Opinion ID: 781722
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The District Court's Holding and Yousef's Challenges on Appeal

Text: 94 Count Nineteen, the bombing of Philippine Airlines Flight 434, appears to present a less straight-forward jurisdictional issue because the airplane that was bombed was not a United States-flag aircraft, it was flying between two destinations outside of the United States, and there is no evidence that any United States citizens were aboard the flight or were targets of the bombing. The District Court nevertheless concluded that jurisdiction over Yousef for the offenses charged in Count Nineteen was proper, inter alia, under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Yousef, 927 F.Supp. at 681-82. 95 Yousef makes a two-part argument on appeal challenging the District Court's holding with respect to the Court's jurisdiction over Count Nineteen. First, he claims that the District Court erred in holding that the universality principle provides jurisdiction over Count Nineteen. He bases this claim on the argument that, if his placing the bomb on the Philippine Airlines plane constituted terrorism, then jurisdiction under the universality principle is improper because terrorism is not universally condemned by the community of States and, therefore, is not subject to universal jurisdiction under customary international law. Yousef Br. at 143-48. Second, he argues that because customary international law does not provide for the punishment of terrorist acts under the universality principle, such failure precludes or invalidates United States laws that provide for the prosecution of such acts that occur extraterritorially. See id. at 139-141, 148 (arguing that jurisdiction over Count Nineteen cannot exist apart from a jurisdictional basis supplied by customary international law). 96 In light of the District Court's conclusion that Yousef's prosecution for the acts charged in Count Nineteen was proper under the universality principle, and in light of Yousef's arguments both that the universality principle does not provide jurisdiction over terrorist acts and that this failure precludes United States law from proscribing such acts, we (i) first present the District Court's holding as to its jurisdiction over this count, (ii) examine whether the District Court correctly concluded that the universality principle provides for jurisdiction over the acts charged in Count Nineteen, and (iii) examine whether the universality principle provides for jurisdiction over terrorist acts. We hold that the District Court erred as a matter of law in relying upon the universality principle as a basis for jurisdiction over the acts charged in Count Nineteen and further hold that customary international law currently does not provide for the prosecution of terrorist acts under the universality principle, in part due to the failure of States to achieve anything like consensus on the definition of terrorism. However, as discussed in full below in Discussion Section I.B.3(b), we hold that Yousef's conduct charged in Count Nineteen — regardless of whether it is termed terrorist — constitutes the core conduct proscribed by the Montreal Convention and its implementing legislation. 30 Accordingly, Yousef's prosecution and conviction on this Count is both consistent with and required by the United States' treaty obligations and domestic laws. We therefore reject Yousef's claim that jurisdiction over Count Nineteen was lacking and affirm the substance of the District Court's ruling. 97
98 In holding that it could exercise universal jurisdiction over Yousef for Count Nineteen, the District Court stated: 99 The issue of exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction over a criminal prosecution based on universal jurisdiction was also discussed in United States v. Yunis, [924 F.2d 1086 (D.C.Cir.1991)] .... 100 The Yunis court did not decide that universal jurisdiction was insufficient as the sole basis for jurisdiction under the Antihijacking Act.... 101 Endorsing the exercise of universal jurisdiction in the prosecution of an aircraft-related crime, the [ Yunis ] court stated that aircraft hijacking may well be one of the few crimes so clearly condemned under the law of nations that states may assert universal jurisdiction to bring offenders to justice, even when the state has no territorial connection to the hijacking and its citizens are not involved. Id. [at 1092.] 102 The court in Yunis cited to the Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law to support exercise of universal jurisdiction in a criminal prosecution related to crimes involving aircraft. Section 404 [of the Restatement (Third)] states, [a] state has jurisdiction to define and prescribe punishment for certain offenses recognized by the community of nations as of universal concern, such as piracy, slave trade, attacks on or hacking of aircraft, genocide, war crimes, and perhaps certain acts of terrorism, even where none of the other bases of jurisdiction indicated in § 402 is present. Restatement (Third) § 404 (1987). Yousef, 927 F.Supp. at 681 (additional internal citations omitted) (emphasis removed). The District Court then added: 103 The disregard for human life which would accompany the placing of a bomb aboard an airplane with the intent for that bomb to explode while the airplane is in flight and fully occupied with people, or otherwise sabotaging that plane, is at least as heinous a crime of international concern as hijacking a plane. Id. at 682. 104 The District Court thus held, relying on Yunis, the Restatement (Third), and its own analogy between the placing of a bomb aboard an airplane and other heinous crimes that support universal jurisdiction, that the United States on this ground alone could exercise universal jurisdiction to prosecute aircraft-related crime. Id. at 681-82. Like the court in Yunis, the District Court relied on the Restatement (Third) for the proposition that a state has jurisdiction to define and prescribe punishment for certain offenses recognized by the community of nations as of universal concern, including piracy, slave trade, attacks on or hijacking of aircraft,... [and] perhaps certain acts of terrorism. Yousef, 927 F.Supp. at 681 (quoting Restatement (Third) § 404) (alteration omitted; emphasis added). Drawing an analogy between aircraft hijacking and Yousef's act of placing a bomb aboard an aircraft, the District Court concluded that the acts charged in Count Nineteen are considered by the United States and the international community to be `Offenses against the Law of Nations' that support the exercise of universal jurisdiction over Yousef. Id. (internal citation omitted in original). 105 In relying primarily on the Restatement (Third) (and its incorporation into Yunis ) and in expanding the scope of universal jurisdiction to new offenses by judicial analogy to its traditional subjects, the District Court erred, first, in its use of the sources of authority from which a court may discern the content of customary international law and, second, in its conclusion that universal jurisdiction may be expanded by judicial analogy to the crimes that currently are subject to jurisdiction under the universality principle. We address these points in turn. 106
107 The District Court anchored its finding of universal jurisdiction over Yousef in the relevant provisions of the Restatement (Third). It erred in doing so because such treatises are not primary sources of international law. While a discussion of the sources of authority from which a court may discover the content of customary international law may seem rarefied, we address this subject here at some length because the incorrect use of such sources can easily lead to an incorrect conclusion about the content of customary international law. In the instant case, misplaced reliance on a treatise as a primary source of the customary international law of universal jurisdiction led to the erroneous conclusion that such jurisdiction existed over the acts charged in Count Nineteen. 108 The Restatement (Third), a kind of treatise or commentary, is not a primary source of authority upon which, standing alone, courts may rely for propositions of customary international law. Such works at most provide evidence of the practice of States, and then only insofar as they rest on factual and accurate descriptions of the past practices of states, not on projections of future trends or the advocacy of the better rule. See note 31, post. Moreover, while a treatise never may serve as a primary source of law, reliance on this section of the Restatement (Third) in particular is error because it advocates the expansion of universal jurisdiction beyond the scope presently recognized by the community of States, as reflected in customary international law primary sources. 31 The District Court's reliance on Yunis for the proposition that it could exercise universal jurisdiction over Yousef similarly was misplaced because the holding in Yunis was grounded in the text of the Restatement (Third). 109