Foreign Sovereign Immunity, Individual Officials, and Human Rights Litigation

For thirty years, international human rights litigation in U.S. courts has developed with little attention to a lurking doctrinal objection to the entire enterprise. The paradigm international human rights case involves a suit against a foreign government official for alleged abuses committed abroad under color of state law. A potentially dispositive objection to this litigation is foreign sovereign immunity. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) creates presumptive immunity for foreign states and has no exception that would cover human rights cases. Many courts have assumed that the FSIA has no relevance to human rights suits as long as they are directed against state officials rather than the state itself. Recently, however, courts have begun to reject this assumption, and the issue is now before the Supreme Court in Yousuf v. Samantar. This essay makes two contributions to the debate over whether the FSIA applies to suits against individual foreign officials. First, it shows that, contrary to what some courts have assumed, suits against individual officials fall naturally within the plain language of the FSIA’s immunity provisions. Second, it shows that the international law of state immunity, which is relevant to the proper interpretation of the FSIA in several ways, supports this construction. Combining these and other points, the essay concludes that the FSIA confers presumptive immunity in suits against state officials, including former state officials, for their official acts committed while in office, and that this immunity applies even in human rights cases. This conclusion, if accepted, would narrow the scope of human rights litigation in U.S. courts, but it would not affect other legitimate mechanisms of human rights accountability

Trends and determinants of contraceptive method choice in Kenya

This paper uses data from the 1989, 1993 and 1998 Kenya Demographic and Health Surveys to examine trends and determinants of contraceptive method choice. The analysis, based on two-level multinomial regression models, shows that, across years, use of modern contraceptive methods, especially long-term methods is higher in the urban than rural areas, while the pattern is reversed for traditional methods. Use of barrier methods among unmarried women is steadily rising, but the levels remain disappointingly low, particularly in view of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Kenya. One striking result from this analysis is the dramatic rise in the use of injectables. Of particular program relevance is the notably higher levels of injectables use among rural women, women whose partners disapprove of family planning, uneducated women and those less exposed to family planning media messages, compared to their counterparts with better service accessibility and family planning information exposure

Foreign Sovereign Immunity and Domestic Officer Suits

Under international law, official-capacity suits brought against a foreign state’s officers are treated as suits against the state itself and thus as subject to the state’s immunity, even in suits alleging human rights abuses. This immunity regime differs from the immunity regime that applies in the United States in suits brought against state and federal officials for violations of federal law. Despite the federal government’s sovereign immunity and the immunity of state governments under Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence, courts often allow suits against federal and state officers for their official actions. This essay attempts to explain why the immunity rules differ between the two regimes. We begin by showing that the differential treatment of foreign and domestic officer suits has deep roots in British and American common law. We then show that Congress has not acted to alter this common law backdrop, and we explain the significance of this fact. Finally, we discuss functional reasons for the long-time differential treatment of suits against domestic and foreign officials

Congressional Authorization and the War on Terrorism

This Article presents a framework for interpreting Congress\u27s September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), the central statutory enactment related to the war on terrorism. Although both constitutional theory and constitutional practice suggest that the validity of presidential wartime actions depends to a significant degree on their relationship to congressional authorization, the meaning and implications of the AUMF have received little attention in the academic debates over the war on terrorism. The framework presented in this Article builds on the analysis in the Supreme Court\u27s plurality opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which devoted significant attention to the AUME Under that framework, the meaning of the AUMF is determined in the first instance by its text, as informed by a comparison with authorizations of force in prior wars, including declared wars. In ascertaining the scope of the necessary and appropriate force that Congress authorized in the AUMF, courts should look to two additional interpretive factors: Executive Branch practice during prior wars, and the international laws of war. Although nondelegation concerns should not play a significant role in interpreting the AUMF, a clear statement requirement is appropriate when the President takes actions under the AUMF that restrict the liberty of non-combatants in the United States. The authors apply this framework to three specific issues in the war on terrorism: the identification of the enemy, the detention of persons captured in the United States, and the validity of using military commissions to try alleged terrorists

Sosa, Customary International Law, and the Continuing Relevance of Erie

Ten years ago, the conventional wisdom among international law academics was that customary international law (CIL) had the status of self-executing federal common law to be applied by courts without any need for political branch authorization. This modern position came under attack by so-called revisionist critics who argued that CIL had the status of federal common law only in the relatively rare situations in which the Constitution or political branches authorized courts to treat it as such. Modern position proponents are now claiming that the Supreme Court\u27s 2004 decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain confirms that CIL has the status of self-executing federal common law. As this Article explains, the decision in Sosa did not in fact embrace the modern position, and, indeed, is best read as rejecting it. Commentators who construe Sosa as embracing the modern position have confounded the automatic incorporation of CIL as domestic federal law in the absence of political branch authorization (i.e., the modern position) with the entirely different issue of whether and to what extent a particular statute, the Alien Tort Statute ( ATS ), authorizes courts to apply CIL as domestic federal law. The Article also explains how CIL continues to be relevant to domestic federal common law despite Sosa\u27s rejection of the modern position. The fundamental flaw of the modern position is that it ignores the justifications for, and limitations on, post-Erie federal common law. As the Article shows, however, there are a number of contexts in addition to the ATS in which it is appropriate for courts to develop federal common law by reference to CIL, including certain jurisdictional contexts not amenable to state regulation (namely admiralty and interstate disputes), and gap-filling and interpretation of foreign affairs statutes and treaties. The Article concludes by considering several areas of likely debate during the next decade concerning the domestic status of CIL: corporate aiding and abetting liability under the ATS; application of CIL to the war on terrorism; and the use of foreign and international materials in constitutional interpretation

A feynman path integral representation for elastic wave scattering by anisotropic weakly perturbations

We write a space-time Feynman path integral representation for scattered elastic wave fields from a weakly compact supported anisotropic non-homogeneity.Replacement by a new version where We (I!) propose a new tomographic inversion methodology based solely in the wave sampling of the Ray paths through Monte Carlo path integral sampling Holding thus great potentiality for Navy's advanced Sonar detection .Comment: 8 page

Error analysis for Mariner Venus/Mercury 1973 conducted at the JPL Mesa west antenna range

Theoretical analysis and experimental data are combined to yield the errors to be used with antenna gain, antenna patterns, and RF cable insertion loss measurements for the Mariner Venus-Mercury 1973 Flight Project. These errors apply to measurements conducted at the JPL Mesa, West Antenna Range, on the high gain antenna, low gain antenna, and RF coaxial cables

A multi-method approach to delineate and validate migratory corridors

Context: Managers are faced with numerous methods for delineating wildlife movement corridors, and often must make decisions with limited data. Delineated corridors should be robust to different data and models. Objectives: We present a multi-method approach for delineating and validating wildlife corridors using multiple data sources, which can be used conserve landscape connectivity. We used this approach to delineate and validate migration corridors for wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) in the Tarangire Ecosystem of northern Tanzania. Methods: We used two types of locational data (distance sampling detections and GPS collar locations), and three modeling methods (negative binomial regression, logistic regression, and Maxent), to generate resource selection functions (RSFs) and define resistance surfaces. We compared two corridor detection algorithms (cost-distance and circuit theory), to delineate corridors. We validated corridors by comparing random and wildebeest locations that fell within corridors, and cross-validated by data type. Results: Both data types produced similar RSFs. Wildebeest consistently selected migration habitat in flatter terrain farther from human settlements. Validation indicated three of the combinations of data type, modeling, and corridor detection algorithms (detection data with Maxent modeling, GPS collar data with logistic regression modeling, and GPS collar data with Maxent modeling, all using cost-distance) far outperformed the other seven. We merged the predictive corridors from these three data-method combinations to reveal habitat with highest probability of use. Conclusions: The use of multiple methods ensures that planning is able to prioritize conservation of migration corridors based on all available information