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After the ‘Coastal Road Massacre’ of 11 March 1978 in Israel, the injured victims of the attack and relatives of the deceased attempted to take legal action in the United States against several non-state organisations and Libya, which they considered responsible for the attack and which they considered guilty of torture.

The District Court did not assess the merits, as the Court held, most importantly, that the relevant provisions of international law did not provide the plaintiffs with the possibility to take legal action. In several parts of the opinion, the Court clearly stated its opinion that it is not up to the federal courts to judge on claims arising under international law, unless an international legal provision grants a private right to sue. A federal court should not be a substitute for an international tribunal and the judiciary should not interfere with foreign affairs and international relations, according to the Court.

Also, the Court held that too much time had passed since the attack to take the matter to court. Thus, the plaintiffs’ action was dismissed.  

After the ‘Coastal Road Massacre’ of 11 March 1978 in Israel, the injured victims of the attack and relatives of the deceased attempted to take legal action in the United States against several non-state organisations and Libya, which they considered responsible for the attack. They based their action on, most importantly, a paragraph of the US Code which allows aliens to file action against an alleged violation of the law of nations or a treaty. 

After the District Court had dismissed their case, the Court of Appeals had to assess the plaintiffs’ appeal against this Opinion. It turned out that the Appellate Panel disagreed on basically everything except on the final conclusion: the dismissal was affirmed. Judge Bork denied the existence of a right to sue altogether, stating that nor the law of nations, nor treaties provided the plaintiffs with this right. Judge Robb considered the questions to be answered in this case too political to be answered in a court. Matters regarding the international status of terrorist acts and sensitive matters of diplomacy should be left to politicians, in his opinion. 

The plaintiffs, Jane Doe I, Jane Doe II, Helene Petit, Martin Larsson, Leeshai Lemish, and Roland Odar, all practitioners of Falun Gong, were beaten, sexually assaulted and tortured by police forces in the period before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

On 7 February 2002, the plaintiffs brought a claim against Liu Qi, who was the mayor of Beijing at that time. The plaintiffs accused him of failing to supervise and discipline the police officers who offended them. In addition, they claimed that Qi also formulated a policy that authorised such offences and incited police forces to violently repress the Falun Gong religious movement.

Qi did not reply or appear after he was served with the complaint. As a result, the plaintiffs filed a request for default judgment (a judgment issued as a result of defendant’s failure to respond). On 8 December 2004, the District Court entered a default judgment against Qi upholding only the claims of Doe I, Doe II, and Petit.

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.

Following the coup by members of the Revolutionary United Forces in Sierra Leone, the democratically elected government of President Kabbah was replaced by a military junta headed by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) in 1997.

The Accused, Brima, Kamara and Kanu, were leading members of the fighting forces of the AFRC throughout the armed conflict until the hostilities ended with the Lomé Peace Accord in July 1999. Trial Chamber II of the Special Court for Sierra Leone found all three Accused responsible for ordering, committing, planning the crimes perpetrated by AFRC forces against civilians, including murder, rape, enslavement, collective punishment, mutilation, burning of civilian property and use of child soldiers in the hostilities. The Accused were also liable as the superiors in charge of AFRC forces for failing to prevent the rapes committed by their subordinates.