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Journal of International Criminal Justice Advance Access originally published online on October 11, 2005
Journal of International Criminal Justice 2006 4(2):387-400; doi:10.1093/jicj/mqi080
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© Oxford University Press, 2005, All rights reserved. For permissions please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The US Supreme Court Affirms the Filartiga Paradigm

Naomi Norberg*

* Ph.D. candidate, Université de Paris I (Sorbonne-Panthéon). Much of the research for this article was completed while the author was a Visiting Scholar at the King Hall School of Law, University of California, Davis (summers 2003 and 2004).

[naomi.norberg{at}college-de-france.fr]

In 2004, for the first time in history, the United States Supreme Court addressed the meaning and scope of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) of 1789. Originally intended to provide redress for acts of piracy or offences against ambassadors, the Statute has been used since the 1980 watershed case of Filartiga v. Peña-Irala to award damages in civil trials in the United States to foreign victims of, inter alia, torture, summary execution and forced disappearance. Opponents have claimed, among other things, that use of the ATS shows disregard for principles of international comity; is inconsistent with principles governing the use of universal jurisdiction; and results in an imperialist American privatization of human rights. The author argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain limits the ATS to a tool of complementary justice consistent with prevailing principles of global accountability.


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