The Kiobel Decision: The End of an Era
I started teaching international law in the country in 1984. I recall reading for the first time Filatiga v. Pena Irala while anxiously preparing for my first class in the sweltering Arizona summer. I was moved. I thought the case exemplified the best of the American spirit, the universal concern with suffering and human dignity, the longstanding rejection of tyranny—in short, the rare Lockean instincts so prevalent in my adoptive land. Here, you have a lone federal judge in Manhattan allowing redress for brutal acts of a faraway tyrant. The was the first time since Nuremberg that we sensed there was some hope for the oppressed, that perpetrators could no longer trust that their twisted logic of “reasons of state” would grant them impunity for their crimes.
