Procedural barriers to court

by Jeremy Leaming

In another victory for corporate interests, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the scope of a 224-year-old law used by human rights groups and lawyers to sue corporations over human rights violations committed overseas.

The case involved a lawsuit leveled against Royal Dutch Petroleum, which owns Shell Oil, alleging that the company was complicit in the murder and torture of Nigerians opposed to the company’s exploration of the Niger Delta and thereby in violation of the law of nations. The Nigerian government executed many of the activists -- and their families, represented by human rights lawyers, lodged a lawsuit in federal court pursuant to the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). The 1789 federal law states that federal courts can hear “any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”

In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. asked the parties to address, “Whether and under what circumstances the [ATS] allows courts to recognize a cause of action for violations of the law of nations occurring within the territory of a sovereign other than the United States.”

The question is not, Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, “whether petitioners have stated a proper claim under the ATS, but whether a claim may reach conduct occurring in the territory of a foreign sovereign.”

Roberts, joined by the high court’s other conservatives, maintained that the ATS “covers actions by aliens for violations of the law of nations, but that does not imply extraterritorial reach – such violations affecting aliens can occur either within or outside the United States.”

The Court’s conservatives concluded the ATS does not reach extraterritoriality claims, in this case.

“On these facts, all the relevant conduct took place outside the United States,” Roberts wrote. “And even where the claims touch and concern the territory of the United States, they must do so with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritorial application. Corporations are often present in many countries, and it would reach too far to say that mere corporate presence suffices. If Congress were to determine otherwise, a statute more specific than the ATS would be required.”

The high court’s left-of-center justices “believed that the statute could still be used in some cases,” Robert Barnes reported for The Washington Post.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Barnes highlighted, wrote that the ATS should reach conduct by corporations overseas that “substantially and adversely affects an important American national interest, and that includes a distinct interest in preventing the United States from becoming a safe harbor (free of civil as well as criminal liability) for a torturer or other common enemy of mankind.”

by Jeremy Leaming

Too many progressives have faltered in highlighting the impact nine justices on the nation’s highest court can have on the lives of millions of Americans. The Constitutional Accountability Center’s Simon Lazarus lays the case out over at CAC’s Text and History Blog, noting that during the second presidential debate an opportunity was missed to show how the conservative justices of the Roberts Court increasingly advance corporate interests, while making life tougher on individuals.

As Lazarus notes, a question from the town hall audience prompted the candidates try and address the ongoing lack of pay equity – women still earn significantly less than their male counterparts. President Obama responded by highlighting his signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The law was named after the Alabama women who struggled to hold Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company accountable for paying her far less than men at the company doing the same work. After Ledbetter (pictured) sued the company, a jury found in her favor and awarded her hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay. But the company appealed and the case eventually reached the high court in 2007. The rightwing bloc of the Supreme Court in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire reversed course and found that Ledbetter could not move forward with her lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 seeking equal pay for equal work. The rightwing justices essentially said that Ledbetter had waited too long to bring the action, even though she did not discover the discrimination until her retirement from the Goodyear Tire plant.

During this year’s ACS National Convention, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who lodged a dissent in Ledbetter, said the decision was “entirely out of touch with the real world of work.”

The Ledbetter Act trumps the high court’s out-of-touch majority opinion by allowing for a realistic timeframe for workers to bring employment discrimination cases.

But Lazarus says progressives, including the president, have failed to “take a cue from Senator [Patrick] Leahy, who has held numerous hearings over the past four years to ‘shine a light on how the Supreme Court’s decisions affect Americans’ everyday lives.’”