Interest Group Litigation to Enforce Human Rights

Abstract

Human rights law groups began a major policy-making initiative in the 1980s to persuade United States courts that new international norms have binding legal effect. Since the 1950s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and environmental and consumer public law interest groups have successfully used litigation to change government policy on racial segregation, prisoner's rights, conservation, and product liability.I Human rights advocates had no such success until the 1980s, when several federal courts made unprecedented decisions based on international law. In Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, the appeals court ruled that the federal district court had jurisdiction to hear an alien's tort claim against a Paraguayan national for violating the