The Three Lives of the Alien Tort Statute: The Evolving Role of the Judiciary in U.S. Foreign Relations

This Article explains how the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) began in the late eighteenth century as a national security statute that the First Congress and early federal district judges saw as a way to afford damages remedies to British merchants, creditors, and other subjects whose persons or property were injured under circumstances in which treaties or the law of nations assigned responsibility to the United States. Torts committed within the United States by private American citizens were the most likely such circumstances. The ultimate aims of the statute were to avoid renewed war with Great Britain and the other European powers and to encourage commerce and trade with the same. Two centuries later, the ATS was reborn as an international human rights statute at a time when the United States had become a global superpower with a global human-rights agenda during the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Now that the Supreme Court\u27s holding in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. has undermined the international human rights vision of the ATS, this Article suggests that the statute be used once again as a way to afford aliens money damages when they suffer torts under circumstances where the United States bears sovereign responsibility under contemporaneous international law

Civil War in the U.S. Foreign Relations Law: A Dress Rehearsal for Modern Transformations, The The Use and Misuse of History in U.S. Foreign Relations Law

The first of the four U.S. foreign relations law insights of the Prize Cases that this Article will discuss is the notion that international law provides a basis for the President\u27s exercise of military force in a manner neither specifically enumerated in the Constitution nor preauthorized by congressional enactments. The specific military action was the proclamation of a naval blockade that applied not only to active Confederate belligerents but also to loyal U.S. citizens residing in seceding or soon-to-secede states and to foreign neutral citizens. The second insight is the notion that federal constitutional law protections for U.S. citizens, such as the Fifth Amendment prohibition on the taking of private property, may be displaced by the international laws of war even in a category of conflict-civil war-not seemingly governed by international law and with respect to noncombatant U.S. citizens who claimed to be loyal. The third is the idea that the President may, consistent with the Constitution, unilaterally disregard or suspend the operation of on-point provisions in peacetime treaties in times of war, such as suspending-by the proclamation of blockade-terms in treaties of amity and commerce committing the United States to allow the merchant ships of its treaty partners free entry to its ports. The fourth is the role of judicial deference to the Executive in its interpretations of international law, both treaties and the customary international laws of war, particularly with respect to executive interpretations that appear to push the envelope in terms of what might be viewed as permissible under the prevailing rules of the laws of war. This Article will address each in turn after a short description of the facts and legal issues in the Prize Cases

Civil War in the U.S. Foreign Relations Law: A Dress Rehearsal for Modern Transformations, The The Use and Misuse of History in U.S. Foreign Relations Law

The first of the four U.S. foreign relations law insights of the Prize Cases that this Article will discuss is the notion that international law provides a basis for the President\u27s exercise of military force in a manner neither specifically enumerated in the Constitution nor preauthorized by congressional enactments. The specific military action was the proclamation of a naval blockade that applied not only to active Confederate belligerents but also to loyal U.S. citizens residing in seceding or soon-to-secede states and to foreign neutral citizens. The second insight is the notion that federal constitutional law protections for U.S. citizens, such as the Fifth Amendment prohibition on the taking of private property, may be displaced by the international laws of war even in a category of conflict-civil war-not seemingly governed by international law and with respect to noncombatant U.S. citizens who claimed to be loyal. The third is the idea that the President may, consistent with the Constitution, unilaterally disregard or suspend the operation of on-point provisions in peacetime treaties in times of war, such as suspending-by the proclamation of blockade-terms in treaties of amity and commerce committing the United States to allow the merchant ships of its treaty partners free entry to its ports. The fourth is the role of judicial deference to the Executive in its interpretations of international law, both treaties and the customary international laws of war, particularly with respect to executive interpretations that appear to push the envelope in terms of what might be viewed as permissible under the prevailing rules of the laws of war. This Article will address each in turn after a short description of the facts and legal issues in the Prize Cases

International Law, International Relations Theory, and Preemptive War: The Vitality of Sovereign Equality Today

The norm of sovereign equality in international law is so resolutely canonical that its precise meaning, origins, and justifications are rarely examined. Whatever the general merits of the norm, its retention seems fairly open to question when one sovereign state appears supremely unequal among 191 states in terms of military power

Safe-Conduct Theory of the Alien Tort Statute, The

In this Article, Professor Lee introduces a novel explanation of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) - a founding-era enactment that has achieved modern prominence as a vehicle for international human rights litigation. He demonstrates how the statute was intended to address violations of something called a safe conduct - a sovereign promise of safety to aliens from injury to their persons and property. The safe-conduct theory advances a new modern role for the ATS to redress torts committed by private actors - including aliens - with a U.S. sovereign nexus, and not for international law violations committed by anyone anywhere. In developing this contextual account, Professor Lee resolves uncertainty over the constitutional basis for the ATS and shows how, even with sparse conventional sources, the original meaning of an iconic founding-era statute might be recovered

A general theory of phase noise in electrical oscillators

A general model is introduced which is capable of making accurate, quantitative predictions about the phase noise of different types of electrical oscillators by acknowledging the true periodically time-varying nature of all oscillators. This new approach also elucidates several previously unknown design criteria for reducing close-in phase noise by identifying the mechanisms by which intrinsic device noise and external noise sources contribute to the total phase noise. In particular, it explains the details of how 1/f noise in a device upconverts into close-in phase noise and identifies methods to suppress this upconversion. The theory also naturally accommodates cyclostationary noise sources, leading to additional important design insights. The model reduces to previously available phase noise models as special cases. Excellent agreement among theory, simulations, and measurements is observed