Opinion ID: 175476
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The deficiencies of the majority's reasoning

Text: In view of the complete absence of precedential support for their rule, the majority's position rests solely on arguments. These arguments rest on illogical propositions and misunderstandings of law and precedent. A. The refusal to empower international criminal tribunals to impose criminal punishment on corporations (for reasons which depend solely on the suitability of criminal punishment to corporations) in no way implies that international law exempts corporations from its rules. The only fact of international law to which the majority can point as evidence of its view that international law does not apply to juridical persons is the fact that international criminal tribunals have not exercised authority to impose criminal punishments on them. According to the majority, it follows inescapably that juridical entities are not subject to international law. The argument is simply a non sequitur. [18] The majority are absolutely correct that international criminal tribunals have consistently been established without jurisdiction to impose criminal punishments on corporations. At the start of modern prosecution by international tribunals for violations of the law of nations, the military tribunals at Nuremberg, established under the London Charter and Control Council Law No. 10 to punish those responsible for the Nazi atrocities, found that the Farben corporation violated the standards of the law of nations and therefore imposed punishment on the responsible Farben personnel, but did not prosecute the corporation. The subsequent international criminal tribunals have also been established with jurisdiction over only natural persons. In the recent establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) under the Rome Statute, July 17, 1998, 37 I.L.M. 999, 2187 U.N.T.S. 90, a proposal advanced by France to extend the court's jurisdiction to include the prosecution of corporations and other juridical persons was defeated. On this basis the majority declare it abundantly clear, Maj. Op. 137 (although furnishing no explanation for this abundant clarity), that the prohibitions of international law do not apply to corporations. The reasons why the jurisdiction of international criminal tribunals has been limited to the prosecution of natural persons, as opposed to juridical entities, relate to the nature and purposes of criminal punishment, and have no application to the very different nature and purposes of civil compensatory liability. According to views widely shared in the world, an indispensable element to the justification of criminal punishment is criminal intent. [19] Many courts and writers have taken the position that, because criminal intent cannot exist in an artificial entity that exists solely as a juridical construct and can form no intent of any kind, it is an anomaly to view a corporation as criminal. [20] In addition, criminal punishment does not achieve its principal objectives when it is imposed on an abstract entity that exists only as a legal construct. Criminal punishment seeks to impose meaningful punishment in other words, to inflict, for salutary effect, a measure of suffering on persons who have violated society's rules. 1 Charles E. Torcia, Wharton's Criminal Law § 1, at 2 (15th ed. 1993) (The `criminal' law attempts to force obedienceor to discourage disobedienceby punishing offenders.). The infliction of punitive suffering has several objectives. One is to give society the satisfaction of retributionof seeing that one who has broken its rules and has caused suffering is required in turn to endure suffering. Another is to disable the offender from further criminal conduct during imprisonment. A third is the hope that the infliction of punitive suffering will change the criminal's conduct, bringing about either his repentance or, at least, his realization that further criminal conduct is likely to result in still more severe punishment. Yet another objective is to dissuade others similarly situated from criminal conduct through the implicit warning that, if they yield to the temptations of illegal conduct, suffering may be inflicted on them. [21] When criminal punishment is inflicted on an abstract entity that exists only as a legal construct, none of these objectives is accomplished. A corporation, having no body, no soul, and no conscience, is incapable of suffering, of remorse, or of pragmatic reassessment of its future behavior. Nor can it be incapacitated by imprisonment. The only form of punishment readily imposed on a corporation is a fine, and this form of punishment, because its burden falls on the corporation's owners or creditors (or even possibly its customers if it can succeed in passing on its costs in increased prices), may well fail to hurt the persons who were responsible for the corporation's misdeeds. Furthermore, when the time comes to impose punishment for past misdeeds, the corporation's owners, directors, and employees may be completely different persons from those who held the positions at the time of the misconduct. What is more, criminal prosecution of the corporation can undermine the objectives of criminal law by misdirecting prosecution away from those deserving of punishment. Because the imposition of criminal punishment on corporations and other juridical entities fails to fulfill the objectives of criminal punishment, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared, [O]nly by punishing individuals who commit such crimes [and not by punishing abstract entities] can the provisions of international law be enforced. The Nurnberg Trial, 6 F.R.D. 69, 110 (1946); see Maj. Op. 118-20. For these reasons, criminal prosecution of corporations is unknown in many nations of the world and is not practiced in international criminal tribunals. See supra notes 19-20. The very sources the majority cite make clear that the reason for withholding criminal jurisdiction over corporations from international tribunals relates to a perceived inappropriateness of imposing criminal punishments on corporations. M. Cherif Bassiouni's report on the drafting of the Rome Statute notes the deep divergence of views as to the advisability of including criminal responsibility of legal [i.e., juridical] persons in the Rome Statute. Maj. Op. 137 (quoting 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)). Andrew Clapham's report notes the whole notion of corporate criminal responsibility [is] simply `alien' to many legal systems. Maj. Op. 137 (quoting 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)). The refusal of international organizations to impose criminal liability of corporations for reasons having to do solely with a corporation's perceived inability to act with a criminal intent and the inefficacy of criminal punishment to achieve its goals when applied to a corporationin no way implies that international law deems corporations exempt from international law. As the Chairman of the Rome Statute's Drafting Committee has explained, despite the diversity of views concerning corporate criminal liability, all positions now accept in some form or another the principle that a legal entity, private or public, can, through its policies or actions, transgress a norm for which the law, whether national or international, provides, at the very least damages. M. Cherif Bassiouni, Crimes Against Humanity in International Criminal Law 379 (2d rev. ed. 1999); see also 3 Int'l Commission of Jurists, Corporate Complicity & Legal Accountability: Civil Remedies 5 (2006) ([W]hen the legal accountability of a company entity is sought, the law of civil remedies may often provide victims with their only legal avenue to remedy. This is because the law of civil remedies will always have the ability to deal with the conduct of companies, individuals and state authorities.  (emphasis added and footnotes omitted)). The purposes of civil tort liability are very different from the purposes of criminal punishment. A principal objective of civil tort liability is to compensate victims of illegal conduct for the harms inflicted on them and to restore to them what is rightfully theirs. [22] If a corporation harms victims by conduct that violates the law of nations, imposition of civil liability on the corporation perfectly serves the objectives of civil liability. It compensates the victims for the harms wrongly inflicted on them and restores to them what is rightfully theirs. What is more, in all likelihood, the objectives of civil tort liability cannot be achieved unless liability is imposed on the corporation. Because the corporation, and not its personnel, earned the principal profit from the violation of the rights of others, the goal of compensation of the victims likely cannot be achieved if they have remedies only against the persons who acted on the corporation's behalfeven in the unlikely event that the victims could sue those persons in a court which grants civil remedies for violations of international law. Furthermore, unlike the case with corporate criminal liability, which does not exist in many nations of the world, it is the worldwide practice to impose civil liability on corporations. [23] Thus, the reasons that explain the refusal to endow international criminal tribunals with jurisdiction to impose criminal punishments on corporations suggest if anything the opposite as to civil tort liability. Whereas criminal liability of corporations is unknown in much of the world, civil liability of corporations is enforced throughout the world. Whereas the imposition of criminal punishment on corporations fails to achieve the objective of criminal punishment, the compensatory purposes of civil liability are perfectly served when it is imposed on corporations. Whereas criminal prosecution of a corporation could misdirect prosecutorial attention away from the responsible persons who deserve punishment, imposition of civil compensatory liability on corporations makes possible the achievement of the goal of civil law to compensate victims for the abuses they have suffered. There is simply no logic to the majority's assumption that the withholding from international criminal tribunals of jurisdiction to impose criminal punishments on corporations (for reasons relating solely to a perception that corporations cannot commit crimes) means that international law's prohibitions of inhumane conduct do not apply to corporations. B. The majority incorrectly assert that international law does not distinguish between criminal and civil liability; in fact, international law does distinguish between the two, and leaves issues of private civil liability to individual States. In an effort to defend their illogical leap from the fact that international tribunals have not exercised criminal jurisdiction over juridical persons to the conclusion that juridical entities cannot violate international law and thus cannot be sued under the ATS, the majority posit that there is no distinction in international law between civil and criminal liability. Maj. Op. 146. The majority cite neither scholarly discussion nor any source document of international law in support of this assertion. In fact, scholarly writings and source documents of international law contradict their assertion. These sources distinguish in many important respects between criminal and civil liability, and demonstrate that imposition of civil liability for violations of international law falls within the general discretion that individual States possess to meet their international obligations. In every instance of the establishment of an international tribunal with jurisdiction over private actors, the tribunal has been given exclusively criminal jurisdiction. [24] For instance, the London Charter established the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg for the just and prompt trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis. Agreement for the Prosecution and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis (the London Charter), § I, art. 1, Aug. 8, 1945, 59 Stat. 1544, 82 U.N.T.S. 279. Control Council Law No. 10 established the U.S. Military Tribunal for the prosecution and punishment of war criminals and other similar offenders. Control Council Law 10, preamble, reprinted in I Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, at xvi (1950). The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda were established to prosecute and punish war criminals. [25] The parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court [a]ffirm that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished. Rome Statute, preamble, ¶ 4. Consistent with their constituting charters, international criminal tribunals have exercised only criminal jurisdiction to punish offenders. None has ever exercised a power to make compensatory civil awards to victims. [26] These tribunals have on occasion made clear that the criminal violations they found may give rise to a claim for civil compensatory liability, and at times, have explicitly said that conduct which does not justify criminal punishment may nonetheless support a claim for compensatory damages. [27] International law not only recognizes differences between criminal and civil liability, but treats them differently. While international institutions have occasionally been established to impose criminal punishments for egregious violations of international law, and treaties often impose on nations the obligation to punish criminal violations, [28] the basic position of international law with respect to civil liability is that States may impose civil compensatory liability on offenders, or not, as they see fit. As Professor Oscar Schachter explains, [29] international law does not ordinarily speak to the opportunities for private persons to seek redress in domestic courts for breaches of international law by States. There is no general requirement in international law that States provide such remedies. By and large, international law leaves it to them to meet their obligations in such ways as the State determines. [30] Oscar Schachter, International Law in Theory and Practice 240 (1991). This feature of international law is largely explained by the diversity of legal systems throughout the world. Because the legal systems of the world differ so drastically from one another, any attempt to dictate the manner in which States implement the obligation to protect human rights would be impractical. [G]iven the existing array of legal systems within the world, a consensus would be virtually impossible to reachparticularly on the technical accouterments to an actionand it is hard even to imagine that harmony ever would characterize this issue. Tel-Oren, 726 F.2d at 778 (Edwards, J., concurring). The ceding to States of the fashioning of appropriate remedies to enforce the norms of the law of nations is readily apparent in the source documents. Characteristically, multilateral treaties protecting human rights include few details. They generally define the rights and duties in question, and direct contracting States to protect such rights under their local laws by appropriate means, sometimes, as noted above, commanding criminal punishment, but rarely dictating any aspects of civil liability. For example, in the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide is defined as a number of acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, arts. I, II, Dec. 9, 1948, S. Exec. Doc. O, 81-1 (1949), 78 U.N.T.S. 277. The Convention then provides in Article V that the State parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide. The Convention leaves the details for realizing its objectives to each nation. It says nothing about the nature or form of effective penalties to be imposed. It says nothing about civil and administrative remedies. In short, the Convention defines the illegal act of genocide, obligates State parties to enforce its prohibition, and leaves it to each State to devise its own system for giving effect to the Convention's norms. In this respect, the Convention is typical. The major instruments that codify the humanitarian law of nations define forms of conduct that are illegal under international law, and obligate States to take appropriate steps to prevent the conduct. [31] They do not instruct on whether, how, or under what circumstances a State may impose civil compensatory liability. They leave those questions to be resolved by each individual nation. C. The majority's next argument that the absence of widespread agreement among the nations of the world to impose civil liability on corporations means that they can have no liability under international lawmisunderstands international law and is furthermore inconsistent with the rulings of the Supreme Court and of this circuit. For their next argument, the majority construct the following syllogism. 1) To determine whether a corporation can be held civilly liable for violation of international law, the place to look is to international law. 2) Principles of local law, even those accepted throughout the world, are not rules of international law, unless they are generally accepted throughout the civilized world as obligatory rules of international law. 3) There is no general acceptance in the world of a rule of international law imposing civil liability on corporate defendants for violations of international law. Ergo, international law does not allow for imposition of civil liability on corporations. I have no quarrel with any of the three premises. If properly understood and applied, each is correct. The problem lies in how they are used in the majority opinion and, in particular, the spurious leap from these propositions to the majority's conclusion. Despite the surface plausibility of the majority's argument as it is stated, when one scratches below the surface, the majority's argument is illogical, internally inconsistent, contrary to international law, and incompatible with rulings of both the Supreme Court and this circuit. I have no disagreement with the first proposition, that the place to look for answers whether any set of facts constitutes a violation of international law is to international law. As improbable as it may seem that international law would give a free pass to corporations to abuse fundamental human rights, one cannot assume the answers to questions of international law without first exploring its provisions. And if we found that international law in fact exempts corporations from liability for violating its norms, we would be forced to accept that answer whether it seemed reasonable to us or not. However, when one looks to international law to learn whether it imposes civil compensatory liability on those who violate its norms and whether it distinguishes between natural and juridical persons, the answer international law furnishes is that it takes no position on the question. What international law does is it prescribes norms of conduct. It identifies acts (genocide, slavery, war crimes, piracy, etc.) that it prohibits. At times, it calls for the imposition of criminal liability for violation of the law, whether by vesting a tribunal such as the ICC with jurisdiction to prosecute such crimes or by imposing on States a duty to make the crimes punishable under national law. The majority's proposition that one looks to the law of nations to determine whether there is civil liability for violation of its norms thus proves far less than the majority opinion claims. Yesthe question whether acts of any type violate the law of nations and give rise to civil damages is referable to the law of nations. And if the law of nations spoke on the question, providing that acts of corporations are not covered by the law of nations, I would agree that such a limitation would preclude suits under the ATS to impose liability on corporations. But international law does not provide that juridical entities are exempt. And as for civil liability of both natural and juridical persons, the answer given by the law of nations (as discussed above) is that each State is free to decide that question for itself. While most nations of the world have not empowered their courts to impose civil liability for violations of law of nations, [32] the United States, by enacting the ATS, has authorized civil suits for violation of the law of nations. [33] In short, the majority's contention that there can be no civil remedy for a violation of the law of nations unless that particular form of civil remedy has been adopted throughout the world misunderstands how the law of nations functions. Civil liability under the ATS for violation of the law of nations is not awarded because of a perception that international law commands civil liability throughout the world. It is awarded in U.S. courts because the law of nations has outlawed certain conduct, leaving it to each State to resolve questions of civil liability, and the United States has chosen through the ATS to impose civil liability. The majority's ruling defeats the objective of international law to allow each nation to formulate its own approach to the enforcement of international law. I turn to the majority's second and third propositions in support of its syllogism that principles of local law, even if accepted throughout the world, are not rules of international law unless they are generally accepted throughout the civilized world as obligatory rules of international law and that there is no widespread practice in the world of imposing civil liability for violation of the rules of international law. These propositions are also true, but they are irrelevant to this controversy. If a damage award under the ATS were premised on the theory that international law commands that violators of its norms be liable for compensatory damages, then we would need to determine whether there is general agreement among the nations of the world to such a rule of international law. But the award of damages under the ATS is not based on a belief that international law commands civil liability. The claim that a tort has been committed is premised on a violation of the law of nations. This follows from a determination that an actor has done what international law prohibits. But international law leaves the manner of remedy to the independent determination of each State. See supra notes 29-30 and accompanying text; cf. Sosa, 542 U.S. at 730, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (The First Congress, which reflected the understanding of the framing generation and included some of the Framers, assumed that federal courts could properly identify some international norms as enforceable in the exercise of § 1350 jurisdiction. (emphasis added)). The fact that other nations have not chosen to exercise the discretion left to them by international law in favor of civil liability does not change the fact that international law has left the choice as to civil liability with each individual nation. A further flaw in the majority's reasoning is its identification of corporate civil liability as the principle that has failed to achieve universal approval as a part of the law of nations. The majority's thesis is that when a corporation commits a violation of the law of nations, the victims may sue the natural persons who acted for the corporation, but may not sue the corporation. In the majority's view, that is because there is no widespread acceptance in the world of corporate civil liability as a rule of international law. See Maj. Op. 120-21 ([T]here would need to be not only a few, but so many sources of international law calling for corporate liability that the norm could be regarded as `universal.'). But this is a mistaken description of international law. While it is true that there is no rule of international law making corporations civilly liable, that is merely the inevitable consequence of the fact that there is no rule of international law making any private person civilly liable regardless of whether the person is natural or juridicaland that international tribunals, which have been established to criminally prosecute violations of international law, have never been vested with authority to impose civil, compensatory liability. If the absence of widespread agreement in the world as to civil liability bars imposing liability on corporations, it bars imposing liability on natural persons as well. The majority's argument thus conflicts with the authority of this court and the Supreme Court. The point of the ATS is to provide a civil remedy to victims of torts committed in violation of the law of nations. In spite of the clear absence of a rule of international law providing for civil liability, we have repeatedly imposed civil liability under the ATS, and the Supreme Court expressly stated in Sosa, rejecting the views of the Court minority, that civil tort liability does lie under the ATS. The absence of a wide consensus imposing civil liability has never been construed as barring civil liability. The majority's argument that such absence of wide consensus bars imposition of liability on a corporation places the majority in irreconcilable conflict with the holdings of this court and the teachings of the Supreme Court. D. Taking out of context Sosa's reference to a norm, which must command virtually universal acceptance as a rule of international law to qualify as a rule of international law, the majority opinion attributes to that concept a meaning the Supreme Court could not possibly have intended. The majority claim to find support for their argument in a passage of the Supreme Court's Sosa opinion. The Court cautioned in Sosa that, in order to qualify as a rule of international law, a norm must command virtually universal acceptance among the civilized nations as a rule of international law. 542 U.S. at 732, 124 S.Ct. 2739. The majority opinion, disregarding the context of the Court's discussion, construes the norm under discussion as a convention concerning the type of violator of international law upon whom civil tort liability may be imposed. It postulates that, where a corporation has committed a tort prescribed by the law of nations, liability may not be imposed on it unless there is a norm generally accepted throughout the world for the imposition of tort liability on such a corporate violator of the law of nations, as opposed to the natural person tortfeasors who acted on the corporations' behalf. This is not what the Supreme Court meant. What the Court was addressing in its reference to norms was standards of conduct. Some norms (or standards) those prescribing the most egregious and universally condemned forms of conduct, including genocide, war crimes, and slavery express rules of the law of nations. Other norms of conduct, even though widely accepted and enforced in the world as rules of local law, are not rules of the law of nations and are therefore not obligatory on States. What was required was that the particular standard of conduct violated by the defendant be generally accepted as a mandatory rule of international law. A reading of Sosa, and of the cases it describes in this discussion as generally consistent with its view, makes clear that all of them are discussing the distinctions between conduct that does, and conduct that does not, violate the law of nations. Reinforcing this limitation, the Sosa opinion quoted with approval this court's reference in Filartiga to conduct that renders one  hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind, 630 F.2d at 890, Judge Edwards' formulationa handful of heinous actionseach of which violates definable, universal, obligatory norms, Tel-Oren, 726 F.2d at 781 (Edwards, J., concurring), and the Ninth Circuit's similar observation that [a]ctionable violations of international law must be of a norm that is specific, universal, and obligatory, In re Estate of Marcos Human Rights Litig., 25 F.3d 1467, 1475 (9th Cir.1994). The discussion in Sosa used the word norms to refer to standards of conduct. To be sure, the distinction between conduct that does and conduct that does not violate the law of nations can turn on whether the conduct is done by or on behalf of a State or by a private actor independently of a State. Sosa and Tel-Oren both spoke of forms of conduct arbitrary detention and torturethat might violate the law of nations only if done by or on behalf of a State and not if done by a private actor acting independently of the State. But that is a completely different issue from the majority's proposition. The majority are not speaking of conduct which, because done by an actor of specified character, does not violate the law of nations. By definition, when conduct does not violate the law of nations, it cannot be the basis of tort liability under the ATS for violation of the law of nations. The majority's rule encompasses conduct that indisputably does violate the law of nations, including for example slavery, genocide, piracy, and official torture (done under color of State law)conduct for which the natural person tortfeasors will be held liable under ATS, but for which, the majority insist, a corporation that caused the conduct to be done and that profited from it, cannot be held liable. Nothing in Sosa inferentially supports or even discusses this question. The Supreme Court, furthermore, could not have meant what the majority opinion attributes to it. The disagreement in Sosa that divided the Court was on the question whether the ATS in any circumstance authorizes an award of compensatory tort damages. The minority of the Court argued vigorously that no such damages could be awarded without further authorizing legislation by the Congress. Sosa, 542 U.S. at 746-47, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment). The majority of the Supreme Court disagreed and found that the ATS authorized awards of tort damages for violations of the norms of the law of nations without need for any further legislation. Id. at 730, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (Maj. op.). Had the Supreme Court meant what my colleagues assume it did in this passage, it could not have maintained its disagreement with the minority. There was no wide adherence among the nations of the world to a rule of civil liability for violation of the law of nations. Had the Supreme Court meant, as my colleagues attribute to it, that no damages may be awarded under ATS absent a universally shared view among the civilized nations that international law provides such a remedy, the Supreme Court would have been forced to conclude, in agreement with the minority, that the Filartiga line of cases, which awarded damages, was wrongly decided and that there could be no awards of damages under ATS. The majority of the Court, however, spoke with approval of Filartiga and the subsequent cases which had awarded damages and unmistakably concluded that damages were awardable under the ATS upon a showing of violation of the norms of conduct constituting part of the law of nations. The majority's claim to find support for their position in the Supreme Court's reference to the need for a norm to enjoy universal acceptance to qualify as a rule of international law is simply a misunderstanding of the Supreme Court's discussion. [34]