U.S. at 732 n. 20, 124 S.Ct. 2739)). In Presbyterian Church, we looked to international law to determine the circumstances in which aiders and abettors could be liable for violations of the customary international law of human rights. Id. at 258-59. We did so because [r]ecognition of secondary liability is no less significant a decision than whether to recognize a whole new tort in the first place. Id. at 259. Thus, our holding today is consistent with Presbyterian Church, where we looked to international law to determine not only what conduct is cognizable under the ATS, but also the identity of the persons to whom that conduct is attributable (in that case, aiders and abettors). [31] Our interpretation of Sosa is also consistent with Judge Katzmann's separate opinion in Khulumani, 504 F.3d at 264 (Katzmann, J., concurring), which this same panel (including Judge Leval) adopted as the law of the Circuit in Presbyterian Church, see 582 F.3d at 258 (This opinion draws substantially from Judge Katzmann's concurring opinion, and adopts his proposed rule as the law of this Circuit.). In Khulumani, Judge Katzmann observed that aiding and abetting liabilitymuch like corporate liability`does not constitute a discrete criminal offense but only serves as a more particularized way of identifying the persons involved' in the underlying offense. 504 F.3d at 280 (Katzmann, J., concurring) (quoting United States v. Smith, 198 F.3d 377, 383 (2d Cir.1999) (some internal quotation marks omitted)). Judge Katzmann further explained that [w]hile [footnote 20 of Sosa ] specifically concerns the liability of non-state actors, its general principle is equally applicable to the question of where to look to determine whether the scope of liability for a violation of international law should extend to aiders and abettors. Id. at 269. He therefore concluded that to assure itself that it has jurisdiction to hear a claim under the [ATS], [a court] should first determine whether the alleged tort was in fact `committed in violation of the law of nations,' 28 U.S.C. § 1350, and whether this law would recognize the defendants' responsibility for that violation.  Id. at 270 (emphasis added); see also id. at 281 (Because aiding and abetting is a generally applicable means of identifying who should be held responsible for a particular act, ... it is ... reasonable to consider whether the theory is accepted as a general principle of customary international law .... (emphases added)). [32] Significantly, it was only because we looked to international law that we were able to recognize a norm of aiding and abetting liability under the ATS. In Khulumani, Judge Katzmann declined to rely on the usual presumption against aiding and abetting liability that applies in the interpretation of domestic statutes. See Cent. Bank of Denver, N.A. v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, N.A., 511 U.S. 164, 182, 114 S.Ct. 1439, 128 L.Ed.2d 119 (1994) ([W]hen Congress enacts a statute under which a person may sue and recover damages from a private defendant for the defendant's violation of some statutory norm, there is no general presumption that the plaintiff may also sue aiders and abettors.). Instead, Judge Katzmann concluded that Central Bank had no bearing on aiding and abetting liability under the ATS because, [u]nder the [ATS] the relevant norm is provided not by domestic statute but by the law of nations, and that law extends responsibility for violations of its norms to aiders and abettors. 504 F.3d at 282 (Katzmann, J., concurring) (emphases added). [33]
In sum, we have little difficulty holding that, under international law, Sosa, and our three decades of precedent, we are required to look to international law to determine whether corporate liability for a violation of the law of nations, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, is a norm accepted by the civilized world and defined with a specificity sufficient to provide a basis for jurisdiction under the ATS, Sosa, 542 U.S. at 725, 124 S.Ct. 2739. We have looked to international law to determine whether state officials, see Filartiga, 630 F.2d at 880, private individuals, see Kadic, 70 F.3d at 239-41, and aiders and abettors, see Presbyterian Church, 582 F.3d at 258-59, can be held liable under the ATS. There is no principled basis for treating the question of corporate liability differently. Like the issue of aiding and abetting liability, whether corporations can be liable for alleged violations of the law of nations is no less significant a decision than whether to recognize a whole new tort in the first place. Presbyterian Church, 582 F.3d at 259. It is, therefore, a decision properly made only by reference to customary international law. Having concluded that international law controls our inquiry, we next consider what the sources of international law reveal with respect to the existence of a norm of corporate liability under customary international law.
To attain the status of a rule of customary international law, a norm must be specific, universal, and obligatory. Sosa, 542 U.S. at 732, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (quoting with approval the statement of a lower court) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Flores, 414 F.3d at 248 ([C]ustomary international law is composed only of those rules that States universally abide by, or accede to, out of a sense of legal obligation and mutual concern.); Restatement (Third) § 102(2) (Customary international law results from a general and consistent practice of states followed by them from a sense of legal obligation.). Defining such norms is no simple task, as [c]ustomary international law is discerned from myriad decisions made in numerous and varied international and domestic arenas. Flores, 414 F.3d at 247. The sources consulted are therefore of the utmost importance. As the Supreme Court re-emphasized in Sosa, we look to those sources we have long, albeit cautiously, recognized: [W]here there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations; and, as evidence of these, to the works of jurists and commentators, who by years of labor, research and experience, have made themselves peculiarly well acquainted with the subjects of which they treat. Such works are resorted to by judicial tribunals, not for the speculations of their authors concerning what the law ought to be, but for trustworthy evidence of what the law really is. 542 U.S. at 733-34, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (emphasis added) (quoting The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. at 700, 20 S.Ct. 290); see also United States v. Smith, 18 U.S. (5 Wheat.) 153, 160-61, 5 L.Ed. 57 (1820) (Story, J.) (identifying the general usage and practice of nations[;] ... judicial decisions recognising and enforcing that law[;] and the works of jurists, writing professedly on public law as proper sources of customary international law); cf. United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56, 100 n. 33 (2d Cir.2003) (explaining that, in the parlance of international law, jurists and publicists are used as synonyms for scholars). Agreements or declarations that are merely aspirational, and that do[ ] not of [their] own force impose obligations as a matter of international law, are of little utility in discerning norms of customary international law. Sosa, 542 U.S. at 734, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (discussing the limited utility of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217A (III), U.N. Doc. A/810 (1948)). [34] In this Circuit we have long recognized as authoritative the sources of international law identified in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ Statute). [35] See Filartiga, 630 F.2d at 880-81 & n. 8 (describing Article 38 as consistent with the Supreme Court's historical approach to sources of international law); see also J.L. Brierly, The Law of Nations 56 (Sir Humphrey Waldock ed., 6th ed. 1963) (referring to Article 38 as a text of the highest authority); Restatement (Third) § 103 (describing similar sources as evidence of international law). Article 38 provides in relevant part: 1. The Court, whose function is to decide in accordance with international law such disputes as are submitted to it, shall apply: a. international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting states; b. international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law; c. the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations; d. subject to the provisions of Article 59, judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists [ i.e., scholars or jurists] of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law. ICJ Statute, art. 38, June 26, 1945, 59 Stat. 1055, 1060, 33 U.N.T.S. 993 (emphasis added). With those principles in mind, we consider whether the sources of international law reveal that corporate liability has attained universal acceptance as a rule of customary international law. A. International Tribunals Insofar as international tribunals are established for the specific purpose of imposing liability on those who violate the law of nations, the history and conduct of those tribunals is instructive. We find it particularly significant, therefore, that no international tribunal of which we are aware has ever held a corporation liable for a violation of the law of nations. 1. The Nuremberg Tribunals The Charter of the International Military Tribunal, commonly known as the London Charter, authorized the punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis following the Second World War. See Agreement for the Prosecution and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis (the London Charter), Aug. 8, 1945, 59 Stat. 1544, 82 U.N.T.S. 279. The London Charter and the trials at Nuremberg that followed are collectively the single most important source of modern customary international law concerning liability for violations of fundamental human rights. [36] As Justice Jackson explained, the London Charter is a basic charter in the International Law of the future, and the Nuremberg trials took great strides in ma[king] explicit and unambiguous the human rights norms that had theretofore ... [been] implicit in International Law. Jackson, Final Report, ante, at 342. And as Judge Katzmann noted in Khulumani : [C]ourts, international bodies, and scholars have recognized that the principles set out in the London Charter and applied by the International Military Tribunal are significant not only because they have garnered broad acceptance, but also because they were viewed as reflecting and crystallizing preexisting customary international law. 504 F.3d at 271 (Katzmann, J., concurring). It is notable, then, that the London Charter, which established the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, granted the Tribunal jurisdiction over natural persons only. See London Charter, ante, art. 6, 59 Stat. at 1547 (granting the tribunal jurisdiction to try and punish persons ... whether as individuals or as members of organizations i.e., natural persons (emphases added)); see also Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, art. 5, Jan. 19, 1946, amended Apr. 26, 1946, 4 Bevans 20, 22 (granting the tribunal jurisdiction over war criminals who as individuals or as members of organizations are charged with offenses (emphases added)). The London Charter also granted the International Military Tribunal the authority to declare organizations criminaland several German government and military organizations, such as the SS and the Gestapo, were, in fact, indicted. London Charter, ante, art. 9, 59 Stat. at 1548 (At the trial of any individual member of any group or organization the Tribunal may declare ... that the group or organization of which the individual was a member was a criminal organization.); Ann Tusa & John Tusa, The Nuremberg Trial 425 (1983) (describing the indictment of six organizations). See generally The Nurnberg Trial, 6 F.R.D. at 136-43 (describing the structure of the SS and the Gestapo and the criminal activities of their members). Such a declaration following indictment, however, did not result in the organization being punished or having liability assessed against it. Rather, the effect of declaring an organization criminal was merely to facilitate the prosecution of individuals who were members of the organization. See London Charter, ante, art. 10, 59 Stat. at 1548 (In cases where a group or organization is declared criminal by the Tribunal, the competent national authority of any Signatory shall have the right to bring individuals to trial for membership therein before national, military or occupation courts. In any such case the criminal nature of the group or organization is considered proved and shall not be questioned.  (emphasis added)). Echoing the London Charter's imposition of liability on natural persons only, the subsequent United States Military Tribunals, established under Control Council Law No. 10, prosecuted corporate executives for their role in violating customary international law during the Second World War, but not the corporate entities themselves. See generally Control Council Law No. 10, Punishment of Persons Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Peace and Against Humanity, in 1 Enactments and Approved Papers of the Control Council and Coordinating Committee, Allied Control Authority Germany 306 (1945), available at http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_ Law/Enactments/Volume-I.pdf. [37] This approach to liability can be seen most clearly in the tribunal's treatment of the notorious I.G. Farben chemical company (I.G. Farben). The refusal of the military tribunal at Nuremberg to impose liability on I.G. Farben is not a matter of happenstance or oversight. This corporation's production of, among other things, oil, rubber, nitrates, and fibers was harnessed to the purposes of the Nazi state, and it is no exaggeration to assert that the corporation made possible the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Nazi Germany, including its infamous programs of looting properties of defeated nations, slave labor, and genocide: The depth of the partnership [between the Nazi state and I.G. Farben] was reached at Auschwitz, the extermination center [in Poland], where four million human beings were destroyed in accordance with the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, Hitler's plan to destroy an entire people. Drawn by the almost limitless reservoir of death camp labor, I.G. [Farben] chose to build a great industrial complex at Auschwitz for the production of synthetic rubber and oil. Joseph Borkin, The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben 2-3 (1978). Auschwitz was an I.G. Farben slave camp where millions were exterminated by Zyklon B, an insecticide knowingly and intentionally manufactured and provided by I.G. Farben and affiliated corporate entities for a new and lethal use as an asphyxiating agent in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Id. at 122-23. Twenty-four executives of Farben were charged, inter alia, with Planning, Preparation, Initiation, and Waging of Wars of Aggression and Invasions of Other Countries; Plunder and Spoliation; and Slavery and Mass Murder. See 7 Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10 ( The Farben Case ) 11-60 (1952); see also Borkin, ante, at 137 (discussing the indictment of I.G. Farben executives). But the I.G. Farben corporate entity was not charged, nor was it named in the indictment as a criminal organization. In issuing its judgment, the tribunal pointedly observed that the corporate defendant, Farben, is not before the bar of this Tribunal and cannot be subjected to criminal penalties in these proceedings. 8 The Farben Case, ante, at 1153. The Tribunal emphasized: We have used the term Farben as descriptive of the instrumentality of cohesion in the name of which the enumerated acts of spoliation were committed. But corporations act through individuals and, under the conception of personal individual guilt ... the prosecution, to discharge the burden imposed upon it in this case, must establish by competent proof beyond a reasonable doubt that an individual defendant was either a participant in the illegal act or that, being aware thereof, he authorized or approved it. Id. (emphases added). [38] Those statements parallel the oft-cited passage of the Nuremberg judgment, made in response to the argument that international law is concerned only with the actions of sovereign states: Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced. The Nurnberg Trial, 6 F.R.D. at 110. In declining to impose corporate liability under international law in the case of the most nefarious corporate enterprise known to the civilized world, while prosecuting the men who led I.G. Farben, the military tribunals established under Control Council Law No. 10 expressly defined liability under the law of nations as liability that could not be divorced from individual moral responsibility. It is thus clear that, at the time of the Nuremberg trials, corporate liability was not recognized as a specific, universal, and obligatory norm of customary international law. See Sosa, 542 U.S. at 732, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (internal quotation marks omitted). We turn now to international tribunals convened since Nuremberg to determine whether there is any evidence that the concept corporate liability has coalesced into a specific, universal, and obligatory norm. 2. International Tribunals Since Nuremberg Since Nuremberg, international tribunals have continually declined to hold corporations liable for violations of customary international law. For example, the charters establishing both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, or ICTY, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, or ICTR, expressly confined the tribunals' jurisdiction to natural persons. See International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Statute, S.C. Res. 827, U.N. Doc. S/RES/827 (May 25, 1993), adopting The Secretary-General, Report Pursuant to Paragraph 2 of Security Council Resolution 808 (Report of the Secretary-General), art. 6, U.N. Doc. S/25704 (May 3, 1993) (The International Tribunal shall have jurisdiction over natural persons ....); Statute of the International Tribunal for Rwanda, art. 5, S.C. Res. 955, U.N. Doc. S/RES/955 (Nov. 8, 1994) (same); cf. Khulumani, 504 F.3d at 274 (Katzmann, J., concurring) ([T]he ICTY Statute is particularly significant because the `Individual Criminal Responsibility' section of that statute was intended to codify existing norms of customary international law.). The commentary contained in the Report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the ICTY reveals that jurisdiction over corporations was considered but expressly rejected: [T]he ordinary meaning of the term `persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law' would be natural persons to the exclusion of juridical persons.  Report of the Secretary-General, ante, ¶ 50. Moreover, unlike the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, the ICTY lacked the authority to declare organizations criminal. Id. ¶ 51 (The question arises ... whether a juridical person, such as an association or organization, may be considered criminal as such and thus its members, for that reason alone, be made subject to the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal. The Secretary-General believes that this concept should not be retained in regard to the International Tribunal. The criminal acts set out in this statute are carried out by natural persons....); cf. London Charter, ante, art. 9, 59 Stat. at 1548. Thus, to the extent that the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg possessed some limited authority to declare corporations criminalwhich, as explained above, operated merely as an evidentiary rule for later trials imposing liability on individuals subsequent tribunals have not retained that procedure. More recently, the Rome Statute of the ICC also limits that tribunal's jurisdiction to natural persons. See The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute) art. 25(1), opened for signature July 17, 1998, 37 I.L.M. 1002, 1016; see also Albin Eser, Individual Criminal Responsibility, in 1 The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 767, 778 (Antonio Cassese et al. eds., 2002) ([W]hen reading paragraphs (1), (2), and (3) of Article 25 of the ICC Statute together, there can be no doubt that by limiting criminal responsibility to individual natural persons, the Rome Statute implicitly negatesat least for its own jurisdictionthe punishability of corporations and other legal entities.). Significantly, a proposal to grant the ICC jurisdiction over corporations and other juridical persons was advanced by the French delegation, but the proposal was rejected. See Eser, ante, at 779. As commentators have explained, the French proposal was rejected in part because criminal liability of corporations is still rejected in many national legal orders and thus would pose challenges for the ICC's principle of complementarity. [39] Id.; see also Draft Report of the Intersessional Meeting from 19 to 30 January 1998 [ Held ] in Zuthphen, The Netherlands, in The Statute of the International Criminal Court: A Documentary History 221, 245 n. 79 (M. Cherif Bassiouni ed., 1998) (There is a deep divergence of views as to the advisability of including criminal responsibility of legal [ i.e., juridical] persons in the statute.); Andrew Clapham, The Question of Jurisdiction Under International Criminal Law Over Legal Persons: Lessons from the Rome Conference on an International Criminal Court, in Liability of Multinational Corporations Under International Law 139, 157 (Menno T. Kamminga & Saman Zia-Zarifi eds., 2000) (This proposal was finally withdrawn by the French delegation when it became clear that there was no possibility that a text could be adopted by consensus .... For some delegations the whole notion of corporate criminal responsibility was simply `alien', raising problems of complementarity. (emphasis added)). The history of the Rome Statute therefore confirms the absence of any generally recognized principle or consensus among States concerning corporate liability for violations of customary international law. In sum, modern international tribunals make it abundantly clear that, since Nuremberg, the concept of corporate liability for violations of customary international law has not even begun to ripen[ ] into a universally accepted norm of international law. Cf. The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. at 686, 20 S.Ct. 290 (explaining that a practice can gradually ripen[ ] into a rule of international law through usage among civilized nations). B. International Treaties Treaties are proper evidence of customary international law because, and insofar as, they create legal obligations akin to contractual obligations on the States parties to them. Flores, 414 F.3d at 256. Although all treaties ratified by more than one State provide some evidence of the custom and practice of nations, a treaty will only constitute sufficient proof of a norm of customary international law if an overwhelming majority of States have ratified the treaty, and those States uniformly and consistently act in accordance with its principles. Id. (second emphasis added). Moreover, as one distinguished scholar of international law has explained: The ordinary treaty by which two or more states enter into engagements with one another for some special object can very rarely be used even as evidence to establish the existence of a rule of general law; it is more probable that the very reason of the treaty was to create an obligation which would not have existed by the general law, or to exclude an existing rule which would otherwise have applied. Brierly, ante, at 57 (emphases added). That a provision appears in one treaty (or more), therefore, is not proof of a well-established norm of customary international law. One district court in our Circuit erroneously overvalued the importance of a number of international treaties in finding that corporate liability has attained the status of customary international law. See Presbyterian Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy, Inc., 244 F.Supp.2d 289, 316-17 (S.D.N.Y.2003) (denying defendants' motion to dismiss). But see Presbyterian Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy, Inc., 453 F.Supp.2d 633 (S.D.N.Y.2006) (granting summary judgment to defendants on different grounds), affirmed by 582 F.3d 244 (2d Cir.2009). None of the treaties relied upon in the district court's 2003 Presbyterian Church opinion has been ratified by the United States, and most of them have not been ratified by other States whose interests would be most profoundly affected by the treaties' terms. [40] Cf. Flores, 414 F.3d at 256-57 (explaining that a treaty's evidentiary value is dependent, in part, on the number and relative influence ... in international affairs of the States that have ratified it). Those treaties are therefore insufficient considered either individually or collectivelyto demonstrate that corporate liability is universally recognized as a norm of customary international law. Even if those specialized treaties had been ratified by an overwhelming majority of states, id. at 256as some recent treaties providing for corporate liability have been, see, e.g., Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, art. 10(1), adopted Nov. 15, 2000, S. Treaty Doc. 108-16; Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, art. 2, done Dec. 17, 1997, S. Treaty Doc. No. 105-43the fact that those treaties impose obligations on corporations in the context of the treaties' particular subject matter tells us nothing about whether corporate liability for, say, violations of human rights, which are not a subject of those treaties, is universally recognized as a norm of customary international law. Significantly, to find that a treaty embodies or creates a rule of customary international law would mean that the rule applies beyond the limited subject matter of the treaty and to nations that have not ratified it. See 1 Oppenheim's International Law § 626, at 1261. To construe those treaties as so-called law-making treatiesthat is, treaties that codify existing norms of customary international law or crystalize an emerging rule of customary international lawwould be wholly inappropriate and without precedent. See id. § 583, at 1203-04 (discussing law-making treaties). As noted above, there is no historical evidence of an existing or even nascent norm of customary international law imposing liability on corporations for violations of human rights. It cannot be said, therefore, that those treaties on specialized questions codify an existing, general rule of customary international law. Nor can those recent treaties, in light of their limited number and specialized subject matter, be viewed as crystalizing an emerging norm of customary international law. See id. § 583, at 1204 (explaining that relatively extensive participation in a treaty, coupled with a subject matter of general significance and stipulations which accord with the general sense of the international community, do establish for some treaties an influence far beyond the limits of formal participation in them (footnote omitted)). Furthermore, even if, as a general rule, treaties on a specialized subject matter could be viewed as crystalizing a norm of customary international law (which they generally cannot), it would be inappropriate to do so in this case in light of the recent express rejection in major multilateral treaties of a norm of corporate liability in the context of human rights violations. See, e.g., Rome Statute, ante, art. 25. Finally, the few specialized treaties imposing liability on corporations have not had such influence that a general rule of corporate liability has become a norm of customary international law. The ICJ in 1969 described the process by which that might occur in the well-known North Sea Continental Shelf Cases. There, Denmark and the Netherlands had argued that the Federal Republic of Germany was bound by a particular provision of a treaty, which Germany had not ratified, because the rule embodied in the multilateral treaty had become a norm of customary international law. According to the ICJ, accepting that view would require treating [a particular provision of the 1958 Geneva Continental Shelf Convention] as a norm-creating provision which has constituted the foundation of, or has generated a rule which, while only conventional or contractual in its origin, has since passed into the general corpus of international law, and is now accepted as such by the opinio juris, so as to have become binding even for countries which have never, and do not, become parties to the Convention. There is no doubt that this process is a perfectly possible one and does from time to time occur: it constitutes indeed one of the recognized methods by which new rules of customary international law may be formed. At the same time this result is not lightly to be regarded as having been attained. North Sea Continental Shelf Cases, [1969] 8 I.L.M. 340, 373-74. For a treaty provision to attain the status of a norm of customary international law, the ICJ explained, [i]t would in the first place be necessary that the provision concerned should, at all events potentially, be of a fundamentally norm-creating character such as could be regarded as forming the basis of a general rule of law. Id. at 374 (emphasis added). Provisions on corporate liability in a handful of specialized treaties cannot be said to have a fundamentally norm-creating character. Moreover, as the history of the Rome Statute demonstrates, still unresolved controversies as to the exact meaning and scope of this notion of corporate liability raise further doubts as to the potentially norm-creating character of the rule. Id. Accordingly, provisions imposing corporate liability in some recent specialized treaties have not established corporate liability as a norm of customary international law. In reaching the contrary conclusion in Presbyterian Church, the judge to whom the case was originally assigned in the district court acknowledged that most treaties do not bind corporations but reasoned that [i]f corporations can be liable for unintentional torts such as oil spills or nuclear accidents, logic would suggest that they can be held liable for intentional torts such as complicity in genocide, slave trading, or torture. Presbyterian Church, 244 F.Supp.2d at 317 (emphases added). In addition to the reasons discussed above, the district court's conclusion was flawed by its use of an improper methodology for discerning norms of customary international law: customary international law does not develop through the logical expansion of existing norms. Cf. Yousef, 327 F.3d at 103-04 (The strictly limited set of crimes subject to universal jurisdiction cannot be expanded by drawing an analogy between some new crime... and universal jurisdiction's traditional subjects.). Rather, as the Supreme Court has explained, it develops, if at all, through the custom and practice among civilized nations ... gradually ripening into a rule of international law. Sosa, 542 U.S. at 715, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (quoting The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. at 686, 20 S.Ct. 290). [41] It bears underscoring that the purpose of the ATS was not to encourage United States courts to create new norms of customary international law unilaterally. Sosa, 542 U.S. at 728, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (explaining that federal courts have no congressional mandate to seek out and define new and debatable violations of the law of nations). Instead, the statute was rooted in the ancient concept of comity among nations and was intended to provide a remedy for violations of customary international law that threaten[ ] serious consequences in international affairs. Id. at 715, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (noting that this concern was probably on the minds of the men who drafted the ATS). Unilaterally recognizing new norms of customary international lawthat is, norms that have not been universally accepted by the rest of the civilized worldwould potentially create friction in our relations with foreign nations and, therefore, would contravene the international comity the statute was enacted to promote. [42] We conclude, therefore, that the relatively few international treaties that impose particular obligations on corporations do not establish corporate liability as a specific, universal, and obligatory norm of customary international law. Id. at 732, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (internal quotation marks omitted). Although those treaties suggest a trend towards imposing corporate liability in some special contexts, no trend is detectable outside such narrow applications in specialized treaties, and there is nothing to demonstrate that corporate liability has yet been recognized as a norm of the customary international law of human rights. [43] C. Works of Publicists Although the works of publicists (i.e., scholars or jurists) can be a relevant source of customary international law, [s]uch works are resorted to by judicial tribunals, not for the speculations of their authors concerning what the law ought to be, but for trustworthy evidence of what the law really is. Sosa, 542 U.S. at 734, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (quoting The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. at 700, 20 S.Ct. 290); see also ICJ Statute, ante, art. 38(1)(d), 59 Stat. at 1060 (directing the ICJ to apply judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law. (emphasis added)); see note 47, post. [44] In light of the evidence discussed above, it is not surprising that two renowned professors of international law, Professor James Crawford [45] and Professor (now Judge) Christopher Greenwood, [46] forcefully declared in litigation argued before this panel on the same day as this case, that customary international law does not recognize liability for corporations that violate its norms. According to Professor Crawford, no national court [outside of the United States] and no international judicial tribunal has so far recognized corporate liability, as opposed to individual liability, in a civil or criminal context on the basis of a violation of the law of nations or customary international law. See Declaration of James Crawford ¶ 10, Presbyterian Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy, Inc., No. 07-0016 (2d Cir. Jan. 22, 2009) (emphasis added); see also Second Declaration of Christopher Greenwood ¶ 13, Presbyterian Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy, Inc., No. 01 Civ. 9882 (S.D.N.Y. July 10, 2002) ([T]here is not, and never has been, any assertion of the criminal liability of corporations in international law.); Michael Koebele, Corporate Responsibility Under the Alien Tort Statute 196 (2009) ([D]espite trends to the contrary, the view that international law primarily regulates States and in limited instances such as international criminal law, individuals, but not [transnational corporations], is still the prevailing one among international law scholars.). [47] Even those who favor using the ATS as a means of holding corporations accountable for human rights violations reluctantly acknowledge that the universe of international criminal law does not reveal any prosecutions of corporations per se. Ratner, note 43, ante, at 477. [48]
Together, those authorities demonstrate that imposing liability on corporations for violations of customary international law has not attained a discernible, much less universal, acceptance among nations of the world in their relations inter se. Because corporate liability is not recognized as a specific, universal, and obligatory norm, see Sosa, 542 U.S. at 732, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (internal quotation marks omitted), it is not a rule of customary international law that we may apply under the ATS. Accordingly, insofar as plaintiffs in this action seek to hold only corporations liable for their conduct in Nigeria (as opposed to individuals within those corporations), and only under the ATS, their claims must be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
Judge Leval concedes that international law, of its own force, imposes no liabilities on corporations or other private juridical entities. Concurring Op. 186. In other words, despite his perplexing but forceful contentions otherwise, Judge Leval does not disagree with Part II of our opinion. What he disputes is our conclusion in Part I that customary international law supplies the rule of decision. Judge Leval admits that international law is the place to look to determine whether a corporation can be held civilly liable for a violation of international law, id. at 173-74, but he maintains that we must accept corporate liability based on principles of domestic law unless the law of nations [has] spoke[n] on the question [and] provid[ed] that acts of corporations are not covered by the law of nations, id. at 175. He then contends that the law of nations has not, in fact, spoken on the question and that corporate liability is therefore a matter of remedy that international law leaves ... to the independent determination of each State. Id. at 176. In doing so Judge Leval dismisses as a source of authoritative guidance the fact that no international tribunal has ever been accorded jurisdiction over corporations because those tribunals have been charged only with the prosecution of crimes. Id. at 165-70. Finally, Judge Leval accuses us of rejecting corporate civil liability under the ATS merely because there is no norm of corporate civil liability in customary international law, and he argues that this reasoning is inconsistent with our endorsement of individual liability under the ATS. Id. at 152-53. Judge Leval's criticisms distort our holding and betray several fundamental misunderstandings of customary international law. First, Judge Leval attempts to shift to us the burden of identifying a norm of customary international law that supports our rule. But it is entirely inappropriate to begin, as Judge Leval apparently begins, with a presumption that a violation of customary international law can be attributed to any defendant unless, and until, a norm of customary international law declares otherwise. This reasoning turns customary international law on its head. Customary international law arises from the customs and practices among civilized nations ... gradually ripening into a rule of international law. Sosa, 542 U.S. at 715, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (quoting The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. at 686, 20 S.Ct. 290). Accordingly, the responsibility lies with those who seek to demonstrate that international law extends the scope of liability for a violation of a given norm to the perpetrator being sued. Id. at 732 n. 20, 124 S.Ct. 2739. Judge Leval produces no evidence that international law extends the scope of liability to corporations, and, in fact, he concedes that it does not. Concurring Op. 186 (It is true that international law, of its own force, imposes no liabilities on corporations or other private juridical entities.). In any event, although it is not our burden, we have little trouble demonstrating the absence of a norm of corporate liability in customary international law. See Part II, ante. Second, Judge Leval dismisses the fact that international tribunals have consistently declined to recognize corporate liability as a norm of customary international law; he does so by inventing a distinction between civil and criminal liability in customary international law that is contrary to our ATS jurisprudence. As Judge Katzmann explained in his separate opinion in Khulumani, [t]his distinction finds no support in our case law, which has consistently relied on criminal law norms in establishing the content of customary international law for purposes of the [ATS]. 504 F.3d at 270 n. 5. Unlike U.S. domestic law, international law does not maintain [a] kind of hermetic seal between criminal and civil law. Id. (citing Sosa, 542 U.S. at 762-63, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (Breyer, J., concurring)). Indeed, Judge Katzmann was able to conclude that the scope of customary international law reaches those who aid and abet violations of international law only by looking to the charters of and the law applied bythe very same international tribunals that Judge Leval ignores. Id. at 270 (observing that liability for aiders and abettors was applied by the war crimes trials following the Second World War and has been repeatedly recognized in numerous international treaties, most notably the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and in the statutes creating the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (`ICTY') and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (`ICTR')); see also Presbyterian Church, 582 F.3d at 257 n. 7 ([C]ustomary international law norms prohibiting genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity have been developed largely in the context of criminal prosecutions rather than civil proceedings. (internal quotation marks omitted)). Judge Leval explicitly endorsed Judge Katzmann's reasoning in Khulumani by joining the unanimous panel opinion in Presbyterian Church, which expressly adopted Judge Katzmann's rule as the law of our Circuit. Presbyterian Church, 582 F.3d at 258. Apparently, Judge Leval would have us look to international criminal tribunals only when they supply a norm with which he agrees. Third, Judge Leval distorts our analysis by claiming that we hold that the absence of a universal practice among nations of imposing civil damages on corporations for violations of international law means that under international law corporations are not liable for violations of the law of nations. Concurring Op. 152 (emphasis added). That is not our holding. We hold that corporate liability is not a norm that we can recognize and apply in actions under the ATS because the customary international law of human rights does not impose any form of liability on corporations (civil, criminal, or otherwise). Finally, and most importantly, Judge Leval incorrectly categorizes the scope of liability under customary international lawthat is, who can be liable for violations of international lawas merely a question of remedy to be determined independently by each state. Id. at 175-76. As we explained above, see Part I.A, ante, the subjects of international law have always been defined by reference to international law itself. Judge Leval is therefore wrong to suggest that international law takes no position on the question of who can be liable for violations of international law. Id. at 152. [49] Although international law does (as Judge Leval explains) leave remedial questions to States, id. at 175-76, the liability of corporations for the actions of their employees or agents is not a question of remedy. [50] Corporate liability imposes responsibility for the actions of a culpable individual on a wholly new defendantthe corporation. In the United States, corporate liability is determined by a body of rules determining which actions of an employee or agent are to be imputed to the corporation. [51] In this important respect, corporate liability is akin to accessorial liability, which is a subject of international law not left to individual States. See Presbyterian Church, 582 F.3d at 259 (holding that  Sosa and our precedents send us to international law to find the standard for accessorial liability and rejecting the argument that international law relies on domestic law to supply the standard, as a means of enforcement). The potential for civil damages under the ATS arises only if customary international law recognizes that a particular class of defendant is a subject of international law in the first place. See 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (providing jurisdiction over torts... committed in violation of the law of nations  (emphasis added)). Contrary to Judge Leval's suggestion, therefore, individual liability under the ATS is wholly consistent with our holding today. Congress chose in the ATS to grant jurisdiction over torts committed in violation of the law of nations, id., and since the Nuremberg trials, customary international law has recognized individual liability for the violation of international human rights. Thus, the ATS merely permits courts to recognize a remedy (civil liability) for heinous crimes universally condemned by the family of nations against individuals already recognized as subjects of international law. To permit courts to recognize corporate liability under the ATS, however, would require, at the very least, a different statuteone that goes beyond providing jurisdiction over torts committed in violation of the law of nations to authorize suits against entities that are not subjects of customary international law.