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Maurice Papon was a civil servant in Occupied France during World War II holding the position of Secretary-General of the Gironde prefecture.

The Assize Court of Gironde – a criminal trial court hearing cases of defendants accused with the most serious crimes – convicted Papon of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 10 years’ imprisonment for having aided and abetted the unlawful arrest and detention of hundreds of Jewish persons from 1942 until 1944, who were eventually deported and exterminated at Auschwitz.

Papon appealed the conviction but the Court of Cassation held that Papon had forfeited his rights to appeal when, instead of surrendering himself to the custody of the Court as he was legally obliged to do, he fled to Switzerland. Following a decision of the European Court of Human Rights condemning France for having breached Papon’s right of access to a court by holding that he had forfeited such right, Papon sought and obtained the re-examination of his appeal by the Court of Cassation, the highest judicial body in France. The Court dismissed the appeal and confirmed the decision of the Assize Court, rendering irreversible Papon’s conviction. Papon died three years later.

Who can be held responsible in a Court of law for human rights violations? In this case, victims and relatives of victims of the South African apartheid regime sued several corporations for their involvement in South Africa in the period between 1948 and 1994. They were liable, the plaintiffs reasoned, because the police shot demonstrators “from cars driven by Daimler-Benz engines”, “the regime tracked the whereabouts of African individuals on IBM computers”, “the military kept its machines in working order with oil supplied by Shell”, and so forth. The main legal issue to be solved by the District Court was whether it had jurisdiction over this case under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), which allows non-Americans to sue in federal Court for a violation of a small group of international norms. The District Court ruled that this case did not fall within the scope of the ATCA for several reasons. They could not be qualified as state agents carrying out illegal state actions, business activities in South Africa during the apartheid era could not be defined as a breach of the ‘law of nations’ under the ATCA and neither could aiding and abetting to an international norm violation. 

Between 1931 and 1945, some 200,000 women were forced into sexual slaverty by the Japenese Army. These women, referred to as “comfort women” were recruited through forcible abductions, deception and coercion. Once captured, they were taken by the Japanese military to “comfort stations”, that is, facilities seized or built by the military near the front lines for express purpose of housing these women. Once there, the women would be repeatedly raped, tortured, beaten, mutilated and sometimes murdered. They were denied proper medical attention, shelter and nutrition.

The present lawsuit was brought by fifteen former “comfort women” against Japan. Having been unsuccessful before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Supreme Court vacated the decision of the Court of Appeals and remanded the case. By its decision of 28 June 2005, the Court of Appeals once again dismissed the appeal on the grounds that the Appellant’s claims were non-justiciable under the political question doctrine as they would require the Courts to interpret treaties concluded between foreign States. 

In 2003, bulldozers manufactured by the American company Caterpillar were used by the Israeli IDF to destroy several houses on the Gaza Strip, killing several Palestinians and an American peace activist in the process. The relatives of the victims and those who lost their homes filed a suit against Caterpillar, arguing that by providing the Israeli military with bulldozers, they were liable for, among other things, war crimes and extrajudicial killing.

The District Court dismissed the claim, most importantly because it considered that selling products to a foreign government does not make the seller liable for subsequent human rights violations. Also, the Court stated that it could not prohibit Caterpillar to sell bulldozers to Israel, as this would infringe upon the government’s executive branch’s exclusive right to decide on trade restraints regarding Israel.   

Mirsad Bektašević, Abdulkadir Cesur, Bajro Ikanović, and Senad Hasanović were indicted in 2005 on charges of terrorism for their intended commission of terrorist acts in order to coerce the Bosnian government or other European governments to withdraw their forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina found the accused guilty with respect to both terrorism and the attempted obstruction of an official person. The sentences handed down ranged between 15 years 4 months and 6 months.

The Second Instance Court upheld the appeals of the accused in part, modifying the sentences imposed. The reason for this modification was the errors made by the First Instance Court in weighting and balancing the mitigating and aggravating factors as well as the taking into consideration factors that pertained to the substantial analysis of the offence (and therefore should not have been considered in the sentencing phase). Accordingly, the Appellate Panel modified this judgement, sentencing Bektaševic to 8 years 4 months, Cesur to 6 years 6 months, Ikanović to 4 years and Hasanović to 6 months.