Posts tagged Alien Tort Statute

Supreme Court Watch: Opening Day

40
7 months ago
by dcpetterson in

This is the first Mon­day in Octo­ber. In the shadow of the upcom­ing elec­tion, the Supreme Court of the United States opens its 2012–2013 term today. Think we had a busy and momen­tous term last year? It gets bigger.

This term, there are cases deal­ing with worker’s rights, vot­ing rights, mar­riage rights, the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, affir­ma­tive action, the rights of non-​​citizens, the right of habeus cor­pus, and more.

As one might expect, the bulk of the arti­cles here at Log­a­rchism over the next month will con­cen­trate on the elec­tion. Even so, the rest of the world con­tin­ues to turn. The Supreme Court of the United States con­tin­ues to address issues that affect us all. In today’s arti­cle, I’ll give a pre­view of just a few of the upcom­ing cases. As we did last year, we’ll be look­ing at many of them in more depth in the com­ing months. Here is a taste to whet your appetite. (more…)

Supreme Court Watch: Mohamad and Kiobel

2
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in

In the wake of the 2010 Cit­i­zens United rul­ing, the Supreme Court will today hear oral argu­ments on two cases, Kio­bel v. Royal Dutch Petro­leum and Mohamad v. Pales­tin­ian Author­ity, that will test whether cor­po­rate per­son­hood extends to lia­bil­ity for com­mit­ting crimes against human­ity. If cor­po­ra­tions have the right of free polit­i­cal speech, do they also have the vul­ner­a­bil­ity to be sued when they engage in tor­ture and murder?

If the crimes occur over­seas, does that shel­ter a cor­po­ra­tion from Amer­i­can law, as if they were shel­ter­ing their tor­ture in an off­shore bank account in the Cay­man Islands?

These cases could decide whether cor­po­ra­tions — or, more accu­rately, cor­po­rate exec­u­tives who give the orders, and employ­ees who carry them out, act­ing in the name of the cor­po­ra­tions — may com­mit the most heinous acts imag­in­able, secure in the knowl­edge that they can­not be pros­e­cuted under U.S. law. (more…)

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