Justia International Law Opinion Summaries

This petition involves Bermuda's efforts to secure rights from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to operate a satellite at the 96.2 degree W.L. orbital location. Bermuda partnered with EchoStar to deploy and maintain its satellite at this orbital location. Meanwhile, the Netherlands also sought rights from the ITU to operate a satellite at a nearby orbital location. Petitioner, Spectrum Five, a developer and operator of satellites working in partnership with the Netherlands, filed an objection to the FCC to EchoStar's request to move its satellite from 76.8 degrees W.L. to 96.2 degrees W.L. The FCC granted EchoStar's request and determined that Bermuda secured rights to the 96.2 degree W.L. orbital location. Spectrum Five petitioned for review of the Commission's order, claiming principally that the Commission acted arbitrarily and capriciously. The court dismissed the petition for lack of Article III standing because Spectrum Five failed to demonstrate a significant likelihood that a decision of this court would redress its alleged injury. View "Spectrum Five LLC v. FCC" on Justia Law

After the Company prevailed in a 2000 arbitration in France against the Congo, the Company sought to collect the arbitral award with little success. The Company obtained a judgment in 2009 from a court in England enforcing the arbitral award. The Company then sued in the United States to enforce the foreign judgment under state law. The court held that the limitations period in the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U.S.C. 207, does not preempt the longer limitations period in the D.C. Recognition Act, D.C. 15-639, and the court reversed the dismissal of the complaint. The court remanded the case for the district court to determine whether the English Judgment is enforceable under the D.C. Recognition Act. View "Commissions Import Export S.A. v. Republic of the Congo, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, foreign nationals, alleged that they were tortured and otherwise mistreated by American civilian and military personnel while detained at Abu Ghraib. CACI, a corporation domiciled in the United States, contracted with the United States to provide private interrogators to interrogate detainees at Abu Ghraib. Plaintiffs alleged that CACI employees instigated, directed, participated in, encouraged, and aided and abetted conduct towards detainees that clearly violated federal and international law. The court concluded that the Supreme Court's decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. does not foreclose plaintiffs' claims under the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. 1350, and that the district court erred in reaching a contrary conclusion. In light of Kiobel, the court held that plaintiffs' claims "touch and concern" the territory of the United States with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritorial application of the Alien Tort Statute. Because the court was unable to determine whether the claims presented nonjusticiable political questions, the court did not reach the additional issue of the district court's dismissal of plaintiffs' common law claims. The court vacated the district court's judgment with respect to all plaintiffs' claims and remanded. View "Al Shimari v. CACI Premier Technology, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff appealed the dismissal of her action claiming that she was the rightful owner to two works of art my Lucas Cranach, "Adam" and "Eve." Plaintiff claimed that she is the rightful owner of the works, which the Nazis forcibly purchased from her deceased husband's family during World War II. The court reversed and concluded that plaintiff's claims for replevin and conversion, as well as the remedies she seeks, do not conflict with federal policy because the Cranachs were never subject to postwar internal restitution proceedings in the Netherlands. Allowing plaintiff's claim to go forward would not disturb the finality of any internal restitution proceedings - appropriate or not - in the Netherlands. Nor is this dispute of the sort found to involve the international problems evident in American Insurance Association v. Garamendi. The court was mindful that the litigation of this case may implicate the act of state doctrine, though the court could not decide that issue definitively on the record. The court remanded for further development of this issue. View "Von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum" on Justia Law

OOIDA, a trade association, challenged the decision of the FMCSA to exempt commercial vehicle operators licensed in Canada or Mexico from certain statutory medical certification requirements applicable to drivers licensed in the United States. The FMCSA claimed that applying these requirements would violate existing executive agreements between those two countries and the United States. The court agreed with the government that absent some clear and overt indication from Congress, the court would not construe a statue to abrogate existing international agreements even when the statute's text was not itself ambiguous. The court presumed that the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (the "Act"), Pub. L. No. 109-59, 119 Stat. 1144, was not intended to abrogate the executive agreements with Mexico and Canada and held that the FMCSA's implementing rules appropriately understood the medical certificate requirement to apply only to drivers based in the United States. The court rejected OOIDA's secondary argument and denied the petition for review.View "Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Ass'n, Inc. v. U.S. Dept. of Transp., et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff sued defendant and the Church in Japan, alleging that they had tortiously induced her to transfer nearly all of her assets to the Church. After the Japanese courts awarded plaintiff a tort judgment, the Church contended that the judgment imposed liability for its religious teachings in violation of its constitutional right to free exercise of religion. The court affirmed the district court's judgment in favor of plaintiff, holding that the district court's recognition and enforcement of the judgment did not constitute "state action" triggering direct constitutional scrutiny. The court also held that neither the Japanese judgment nor the cause of action on which it was based rose to the level of repugnance to the public policy of California or of the United States that would justify a refusal to enforce the judgment under California's Uniform Foreign-Country Money Judgments Recognition Act, Cal. Civ. Proc. Code 1713-1724. View "Ohno v. Yasuma" on Justia Law

Appellees, the Rubins, requested that the district court issue a Writ of Garnishment against the assets of Hamas and HLF after obtaining a judgment against Hamas for damages resulting from a terrorist attack in an outdoor pedestrian mall in Jerusalem. The district court executed the writ but the Rubins could not execute against HLF's assets because those assets had been restrained under 21 U.S.C. 853 to preserve their availability for criminal forfeiture proceedings. The district court subsequently denied the government's motion to dismiss the Rubins' third-party petition under section 853(n) to assert their interests in the restrained assets and vacated the preliminary order of forfeiture. The district court held that the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 (TRIA), Pub. L. No. 107-297, title II, 201, 116 Stat. 2337, allowed the Rubins to execute against HLF's assets not withstanding the government's forfeiture proceedings. The court reversed, holding that section 853(n) did not provide the Rubins with a basis to prevail in the ancillary proceeding; TRIA did not provide the Rubins a basis to assert their interest in the forfeited property; TRIA did not trump the criminal forfeiture statute; and the in custodia legis doctrine did not preclude the district court's in personam jurisdiction over HLF.View "United States v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief, et al." on Justia Law

Respondent appealed the district court's grant of her husband's petition for repatriation of their son from New York to Singapore. At issue was whether respondent's affirmative defenses to repatriation should have prevailed in the district court. The court concluded that, under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, T.I.A.S. No. 11, 670, 1343 U.N.T.S. 89, and its implementing statute, the International Child Abduction Remedies Act, 42 U.S.C. 11601-10, the evidence did not establish that the child faced a grave risk of physical or psychological harm upon repatriation (Article 13 defense). The court also held that it was not inclined to conclude that the presence of a Syariah Court in a foreign state whose accession to the Convention had been recognized by the United States was per se violative of all notions of due process; the court was also mindful of the need for comity; and, therefore, the district court did not err in rejecting respondent's Article 20 defense. Respondent's remaining arguments were without merit and the court affirmed the judgment.View "Souratgar v. Fair" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs appealed from the district court's order denying their Rule 60(b) motion to reopen the district court's judgment dismissing sovereign defendants under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), 28 U.S.C. 1330 1602 et seq. Plaintiffs moved for relief from judgment in order to appeal the district court's alternative ground for finding sovereign immunity - a ground that the court declined to reach in its prior opinion. The district court denied the motion under the impression that the court would be able to consider that unreviewed issue on appeal from the denial. But the court could not. Accordingly, the court concluded that this was an error of law and that "extraordinary circumstances" existed warranting relief under Rule 60(b). The court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "In Re: Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his convictions for conspiring to distribute 1,000 kilograms or more of marijuana knowing that it would be unlawfully imported into the United States and conspiring to import 1,000 kilograms or more of marijuana. The court held that ongoing, formalized collaboration between an American law enforcement agency and its foreign counterpart did not, by itself, give rise to an "agency" relationship between the two entities sufficient to implicate the Fourth Amendment abroad; the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule did not impose a duty upon American law enforcement officials to review the legality, under foreign law, of applications for surveillance authority considered by foreign courts; defendant was not entitled to discovery of the wiretap application materials, submitted by Jamaican law enforcement to courts in that nation, underlying the electronic surveillance abroad; the district court correctly denied defendant's motion to suppress the fruits of the foreign wiretaps and his motion to compel the documentation underlying the foreign wiretap orders; defendant's amended judgment of conviction was supported by sufficient evidence and the district court properly admitted expert testimony at defendant's trial regarding the values and quantities of marijuana generally used by drug traffickers in the course of distribution. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's judgment.View "United States v. Lee" on Justia Law