Now that Eugene has given me the electronic keys to this Conspiracy, I could not resist getting involved in the now-legendary discussion of the ACA… There is a serious inconsistency between the government’s arguments for the mandate and for the Medicaid expansion. In a nutshell, these arguments make opposite assumptions about the effect of financial […]
Author Archive | Eugene Kontorovich
Precedent-setting Dutch Civil Universal Juris. Case
By Eugene Kontorovich on March 28, 2012 11:38 am in Alien Tort Statute, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Uncategorized
One of the peculiarities of the Alien Tort Statute is its mix of cosmopolitan conceptions of justice with American exceptionalism. Under the ATS the U.S. has been the only nation in the world allowing for universal jurisdiction (“UJ”) in civil suits. So while enforcing international law has been the justification for these suits, it has […]
Kiobel (III): Universality as a Constitutional Question
By Eugene Kontorovich on March 27, 2012 9:00 am in Alien Tort Statute, Constitutional Law, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Uncategorized
Lets take a break from the ACA to think about the federal government’s power to to deal with matters that have no connection to the U.S., an issue the Court will take up when it hears the expanded arguments in Kiobel, the ATS case. Yesterday I talked about how the ATS extraterritoriality at issue in […]
Kiobel (II): Universality, Not More Extraterritoriality
By Eugene Kontorovich on March 26, 2012 9:32 am in Alien Tort Statute, Constitutional Law, International Human Rights Law, International Law
[Cross-posted on OpinioJuris] The new issue in Kiobel is not mere extraterritoriality, but rather universality. There are constitutional limits on universal jurisdiction (UJ); at most it can only be used for those “Piracies” and “Offenses” that have UJ status in international law. But Congress has not “defined” any offenses in the ATS. It delegated the […]
ObamaCare and the ATS: Can the Feds Regulate the Whole World?
By Eugene Kontorovich on March 26, 2012 8:35 am in Alien Tort Statute, Constitutional Law, Global Governance/World Government, International Human Rights Law, International Law
Today the Supreme Court takes on the scope of the Commerce Clause in the historic healthcare cases. The case raises the question of whether there are any substantive limits to the federal government’s domestic regulatory power. But another case soon to be (re)argued before the Court, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell, manages to raise an […]