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After Pinochet: Foreign Sovereign Immunity in Respect of Serious Human Rights Violations - The Decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the Al-Adsani Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Markus Rau

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For want of an effective and accessible universal system for redress of international human rights abuses, victims of human rights violations increasingly seek reparations in domestic civil courts. In the United States in particular, the federal courts, since the 1980 Filártiga decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, have already decided on a remarkable number of civil suits alleging human rights violations committed abroad, the most recent example of this trend being a class action of members and supporters of opposition political groups in Zimbabwe who invoke the so-called Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) against President and Foreign Minister Robert Mugabe with respect to alleged acts of torture. According to the proponents of such lawsuits, international human rights litigation in domestic civil courts can serve as an important tool in the worldwide effort to enforce international norms concerned with the protection of the individual which may complement criminal prosecutions of the offenders. As stated by Professor Stevens, who has litigated many of the international human rights cases in the U.S. federal courts, \\\“civil lawsuits for human rights violations […] serve a role similar to tort litigation in a domestic forum: to offer victims of violence a legal remedy which they control and which may satisfy needs not met by the criminal law system.\\\”

Type
Research Article
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 3 , Issue 6 , June 2002 , E1
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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