The International Law Commission of the United Nations held its 40th session from May 9 to July 29, 1988, under the Chairmanship of Ambassador Leonardo Díaz-González. The Commission adopted 6 articles of the Draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind and 14 articles on the law of non-navigational uses of international watercourses. Substantial time was devoted to both international liability for injurious consequences arising out of acts not prohibited by international law and the status of the diplomatic courier and the diplomatic bag not accompanied by diplomatic courier. Reports on jurisdictional immunities of states and their property and state responsibility were introduced by the special rapporteurs for those topics but were not discussed by the Commission owing to lack of time. The remaining substantive item on the Commission’s agenda, relations between states and international organizations (second part of the topic), was not considered at this session. Finally, the Commission once again devoted substantial time to reviewing its procedures and methods of work.

Foreign affairs, and its close relation national security, has been a graveyard for civil liberties for much of our recent history. The questions to be answered are not whether this is true—it demonstrably is—but why we have come to this pass and how we might begin to relieve the Bill of Rights of at least some of the burden thus imposed on it.

In an action brought in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, plaintiff, the National Petrochemical Co. of Iran (NPC), sought damages against Monnris Enterprises of Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, Rotexchemie Brunst & Co. of Hamburg (Rotex), and Rotex’s Geneva affiliate, Formula S.A., for breach of an agreement to sell chemicals to NPC. Asserting that NPC is a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Co., which is in turn owned wholly by the Government of Iran, defendants moved to dismiss on the ground that the United States does not recognize the Khomeini Government of Iran and, hence, that neither Iran nor its instrumentality NPC has standing to sue in U.S. courts. The district court granted the motion, NPC appealed and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held: (1) that a foreign state may have standing to sue in U.S. courts even if the United States does not recognize its government or have diplomatic relations with it; (2) that an unrecognized government will have standing to sue if the U.S. executive branch has evinced a willingness to permit the plaintiff to litigate its claims in U.S. courts; and (3) that the level of intercourse between the United States and Iran, and a Statement of Interest filed in this case by the United States as amicuš curiae, show that the executive branch is willing to permit NPC to litigate its claims in U.S. courts.

The plaintiff, a Chinese citizen who entered the United States under a nonimmigrant student visa, appealed from a decision by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to deny his request for asylum. Plaintiff claimed that he had a “well-founded fear of persecution,” the prerequisite to attaining “refugee” status under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the Act) and implementing regulations promulgated by the INS. He also claimed that the immigration judge had erred by refusing to obtain a second advisory opinion from the Department of State’s Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (BHRHA). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (per Nelson, J.) held that (1) the immigration judge had abused his discretion by not requesting a second advisory opinion from the BHRHA; and (2) the judge had incorrectly applied an objective standard in evaluating plaintiffs asylum request, when credible evidence demonstrated that plaintiff had a subjectively valid fear of persecution if deported to China. The court remanded the case to the immigration judge with instructions to obtain a second opinion from the BHRHA and to consider plaintiffs asylum request on the assumption that he qualified as a “refugee.”

A decade ago Professor Henkin remarked that “there has been almost no examination at all of the relation between international human rights and the American Constitutional version of human rights.” Since then he has done much to fill this gap in the literature, as has, more recently, a distinguished barrister/scholar from Great Britain. Nevertheless, it may be useful, in this symposium celebrating the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, to survey both the contribution it has made to the development of international human rights law and the extent to which the latter has influenced the evolution of U.S. constitutional law.

A federal grand jury investigating possible criminal violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 1961 — 1968 (1982)) (RICO) by former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife issued subpoenas requiring the Márcoses to provide handwriting and voice exemplars and fingerprints, and to sign forms authorizing the release of confidential banking records. The Márcoses refused to comply with the subpoenas and were held in civil contempt. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (per Cardamone, J.) affirmed the contempt order and held that (1) the current Government of the Philippines had effectively waived whatever head-of-state immunity the Márcoses might have otherwise enjoyed; (2) United States law governed the Márcoses’ privilege against self-incrimination, rather than the arguably broader provisions of Philippine law; and (3) the trial court had the authority to enforce the grand jury’s order requiring the Márcoses to waive foreign financial secrecy laws.

In these three breach-of-contract actions, United States federal courts considered the liability of home offices of U.S. banks for obligations of their foreign branches in the event of foreign governmental expropriation or exchange control measures. In each decision the court of appeals did not apply the act of state doctrine and gave no effect to the foreign governmental action, largely on the ground either that the situs of the debt was not within the exclusive jurisdiction of the foreign state carrying out the governmental measure at issue or that the law governing the obligation was not that of the foreign state.

Plaintiff, a United States citizen employed in Saudi Arabia, brought an employment discrimination suit against defendant, a U.S. corporation, alleging violations of title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. §2000e (1982)). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed (per Davis, J.) the district court’s dismissal of the suit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and held (two to one): (1) that neither the language nor the legislative history of title VII evinces a clearly expressed congressional intent to apply title VII outside U.S. borders; (2) that in the absence of clearly expressed congressional intent to the contrary, the presumption against extraterritoriality controls; and (3) that no “negative inference” extending the reach of title VII should be drawn from its “alien exemption” provision. Judge King’s dissent discussed international law principles not addressed by the majority. The Fifth Circuit subsequently granted on December 23, 1988, the petition for rehearing en banc submitted by plaintiff and various amici, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Plaintiff Sheets sought sanctions under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure against defendants, the Yamaha Motor Co. Ltd. (Yamaha Japan) and its wholly owned American subsidiary, Yamaha Motors Corp., U.S.A. (Yamaha U.S.A.), for misconduct in discovery and frivolous insistence that service on the foreign parent be made in conformity with the Convention on Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters, better known as the Hague Service Convention. Plaintiff had effected service under the Louisiana long-arm statute, which permitted service on the subsidiary as involuntary agent for the defendant parent company in an action arising out of business transacted or tortious conduct occurring in the state. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana initially awarded $25,000 in sanctions to the plaintiff. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit remanded the decision for further findings by the district court on the grounds for imposing sanctions. The district court held (per Schwartz, J.): in light of the decision of the Supreme Court in Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesellschaft v. Schlunk, involving a state service statute virtually identical to that of Louisiana, the defendants’ failure to waive service under the Hague Convention needlessly increased the cost of litigation and was properly the subject of Rule 11 sanctions.

In two cases decided in the afterglow of the centennial of the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court said nearly everything the modern lawyer needs to know about the source and extent of Congress’s power to regulate immigration. The cases sustained the constitutionality of the first significant congressional restrictions on immigration—the shameful Chinese exclusion laws. Constitutional analysis of the immigration power has yet to shed the original sins of the Court’s ratification of Congress’s ignominious legislation.

Plaintiff bank, incorporated under the laws of the state of Hawaii, brought an action in the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii against defendants, residents and citizens of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). One of the defendants, Imata Kabua, moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction on the ground that diversity of citizenship did not exist because defendants were not citizens of a “foreign state” within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. §1332(a)(2). The district court (per King, J.) denied the motion and held that diversity jurisdiction exists because the RMI, although technically retaining membership in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI), has de facto become a foreign state.

Appellants sued President Reagan and other executive branch officials in the U.S. district court to enjoin U.S. military aid to the Nicaraguán resistance forces (contras), alleging that the aid violated the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, the United Nations Charter and customary international law. The district court, in an unpublished opinion, dismissed the complaint as presenting nonjusticiable political questions. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (per Mikva, J.), affirming the dismissal on different grounds, held that (1) the trial court’s blanket invocation of the political question doctrine was inappropriate; (2) the statute funding the contras prevails over any earlier obligations under treaties or customary international law; (3) individuals have no private right of action to enforce decisions of the International Court of Justice; (4) adherence to an ICJ judgment rendered under a disputed assertion of compulsory jurisdiction is not required as a matter of jus cogens; and (5) plaintiffs had failed to show that U.S. government support of the contras caused their injuries or was so arbitrary and unreasonable as to violate their Fifth Amendment rights.

In recent years federal courts have faced a growing number of challenges to United States actions abroad. Citizens living abroad have brought claims alleging that their property was unlawfully taken or that their lives were threatened by United States governmental action. Aliens living in foreign countries have also invoked constitutional protections—Nicaraguans have alleged torture and assassination attributed to CIA activities in Central America; a Mexican alleged that his home in Mexico was searched by Drug Enforcement Agency officials without a search warrant; a Lebanese citizen claimed that he was unlawfully arrested and interrogated in international waters by U.S. agents; a Polish refugee tried for hijacking in a special United States court convened in Berlin sought the right to a jury trial. These cases test the extent to which the Constitution limits U.S. conduct abroad.

In recent years, the Congress of the United States has enacted a series of laws criminalizing certain activities committed outside the territory of the United States, even by persons who are not nationals of the United States. The international lawyer would doubtless characterize those laws as assertions by the United States of authority to exercise jurisdiction to prescribe laws on the basis of the principle of “passive personality”—to punish actions directed at the state’s nationals—or perhaps as new applications of principles of universal jurisdiction; one might then examine those laws in the light of recent developments in the international law governing state jurisdiction to prescribe.

Appellant applied to an English court for the return of his son Thomas under the Child Abduction and Custody Act, 1985 (ch. 60), which gave statutory force to provisions of the Hague Convention on Child Abduction. The lower court refused the application on the ground that removal of Thomas to Australia without his mother would create a grave risk of serious psychological harm to the child. On appeal, the Court of Appeal unanimously held that the mother’s removal of Thomas from Australia was wrongful under the Hague Convention as a violation of the father’s rights of custody; that the exception in the Convention permitting courts to decline to order return of children when return would create a grave risk of harm to the child does not apply when this risk would occur only if the mother refused to accompany the child back to Australia; and that an order of the court for return of the child to Australia would issue on condition that the father fulfill his offer to give undertakings to the English court and the Australian Family Court regarding provision for Thomas and his mother in Australia.

On remand after reversal of a prior denial of a motion to reopen deportation proceedings and a final order of deportation, petitioner, a native and citizen of El Salvador, presented a renewed application for political asylum as a refugee under section 208(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. §1158(a) (1982)) (INA or Act). The Immigration Judge found that petitioner had failed to present a prima facie case for eligibility under section 208(a) of the INA, a prerequisite to reopening his deportation proceedings for a hearing on the merits of the asylum claim, and therefore denied petitioner’s motion to reopen and issued another final order of deportation. Petitioner appealed, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed. On petition for review of the BIA’s decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (per Winter, J.) reversed the order denying the motion to reopen, remanded the case for determination on the merits of whether petitioner is eligible to be granted political asylum, and held: that petitioner had made a prima facie case that he merits refugee status and thus consideration for political asylum on the basis of his sincere refusal to participate in actions of the Salvadoran Armed Forces condemned by the international community and the likelihood that he would be punished for his refusal to serve with those forces. Judge Murnaghan filed a concurring opinion. On January 5, 1989, the Fourth Circuit granted the Justice Department’s request for a rehearing en banc based on the Department’s position that the decision presented an issue of “exceptional importance” and could have “an enormous potential impact” on U.S. asylum law.