Thursday, September 26th, 4:00 pm, Maurer Law School Faculty Conf. Room:

The Law & Society Center Workshop will host a presentation by Philip Liste (University of Hamburg), who will present his paper, “Transnational Human Rights Litigation and the Production of Normative Space.” Light refreshments will be provided.  A full list of Law & Society Center events for the semester can be found at their webpage: http://law.indiana.edu/centers/lawsociety/workshop.shtml

During September 2013 I stay at the Maurer Law School, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. The research stay is funded in the context of a partnership programme of University of Hamburg and Indiana University. I will be working on transnational human rights litigation and the production of space.

“Reasonable is that the heads of state – when talking to one another – talk about how to deal with the issue, how serious to take the allegations and how to deal with them, to discuss the allegations, to clarify, to verify, or to resolve them. Reasonable is that those persons speak about the actual way of the one or the other side’s intelligence services’ conduct who possess the intensive knowledge of details of those issues.” (Undersecretary Seibert, Speaker of the German Government on NSA surveillance , Berlin, July 8, 2013)

Is this statement still compatible to any notion of democratic governance or a manifestation of a nascent world state expertocracy? Read my contribution to the Verfassungsblog: “Experten unter sich: Warum die Regierung findet, dass die Snowden-Affäre uns nichts angeht” (in German).

Read my contribution to the “Verfassungsblog“

Law is a ‘politics of space.’ The last week’s Supreme Court decision in ‘Kiobel’ significantly cuts the possibilities to sue human rights violators before courts in the United States, particularly when the relevant conduct occurred on the territory of a foreign sovereign. The decision builds upon a highly territorialized notion of law and points to what may be called a ‘nationalization’ of international law—with repercussions for the transnational law of public and private global governance. In the Kiobel case transnational oil corporations (Royal Dutch Petroleum/Shell) were accused of having aided and abetted in massive violations of human rights in Nigeria, including extrajudicial killings, crimes against humanities, and torture. The lawsuit was relying on the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) — a Judiciary Act enacted by the First Congress of the United States in 1789 — which is granting ‘aliens’ access to courts in the US for bringing tort claims basing on international law. (…) [read more at Verfassungsblog]

On Wednesday, Apr 17, the US Supreme Court has issued its decision on Kiobel. This time, Shell will not be held responsible for violations of human rights in Nigeria. And: Transnational legal opportunities have been curtailed. Human rights advocates are disappointed. New ways will have to be found in order to sue private corporations for human rights violations–with and without relying on the Alien Tort Statute. At the same time, those speaking in the name of private business hail the perpetuation of nation-state jurisdictional boundaries. What a “politics of space”!

“There is a politics of space because space is political” (Henri Levebvre)

A nice collection of positions can be found at the Business & Human Rights website.

Read Jan Klabbers’ review on my book “Völkerrecht-Sprechen” in the European Journal of International Law.