{"id":1805,"date":"2009-06-01T09:05:16","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T13:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/site\/?p=1805"},"modified":"2010-09-17T11:46:33","modified_gmt":"2010-09-17T15:46:33","slug":"issue_50-2_ramsey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/2009\/06\/issue_50-2_ramsey\/","title":{"rendered":"International Law Limits on Investor Liability in Human Rights Litigation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Abstract<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>This Article assesses efforts in U.S. courts, principally under the  federal Alien Tort Statute, to hold foreign investors indirectly liable  for human rights violations committed by the governments of countries in  which they do business. Such claims, though intended as remedies for  international law violations, create substantial tensions with  international law in two respects. First, to the extent they purport to  regulate the non-U.S. activities of non-U.S. entities, they may conflict  with international law principles of prescriptive jurisdiction, which  limit a nation\u2019s ability to regulate the extraterritorial activities of  non-nationals. Although an exception for universal jurisdiction allows  nations to punish a few especially heinous international crimes without  regard to territory or citizenship, it seems difficult to establish  universal jurisdiction for most indirect investor liability claims, and  in any event U.S. courts appear to have lost sight of this limitation.  Second, investor liability suits may misconceive the source of customary  international law principles. Because customary international law  arises from the actual practices of nations followed out of a sense of  legal obligation, its content cannot be derived from analogies to  nations\u2019 practices in areas that are factually and normatively distinct.  The only reliable evidence of nations\u2019 practices is what nations  actually have done with respect to investor liability, and there is no  consistent practice of imposing indirect liability on investors for host  government abuses. While international law allows the United States to  impose indirect investor liability upon its own corporations, the United  States cannot claim to be doing so as a matter of enforcing existing  international law, as the Alien Tort Statute appears to require, nor can  it\u2014consistent with international law\u2014impose liability upon non-U.S.  entities over which it lacks prescriptive jurisdiction.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Article assesses efforts in U.S. courts, principally under the federal Alien Tort Statute, to hold foreign investors indirectly liable for human rights violations committed by the governments of countries in which they do business. Such claims, though intended as remedies for international law violations, create substantial tensions with international law in two respects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-print-archives"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZu3S-t7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}