Opinion ID: 902495
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Conspiracy To Commit Piracy

Text: 5 The “high seas” reference may also be Congress’s attempt to expressly rebut the presumption against extraterritoriality as to piracy. See Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess Shipping Corp., 488 U.S. 428, 440 (1989) (“When it desires to do so, Congress knows how to place the high seas within the jurisdictional reach of a statute.”). 21 Though the aiding and abetting statute reaches Ali’s conduct, his conspiracy charge is another matter. In many respects conspiracy and aiding and abetting are alike, which would suggest the government’s ability to charge Ali with one implies the ability to charge him with both. While conspiracy is a “separate and distinct” offense in the United States, Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 643 (1946), it is also a theory of liability like aiding and abetting; “[a]s long as a substantive offense was done in furtherance of the conspiracy, and was reasonably foreseeable as a necessary or natural consequence of the unlawful agreement, then a conspirator will be held vicariously liable for the offense committed by his or her co-conspirators.” United States v. Moore, 651 F.3d 30, 80 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks omitted). Yet a crucial difference separates the two theories of liability. Because § 371, like § 2, fails to offer concrete evidence of its application abroad, we turn, pursuant to the Charming Betsy canon, to international law to help us resolve this ambiguity of meaning. Whereas UNCLOS, by including facilitative acts within article 101’s definition of piracy, endorses aider and abettor liability for pirates, the convention is silent on conspiratorial liability. International law provides for limited instances in which nations may prosecute the crimes of foreign nationals committed abroad, and, in invoking universal jurisdiction here, the government predicates its prosecution of Ali on one of those theories. And although neither side disputes the applicability of universal jurisdiction to piracy as defined by the law of nations, UNCLOS’s plain language does not include conspiracy to commit piracy. See, e.g., Ved P. Nanda, Maritime Piracy: How Can International Law and Policy Address This Growing Global Menace?, 39 DENV. J. INT’L L. & POL’Y 177, 22 181 (2011) (“It should be noted that the [UNCLOS] definition does not refer to either an attempt to commit an act of piracy or to conspiracy relating to such an act, but it does include voluntary participation or facilitation.”). The government offers us no reason to believe otherwise, and at any rate, we are mindful that “imposing liability on the basis of a violation of ‘international law’ or the ‘law of nations’ or the ‘law of war’ generally must be based on norms firmly grounded in international law.” Hamdan v. United States, 696 F.3d 1238, 1250 n.10 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (emphasis added). International law does not permit the government’s abortive use of universal jurisdiction to charge Ali with conspiracy. Thus, the Charming Betsy doctrine, which was no impediment to Ali’s aider and abettor liability, cautions against his prosecution for conspiracy. The government hopes nonetheless to salvage its argument through appeal to § 371’s text. Though courts construe statutes, when possible, to accord with international law, Congress has full license to enact laws that supersede it. See Yunis, 924 F.2d at 1091. The government suggests Congress intended to do precisely that in § 371, which provides that “[i]f two or more persons conspire . . . to commit any offense against the United States . . . and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy,” each is subject to criminal liability. Homing in on the phrase “any offense against the United States,” the government contends Congress intended the statute to apply to all federal criminal statutes, even when the result conflicts with international law. Yet, as we explained above, if we are to interpret § 371 as supplanting international law, we need stronger evidence than this. Indeed, the Supreme Court recently rejected the notion that similar language of general application successfully rebuts the presumption against extraterritorial effect. See Kiobel, 133 S. Ct. at 1665 (“Nor 23 does the fact that the text reaches ‘any civil action’ suggest application to torts committed abroad; it is well established that generic terms like ‘any’ or ‘every’ do not rebut the presumption against extraterritoriality.”). Under international law, prosecuting Ali for conspiracy to commit piracy would require the United States to have universal jurisdiction over his offense. And such jurisdiction would only exist if the underlying charge actually falls within UNCLOS’s definition of piracy. Because conspiracy, unlike aiding and abetting, is not part of that definition, and because § 371 falls short of expressly rejecting international law, Charming Betsy precludes Ali’s prosecution for conspiracy to commit piracy. The district court properly dismissed Count One.