Human Rights

By John Knox, a law professor at Wake Forest University School of Law and a member scholar at the Center for Progressive Reform. This commentary is cross-posted at CPRBlog.

On February 28, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, a case with far-reaching implications for efforts to hold corporations accountable when they commit or are complicit in abuses of human rights. 

For over fifty years, Shell has extracted oil from Nigeria, causing great harm to the environment and people of the Niger delta. The Ogoni people living in the delta protested Shell’s operations, and in response the Nigerian government harshly oppressed them. Most infamously, in 1995 it executed the author Ken Saro-Wiwa, together with eight other leaders of the protests.     

Esther Kiobel, the widow of one of the executed men, as well as other affected Ogoni, sued Shell in U.S. federal court, claiming that it aided and abetted the Nigerian government in its violations of human rights law. The plaintiffs relied on the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a law enacted by the First Congress, in 1789, which gives federal courts jurisdiction over claims by aliens arising from torts committed in violation of international law. In 2004, in Sosa v Alvarez-Machain, the Supreme Court affirmed that the ATS still provides jurisdiction for international tort claims, but it cautioned federal courts not to recognize claims “for violations of any international law norm with less definite content and acceptance among civilized nations than the historical paradigms” familiar when the law was enacted. As an example of such a historical paradigm, the Court cited the long-standing prohibition against piracy. 

Foreign plaintiffs have used the ATS to accuse corporations of committing grave human rights abuses, including genocide, war crimes, and forced labor.  A few of the suits have resulted in payments, including a 2009 settlement by Shell of another claim arising from its Nigerian operations. In 2010, however, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Esther Kiobel’s claim on the sweeping ground that corporations could never be liable for violations of customary international law, because customary international law never imposes any obligations on corporations. In short order, the Seventh, Ninth, and D.C. Circuits rejected the Second Circuit decision, holding that plaintiffs can sue corporations under the Alien Tort Statute. 

Last fall, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the Second Circuit decision. Its ruling will be its first ATS decision since Sosa, and it will determine whether the many other pending ATS suits against corporations may continue. It’s possible that the Court will decide the case on grounds that allow it to avoid addressing corporate duties under international law. But if the Supreme Court does take on international law, as seems likely, what should it decide? Is the Second Circuit correct that international norms do not prohibit corporate abuses of human rights? 

By Harold Baer Jr., U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York

As we watch the Arab spring unfold and hear the depressing stories of how the People’s Republic of China deals with human rights, Judges Under Fire: Human Rights, Independent Judges, and the Rule of Law becomes a must read. It provides insights into how the Rule of Law and an independent judiciary have fared over the last 300 years around the world. More to the point, it demonstrates what happens when judges and citizens lose track of the vital tenets to which the book is devoted.

On that score, one can’t help but wonder how some of the newly liberated countries will fare. Will they ensure that the Rule of Law is a part of their rebirth? How sad it will be if countries like Egypt and Libya slip back into anarchy. My book provides the reader with stories of how easy it could be for that to happen, both in older established countries as well as in fledgling republics. It supports the proposition that without the Rule of Law and an independent judiciary, democracy as we know it cannot survive. It is this proposition that we must bring to the attention of the leaders of these newly liberated countries.