The Sixteenth Annual Rebellious Lawyering Conference. The RebLaw Conference is an annual, student-run conference that brings together practitioners, law students, and community advocates from around the country to discuss innovative, progressive approaches to law and social change.

Domestic Remedies for Human Rights Violations Abroad: The Future of ATS Litigation

This panel brings together the leading Alien Torts Statute litigators, providing us with an opportunity to reflect on the past, present and future of ATS litigation at a time where the jurisprudence seems to be in flux. The doctrine has global implications. For human rights advocates, ATS is the main remedy for international human rights violations available in domestic courts. Expansions of ATS liability towards an aiding and abetting has made ATS a key tool for corporate responsibility advocates. Recently, Royal Dutch/ Shell settled $15.5 million in compensation to Nigerian Activists in a suit charging company with complicity in the torture, killing, and other abuses in Nigeria. The Second Circuit is hearing cases about a slew of American, European and Canadian corporations dealing with apartheid South Africa, and eleven Indonesian citizens are suing ExxonMobil in the D.C Circuit for kidnapping, torture, and murder and other abuses, allegedly committed by security guards ExxonMobil hired from the ranks of the Indonesian military.

Come and have a conversation with the panelists - all practitioners who have extensive experience in ATS litigation - as they evaluate their strategies and discuss the emerging issues in ATS, particularly in the context of the new administration. Panelists will have a chance to discuss the impact of these suits domestically, on the communities where the violations took place, on the way corporations do business abroad, and on other human rights strategies pursued in and out of courts.

Panelists:

Agnieszka Fryszman, Cohen Milstein, Katherine Gallagher, Center for Constitutional Rights, Steven Watt, American Civil Liberties Union

Moderator:

Hope Metcalf, Yale Law School

　

Yale Law School: RebLaw 2010, Friday, February 19, 2010, 4:00-5:30pm

 

 

Friday, February 19–Sunday, February 21, 2010
 

Standard registration is $30. Registration is free for members of the Yale, UConn, New Haven, and Quinnipiac communities.

　

　

For more information on the Sixteenth Annual Rebellious Lawyering Conference, go to: http://islandia.law.yale.edu/reblaw/index.htm.