Opinion ID: 187095
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Appellants' Claimed Exceptions to the FSIA

Text: Appellants offer several arguments in support of the proposition that the district court erred in dismissing their action even in the face of the FSIA's apparent jurisdictional bar. We reject each of these in turn.
Appellants first argue that the FSIA does not apply to a foreign official who has left office between the time of the commission of the challenged acts and the bringing of the litigation. We need not ultimately decide the merits of this argument, as it is not properly before us. Appellants did not raise this issue in the district court. Absent exceptional circumstances, a party cannot raise legal issues on appeal that it failed to raise in the district court. Nemariam v. Fed. Democratic Republic of Eth., 491 F.3d 470, 483 (D.C.Cir.2007). As the issue is not properly before us, this is not a proper case for us to decide this question of statutory interpretation. While we will not decide the issue, we feel compelled to advise that our refusal to enter a holding on the question does not mean that we consider this novel argument to be a compelling one or the question to be difficult. Indeed, it is likely that we would reject the proposition were it before us on the merits. The argument relies on the undeniable proposition that General Ya'alon's status as an agency or instrumentality of a foreign state is the basis for his immunity. See 28 U.S.C. § 1603(a)-(b); El-Fadl, 75 F.3d at 671. Appellants note that section 1603(b), which defines an agency or instrumentality as any entity which is an organ of a foreign state or political subdivision, speaks in the present tense. 28 U.S.C. § 1603(b) (emphasis added). Appellants claim that because section 1603(b) of the FSIA uses the word is and not was, it fails to protect defendants who are no longer foreign officials at the time of suit. Because General Ya'alon served as Head of Army Intelligence from 1995 to 1998 and Plaintiffs did not bring suit until 2005, under their construction of the statute he does not qualify for foreign sovereign immunity. To support their statutory interpretation argument, appellants cite Dole Food Co. v. Patrickson, 538 U.S. 468, 123 S.Ct. 1655, 155 L.Ed.2d 643 (2003), which they argue settled this issue in their favor. Appellants ask us to hold that a public official protected by the sovereign immunity of his country at the time he performs acts on behalf of the government loses that protection on the day he resigns or reaches the expiration of his term. Aside from the fact that such a holding makes no practical sense, it would be a dramatic departure from the common law of foreign sovereign immunity, as codified in the FSIA. The Supreme Court recently reiterated that one well-recognized purpose of the FSIA was the codification of international law at the time of the FSIA's enactment. Permanent Mission of India, 548 U.S. at ___, 127 S.Ct. at 2356. In 1976, it was well settled that sovereign immunity existed for any other public minister, official, or agent of the state with respect to acts performed in his official capacity if the effect of exercising jurisdiction would be to enforce a rule of law against the state. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 66(f) (1965). The common law of foreign sovereign immunity made no distinction between the time of the commission of official acts and the time of suit. When Congress codified the common law in the FSIA, it retained this same protection for foreign officials. See Chuidian, 912 F.2d at 1099-1100. In light of the above well-recognized purpose of the FSIA, it is unreasonable to assume that in enacting the FSIA, Congress intended to make such sweeping and counterintuitive changes to foreign sovereign immunity with the simple use of the word is. Dole Food does not appear to support the proposition advanced by appellants. It resolved only two questions, neither of which is relevant to this case  whether a corporate subsidiary can claim instrumentality status where the foreign state does not own a majority of its shares but does own a majority of the shares of a corporate parent one or more tiers above the subsidiary and whether a corporation's instrumentality status is defined as of the time an alleged tort or other actionable wrong occurred or, on the other hand, at the time suit is filed. Dole Food, 538 U.S. at 471, 123 S.Ct. 1655. Although the Court held that a corporation's instrumentality status is defined at the time of suit, id. at 478, 123 S.Ct. 1655, relying in part on the statute's use of the present tense of is owned, 28 U.S.C. § 1603(b)(2), the case never dealt with the acts of a government official. The status of a corporation at one time owned by a foreign state and an individual who was at one time an official of such a state are hardly the same. The corporation and the state have at all times been entities wholly separate and distinguishable from each other and able to act without the presence or even existence of the other. This does not define the relationship between the state and its officials. While it is true, indeed obvious, that the official has an existence independent of the state, the state does not act independently of its agents. Every act committed by a sovereign government is carried out by its officials and agents. While the state may own corporations that conduct some of these acts, it need not do so. Regardless of whether it creates or owns corporations, individual officials or agents must act as instrumentalities for anything actually to be done. To suppose that the sovereign's immunity protecting the individual official in the performance of his sovereign's business vanishes the moment he resigns, retires, or loses an election is to establish that he had no immunity at all. Even though the state's immunity survives his departure, it is difficult to say how it could act within its immunity without being able to extend that immunity to the individual officials who acted on its behalf. While Dole Food was not dealing with appellants' novel theory, the court did offer language in that case relevant to this argument. The Dole Food Court opined that a purpose of foreign sovereign immunity is to give foreign states and their instrumentalities some protection from the inconvenience of suit as a gesture of comity between the United States and other sovereigns. 538 U.S. at 479, 123 S.Ct. 1655. To allow the resignation of an official involved in the adoption of policies underlying a decision or in the implementation of such decision to repeal his immunity would destroy, not enhance that comity. This is especially true in a case like the present one where we would be engaging in the micro-management of military targeting decisions. All this is even assuming that appellants have alleged a claim for relief when all they seem to be able to support is the proposition that appellee was a high-ranking military official at the time the actions were undertaken.
Appellants next argue that General Ya'alon acted contrary to jus cogens norms of international law and therefore outside any scope of authority that would provide protection from suit. [A] jus cogens norm, also known as a peremptory norm of international law, is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of states as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character. Sideman de Blake v. Republic of Arg., 965 F.2d 699, 714 (9th Cir.1992) (quoting Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties art. 53, May 23, 1969, 1155 U.N.T.S. 332); see also Princz, 26 F.3d at 1173. Appellants claim that any act that violates a jus cogens norm must, by definition, be outside the scope of the individual's authority because no sovereign can authorize jus cogens violations. See Enahoro v. Abubakar, 408 F.3d 877, 893 (7th Cir.2005) (Cudahy, J., dissenting) ([O]fficials receive no immunity for acts that violate international jus cogens human rights norms (which by definition are not legally authorized acts.)); Cabiri v. Assasie-Gyimah, 921 F.Supp. 1189, 1198 (S.D.N.Y.1996) (noting that the defendant did not argue, nor could he, that torture fell within the scope of his authority or was permitted under his nation's laws, because no government asserts a right to torture) (citing Filartiga v. Pena-lrala, 630 F.2d 876, 884 (2d Cir. 1980)); Prosecutor v. Furundija, Case No. IT-95-17/1-T, Judgement, ¶ 56 (Dec. 10, 1998) (noting the inconsistency of preventing courts from prosecuting torturers when no state has the lawful authority to torture). Appellants claim that their allegations of war crimes, extrajudicial killing, crimes against humanity, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment constitute violations of jus cogens norms. It is not necessary for this Court to reach the issue of whether the acts alleged by Plaintiffs constitute violations of jus cogens norms because the FSIA contains no unenumerated exception for violations of jus cogens norms. In Princz, we rejected this precise argument in the context of the waiver exception to the FSIA. 26 F.3d at 1173. Amici had argued that the Third Reich implicitly waived Germany's sovereign immunity under the FSIA by violating jus cogens norms. Id. Relying in part on Siderman, 965 F.2d at 715, this Court held that although it is doubtful that any state has ever violated jus cogens norms on a scale rivaling that of the Third Reich, even violations of that magnitude do not create an exception to the FSIA where Congress has created none. Princz, 26 F.3d at 1174; see also Smith v. Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, 101 F.3d 239, 242 (2d Cir.1996) (noting that, although Congress had not done so for Libya's role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, Congress may choose to remove the defense of sovereign immunity selectively for particular violations of jus cogens, as it has recently done in the 1996 amendment of the FSIA). Although appellants put a new twist on the argument  that jus cogens violations can never be authorized by a foreign state and so can never cloak foreign officials in immunity  the same prohibition on creating new exceptions to the FSIA holds. Neither the dissent by Judge Cudahy nor the opinion from the Southern District of New York following Filartiga, which a majority of this Court declined to follow in Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F.2d 774, 820 & 826 n. 5 (D.C.Cir.1984) (Bork, J., concurring) (Robb, J., concurring), see Al Odah v. United States, 321 F.3d 1134, 1149 (D.C.Cir.2003) (Randolph, J., concurring), rev'd on other grounds, Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466, 124 S.Ct. 2686, 159 L.Ed.2d 548 (2004), nor any of the cases appellants cite from foreign courts are persuasive or sufficient for this Court to carve another exception into the FSIA. We note that the reasoning this Court espoused in Princz applies equally well to our holding here: We think that something more nearly express is wanted before we impute to the Congress an intention that the federal courts assume jurisdiction over the countless human rights cases that might well be brought by the victims of all the ruthless military juntas, presidents-for-life, and murderous dictators of the world, from Idi Amin to Mao Zedong. Such an expansive reading of § 1605(a)(1) would likely place an enormous strain not only upon our courts but, more to the immediate point, upon our country's diplomatic relations with any number of foreign nations. In many if not most cases the outlaw regime would no longer even be in power and our Government could have normal relations with the government of the day  unless disrupted by our courts, that is. 26 F.3d at 1174 n. 1. In this case, Plaintiffs do not make allegations against an Idi Amin or a Mao Zedong  they assert that a general in charge of producing intelligence reports for the Israeli Prime Minister committed war crimes and unlawful killings, among other things, because he failed to prevent a military operation that killed civilians in southern Lebanon. These allegations are not sufficient to abrogate the immunity that Congress conferred upon foreign states. We emphasize that our rejection of the purported jus cogens exception in no way intends to imply that the alleged inaction by a military officer against whom there are no allegations of personal acts of illegality would fall within such an exception even if we were to recognize the existence of such an exception to the FSIA immunity. Appellants also argue that General Ya'alon acted outside the scope of his authority, and therefore outside the protection of the FSIA, because he allegedly violated Israeli law. They urge this Court to carve out an exception, quite similar to that for jus cogens norms, for foreign officials who violate their state's laws. However, just as the FSIA carves out no exception for complaints that allege violations of jus cogens norms, it does not create an exception for alleged violations of a foreign state's laws.
Appellants also argue that the FSIA should not bar suit because the TVPA abrogates the FSIA to the extent the FSIA applies to individuals. To support this argument, appellants point to the plain language of the TVPA, which confers civil liability for damages in a wrongful death action on [a]n individual who, under actual or apparent authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation . . . subjects an individual to extrajudicial killing. . . . 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (note) sec. 2(a). There must be some level of government action for an individual to be liable in a TVPA case, so appellants argue the FSIA will almost always apply to bar suit and effectively nullify the TVPA. In order to resolve the apparent conflict between these statutes, they argue that the TVPA exempts individuals from the FSIA when they are sued in their personal capacities. They claim that the TVPA requires this result because without this exemption, the TVPA would fail to have its full effect. Appellants' argument fails for several reasons. First, the FSIA does not prevent the application of the TVPA to foreign officials. Even though the TVPA limits actions to individuals acting under actual or apparent authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation, 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (note) sec. 2(a), it still has effect when the suit falls under one of the exceptions to the FSIA, see 28 U.S.C. § 1605 (listing at least eight exceptions to foreign sovereign immunity, e.g., waiver, commercial activity, and state sponsors of terrorism). Second, the cases appellants cite from our Sister circuits do not support the proposition that the TVPA creates an exception to the FSIA. Instead, those that even discuss the FSIA at all held that the defendant was acting outside the scope of his authority and therefore not subject to the FSIA. For example, in Hilao, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the FSIA did not bar suit against a former Philippine president because he acted outside the scope of his authority, which was evidenced by the Philippine government's agreement that the suit against Marcos proceed. 25 F.3d at 1472. Again, in Trajano v. Marcos, 978 F.2d 493 (9th Cir.1992), the FSIA did not bar plaintiff's wrongful death action against a former Philippine official because the defendant's default showed that she admitted acting on her own authority, not on the authority of the Republic of the Philippines. Id. at 498; see also Qi, 349 F.Supp.2d at 1287 (Where, as here, the PRC appears to have covertly authorized but publicly disclaimed the alleged human rights violations caused or permitted by Defendants Liu and Xia and asserts that such violations are in fact prohibited by Chinese law, Defendants cannot claim to have acted under [] a valid grant of authority for purposes of the FSIA.); Xuncax v. Gramajo, 886 F.Supp. 162, 175-76 & n. 10 (D.Mass.1995) (holding that the FSIA does not provide immunity to the defendant because he acted outside his scope of authority and noting that Where is no suggestion that either the past or present governments of Guatemala characterizes the actions alleged here as `officially' authorized). These cases are fully in line with this Court's precedent that the FSIA does not apply to foreign officials acting outside the scope of their authority. The other cases cited by appellants do not discuss the FSIA at all and are irrelevant to the issue at hand. Further, there is no indication in either the language or the legislative history of the TVPA that Congress intended to create another exception to the FSIA; in fact, the language points to the contrary result. When Congress enacted the FSIA, it stated clearly that [c]laims of foreign states to immunity should henceforth be decided by courts of the United States and of the States in conformity with the principles set forth in the FSIA. 28 U.S.C. § 1602; see Amerada Hess, 488 U.S. at 437-38, 109 S.Ct. 683 (quoting this language and noting that Congress very likely [] thought that should be sufficient to show that the FSIA applies to the ATCA). If Congress had intended to create an exception to the FSIA, it could have done so, as evidenced by its 1996 amendment to the FSIA to exclude state sponsors of terrorism. Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub.L. No, 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214, § 221(a)(1) (codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(7)). When Congress passed the TVPA in 1991, it did not amend the FSIA and instead appended it to the ATCA, a statute the Supreme Court held in Amerada Hess to be subject to all provisions in the FSIA. 488 U.S. at 438, 109 S.Ct. 683. Finally, the legislative history of the TVPA comports with this Court's interpretation. Both the House and Senate reports on the passage of the TVPA state explicitly that the TVPA is not meant to override the FSIA. See H.R.Rep. No. 102-367, at 5 (1991), reprinted in 1992 U.S.C.C.A.N. 84, 88 (The TVPA is subject to restrictions in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) of 1976.); S.Rep. No. 102-249, at 7 (1991) ([T]he TVPA is not meant to override the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976.). In sum, the TVPA, like the ATCA, is subject to all the provisions of the FSIA. Cf. Amerada Hess, 488 U.S. at 438, 109 S.Ct. 683.
Appellants finally argue that the FSIA should not bar suit because it does not apply when the complaint seeks no relief against the sovereign. We will not dwell on the merits of this dubious argument because appellants failed to raise it in the court below. Absent exceptional circumstances, a party cannot raise legal issues on appeal that it failed to raise in the district court. Nemariam, 491 F.3d at 483.