Court: Foreigners can sue over abuse

The Supreme Court rules against a Mexican doctor who sued the U.S. government, but leaves the door open for other cases.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that foreigners sometimes can use American courts to sue over alleged international human rights abuses, a decision that could allow courts to hear claims about things like inmate mistreatment in Iraq and forced slavery in impoverished countries.

The justices said a 1789 law permits lawsuits by foreign nationals in U.S. courts under certain circumstances.

The law was cited earlier this month in a California lawsuit accusing two U.S. defense contractors of conspiring to torture, rape and kill Iraqi prisoners.

The decision was the Supreme Court's first on the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act, a law that has been used by Holocaust survivors and relatives of people killed or tortured under despotic regimes from South America to the Philippines.

The White House and business groups had wanted the court to severely restrict the use of U.S. courts to enforce international law.

The court ruled 9-0 against a Mexican doctor who filed a lawsuit using the law, but was divided 6-3 over the broader issue of where to draw the line for other lawsuits.

Justice David Souter, writing for the court, said that when the 1789 law was approved, Congress envisioned only a "modest" set of lawsuits over such things as offenses against ambassadors and piracy. Courts should consider cases involving claims that could have been brought then, Souter said, and may also allow lawsuits involving present-day violations.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas - the court's three strongest conservatives - did not join that part of Souter's opinion. "This court seems incapable of admitting that some matters - any matters - are none of its business," Scalia wrote for the three.

Douglass Cassel, an international law professor at Northwestern University, said the standard would include torture and massacres. He also said terror suspects held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay could sue.

The Supreme Court said the law does not create a right to bring lawsuits like the one pursued by Dr. Humberto Alvarez-Machain, a gynecologist who was kidnapped in Mexico in 1990 and brought to America to face trial in the death of federal drug agent. The doctor sued the U.S. government after he was acquitted.

Souter said, "A single illegal detention of less than a day, followed by the transfer of custody to lawful authorities and a prompt arraignment violates no norm of customary international law."

ON THE WEB: http://wid.ap.org/documents/scotus/040629sosa.pdf

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