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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. Whereas the District Court in first instance had granted the corporations’ motion to dismiss the case, the Court of Appeals ruled that the case could proceed. The District Court had ruled that aiding and abetting violations of customary international law could not provide a basis for jurisdiction. The majority of the panel disagreed, though for different reasons: one judge relied on international law to substantiate this, another solely relied on national law. A third judge dissented, arguing that this case should not be allowed to proceed, among other things because of fierce opposition from both South Africa and the US.

The case was filed by 22 injured Iraqi nationals and the families of eight individuals who died in the Nisoor Square shooting in Bagdad on 16 September 2007. The complaint was brought against the private security contractor Blackwater (now known as “Academic LLC”) and its founder Erik Prince.

On 1 January 2010, the Iraqi nationals agreed to sign a settlement agreement with Blackwater and Erik Prince, and to withdraw their complaint. The details of the agreement were not made available to the public.

Several villagers from Aceh, Indonesia, filed a civil suit against oil and gas company Exxon Mobil. They argued that the company carried responsibility for human rights violations committed by Indonesian security forces by hiring these forces and because Exxon Mobil knew or should have known that human rights violations were being committed.

In an appeal against two previous rulings in this case, plaintiffs held that they should be allowed to sue Exxon for violations of the law of nations and for violations of state law. The question whether they were allowed to sue for violations of the law of nations hinged primarily on whether corporations can be sued for these violations and whether it is possible to sue for aiding-and-abetting international crimes. These questions were for the most part answered in the affirmative. The question whether they were allowed to sue for violations of state law hinged primarily on the question whether non-resident aliens could even bring a case before the Court. The Court stated that there was no absolute bar for non-residents aliens to sue and that this question had to be answered case-by-case. The Court of Appeals referred the case back to the District Court for further assessment.      

During the Vietnam war, the United States used herbicides (including ‘Agent Orange’) in an effort to deprive the enemy of places to hide in forests and agricultural lands. In the decades after the war, reports on detrimental health effects of Agent Orange started coming out.

In this case, a Vietnamese organisation and several Vietnamese individuals did not sue the United States directly, but claimed that several chemical corporations by manufacturing the herbicides had violated national and international law. The Court rejected their claims based on national law, as under US law product liability against government contractors is barred.

Although the Court held that corporations can be held liable under international law, it also rejected the international law based claims as it did not find any international legal obligation which prohibited the US from using herbicides during the Vietnam war. The Court especially emphasised that the herbicides were not used with the specific intent to harm persons, but to ‘kill plants’. The Court held that since the use of herbicides during the Vietnam war had not been illegal, the manufacturers were not liable. The case was dismissed.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni citizen, was Osama bin Laden’s driver. Captured in Afghanistan in 2001 by members of the United States Armed Forces, he was transferred to the United States detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in 2002. By an order of the President of the United States, Hamdan was designated to stand trial before a United States Military Commission for charges of conspiracy to commit multiple offenses, including attacking civilians and civilian objects, murder by an unprivileged belligerent, destruction of property by an unprivileged belligerent and terrorism. Hamdan’s counsel applied for a writ of habeas corpus alleging that the military commissions were unlawful and trial before them would violate Hamdan’s rights of access to a court.

In this decision, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia and held that Hamdan’s trial by military commission would be unlawful for a number of reasons: conspiracy, with which he is charged, is not a crime against the laws of war, the commissions do not conform to the requirements of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, nor with the rights guaranteed to Hamdan under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.