Opinion ID: 175476
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Customary International Law Governs Our Inquiry

Text: The ATS grants federal district courts jurisdiction over claims 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. [27] In 2004, the Supreme Court held in Sosa that the ATS is a jurisdictional statute only; it creates no cause of action, Justice Souter explained, because its drafters understood that the common law would provide a cause of action for the modest number of international law violations with a potential for personal liability at the time. 542 U.S. at 724, 124 S.Ct. 2739. Indeed, at the time of its adoption, the ATS enabled federal courts to hear claims in a very limited category defined by the law of nations and recognized at common law. Id. at 712, 124 S.Ct. 2739. These included three specific offenses against the law of nations addressed by the criminal law of England [and identified by Blackstone]: violation of safe conducts, infringement of the rights of ambassadors, and piracyeach a rule binding individuals for the benefit of other individuals[, which] overlapped with the norms of state relationships. Id. at 715, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (citing 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 68 (1769)). The Supreme Court did not, however, limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts under the ATS to those three offenses recognized by the law of nations in 1789. Instead, the Court in Sosa held that federal courts may recognize claims based on the present-day law of nations provided that the claims rest on norm[s] of international character accepted by the civilized world and defined with a specificity comparable to the features of the 18th-century paradigms [the Court had] recognized. Id. at 725, 124 S.Ct. 2739. The Supreme Court cautioned that the determination whether a norm is sufficiently definite to support a cause of action should (and, indeed, inevitably must) involve an element of judgment about the practical consequences of making that cause available to litigants in the federal courts. Id. at 732-33, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (footnote omitted). The Court also observed that a related consideration is 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 an individual. Id. at 732 n. 20, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (emphasis added). We concludebased on international law, Sosa, and our own precedentsthat international law, and not domestic law, governs the scope of liability for violations of customary international law under the ATS.
International law is not silent on the question of the subjects of international lawthat is, those that, to varying extents, have legal status, personality, rights, and duties under international law and whose acts and relationships are the principal concerns of international law. Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States (Restatement (Third)), pt. II, at 70 introductory note (emphasis added); see 1 Oppenheim's International Law § 33, at 119 (Sir Robert Jennings & Sir Arthur Watts eds., 9th ed. 1996) (An international person is one who possesses legal personality in international law, meaning one who is a subject of international law so as itself to enjoy rights, duties or powers established in international law, and, generally, the capacity to act on the international plane .... (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted)). Nor does international law leave to individual States the responsibility of defining those subjects. Rather, [t]he concept of international person is ... derived from international law. 1 Oppenheim's International Law § 33, at 120; see also Restatement (Third), pt. II, at 70 introductory note ([I]ndividuals and private juridical entities can have any status, capacity, rights, or duties given them by international law or agreement .... (emphasis added)). [28] That the subjects of international law are determined by international law, and not individual States, is evident from the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (Tribunal) in the aftermath of the Second World War. The significance of the judgment of the Tribunaland of the judgments of the tribunals established pursuant to Allied Control Council Law No. 10was not simply that it recognized genocide and aggressive war as violations of international law. The defining legal achievement of the Nuremberg trials is that they explicitly recognized individual liability for the violation of specific, universal, and obligatory norms of international human rights. In its judgment the Tribunal noted that the defendants had argued that international law is concerned with the actions of sovereign states, and provides no punishment for individuals. The Nurnberg Trial ( United States v. Goering), 6 F.R.D. 69, 110 (Int'l Military Trib. at Nuremberg 1946). The Tribunal rejected that view, however, declaring that  international law imposes duties and liabilities upon individuals as well as upon states and that individuals can be punished for violations of international law. Id. (emphasis added). The significance of that aspect of the Tribunal's judgment was not lost on observers at the time. Justice Jackson, who served as chief prosecutor for the United States for the trial before the Tribunal, explained in his final report to President Truman that [the Nurnberg trials] for the first time made explicit and unambiguous what was theretofore, as the Tribunal has declared, implicit in International Law, namely, that the conduct of the leaders of Nazi Germany violated international law,  and that for the commission of such crimes individuals are responsible.  Robert H. Jackson, Final Report to the President Concerning the Nurnberg War Crimes Trial (1946) (emphasis added), reprinted in 20 Temp. L.Q. 338, 342 (1946) (emphasis added). General Telford Taylor, chief prosecutor for the United States for the trials conducted under Allied Control Council Law No. 10, similarly noted in his final report to the Secretary of the Army that the major legal significance of the Law No. 10 judgments lies ... in those portions of the judgments dealing with the area of personal responsibility for international law crimes. Brigadier General Telford Taylor, U.S.A., Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, Final Report to the Secretary of the Army on the Nuernberg War Crimes Trials Under Control Council Law No. 10, at 109 (1949); see also note 36, post. [29]