Don't Touch that Dial! You Don't Know What You are Doing - Contractions in the Birth of a New World Order

Abstract

Practical Procedural Focus: First world parent corporations create thinly capitalized third world subsidiary corporations and outsource to sub-contractors in order to externalize costs of doing business (pollution, accidents, defective products) onto third world populations. When and how may first world courts attribute liability to main-offices for the extraterritorial torts of their subsidiaries? Substantive Law Exposed: Laws in the EU and Member States which are similar to the U.S. Alien Tort Statute (e.g., Brussels Regulation I) and the U.S. Torture Victims Protection Act (e.g. Convention Against Torture). Synopsis: Universal civil jurisdiction is lawful under international law because States may do all things within their powers which are not prohibited by their treaty obligations or customary law to which they have not persistently objected ab initio. International law (CAT) and EU law (Brussels Regulation) as well as contemporary Romanist law (Actio Popularis, action civile, Adhasionsverfahren) permit civil claims for violations of various jus cogens rules. Describes the rise of private enforcement of individual human rights under international law. International human rights, initially purely hortatory norms, which were applicable - if at all - only to states have since become binding rules of international law which often entail private law claims, whether through direct effect or indirect horizontal (third party) effect (Drittwirkung). Contextualizes human rights rise as a needed reaction to the abuse of human rights as cause and pretext for war under the pre-war system of only mediate enforcement by states (usually through diplomatic protection and self help remedies). Describes currently valid rules of national, E.U., and public international law (C.A.T.) which entail, or can entail, private law enforcement of human rights. Reiterates the black letter U.S. common law of procedural defenses to extraterritorial jurisdiction and the rules U.S. common law rules of piercing the corporate veil.