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Transnational Legal Theory Volume 5, 2014 - Issue 1
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Original Articles

Transnational Human Rights Litigation and Territorialised Knowledge: Kiobel and the ‘Politics of Space’

Philip ListeRechtskulturen Postdoc Fellow 2013/14, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin/Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin; Senior Researcher and Lecturer, University of Hamburg, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences (Political Science, esp Global Governance). Email: [email protected]. For insightful critique on earlier versions of this paper, I am grateful to Tanja Aalberts, Fred Aman, Hauke Brunkhorst, Hannah Buxbaum, Daniel Chernilo, Lauren Coyle, Andreas Fischer-Lescano, Katja Freistein, Alexis Galan, Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Morag Goodwin, Friederike Kuntz, Hans Lindahl, Nick Onuf, Sven Opitz, Nik Rajkovic, Umut Turem, Wouter Werner, Antje Wiener, Peer Zumbansen and the participants at the Global Governance Colloquium, 21 August 2013 at the University of Hamburg. All websites accessed 2 April 2014.
Pages 1-19 | Published online: 07 May 2015

  • Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, No 10–1491, slip op (US Supreme Court, 17 April 2013) 14.
  • Richard T Ford, ‘Law's Territory (A History of Jurisdiction)' (1999) 97 Michigan Law Review 843, 851.
  • Kiobel (n 1).
  • Ibid, 14.
  • Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co, 621 F 3d 111 (2010). For the case history, see United States District Court Southern District of New York, Kiobel et al v Royal Dutch Petroleum et al, 02 Civ 7618 (KMW) (HBP), Order, 29 September 2006; Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co, 621 F 3d 111 (US Court of Appeal, 2d Cir 2010); Oral argument before the Supreme Court of the United States, Kiobel et al v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co et al, Washington, DC, 28 February 2012, www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/10–1491.pdf; Oral argument (Reargument) before the Supreme Court of the United States, Kiobel et al v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co et al, Washington, DC, 1 October 2012, www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/10–1491rearg.pdf.
  • For criticism, see Saskia Sassen, ‘Neither Global Nor National: Novel Assemblages of Territory, Authority and Rights' (2008) 1(1–2) Ethics & Global Politics 61.
  • Henri Lefebvre, ‘The State in the Modern World (1975)' in Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden (eds), State, Space, World (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) 117.
  • Henri Lefebvre, ‘The Worldwide Experience (1978)' in Brenner and Elden (n 7) 278.
  • Ibid.
  • David Harvey, ‘The Sociological and Geographical Imaginations' (2005)18 (3–4) International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 211, 213.
  • See Jef Huysmans, ‘What's in an Act? On Security Speech Acts and Little Security Nothings' (2011) 42 (4–5) Security Dialogue 371.
  • Filàrtiga v Pena-Irala, 630 F 2d 876 (US Court of Appeal, 2d Cir, 30 June 1980).
  • 28 USC § 1350. Corresponding ATS lawsuits are: Filàrtiga (ibid); Sosa v Alvarez-Machain, 542 US 692 (2004); Roe v Bridgestone, 492 F Supp 2d 988, 1008 (SD Ind 2007); Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co, 621 F 3d 111 (2010); Flomo v Firestone Natural Rubber Co, 744 F Supp 2d 810 (SD Ind 2010); and Flomo v Firestone Natural Rubber Co, 642 F 3d 1013 (2011). This script for the transnational legal process, to be clear, stems from the late 18th century and even precedes Immanuel Kant's seminal remark on the idea of a Weltbürgerrecht (cosmopolitan condition). See Immanuel Kant, ‘Schrift zum Ewigen Frieden' in Wilhelm Weischedel (ed), Werkausgabe (Suhrkamp, 1964 [1795]) 216–17.
  • See Filàrtiga (n 12) 881 ('Thus it is clear that courts must interpret international law not as it was in 1789, but as it has evolved and exists among the nations of the world today').
  • For the prototypical canon, see Hans J Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (Alfred A Knopf, 1978); Robert O Keohane, ‘Institutional Theory and the Realist Challenge after the Cold War' in David A Baldwin (ed), Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (Columbia University Press, 1993); Andrew Moravcsik, ‘Liberal International Relations Theory: A Scientific Assessment' in Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman (eds), Progress in International Relations Theory (MIT Press, 2003) 159; Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (McGraw-Hill, 1979). For early criticisms, see John G Ruggie, ‘Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations' (1993) 47(1) International Organization 139; RBJ Walker, Inside/Outside International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
  • John Agnew, ‘The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumption of International Relations Theory' (1994) 1(1) Review of International Political Economy 53; John Agnew, ‘Know-Where: Geographies of Knowledge of World Politics' (2007) 1(2) International Political Sociology 138;Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden, ‘Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory' (2009) 3(4) International Political Sociology 353; Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden, ‘Introduction—State, Space, World: Lefebvre and the Survival of Capitalism' in Brenner and Elden (n 7); Sassen (n 6); Nisha Shah, ‘The Territorial Trap of the Territorial Trap: Global Transformation and the Problem of the State's Two Territories' (2012) 6(1) International Political Sociology 57; Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta, ‘Introduction: Rethinking Theories of the State in an Age of Globalization' in Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta (eds), The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (Blackwell, 2006) 1.
  • Michel Foucault, ‘Questions on Geography' in Michel Foucault (ed), Power/Knowledge, C Gordon (trans) (Pantheon, 1980); Michel Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces' (1986) 16(1) Diacritics 22; David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); Harvey (n 10); Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Blackwell, 1991); Edward W Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (Verso, 1989).
  • Harvey, Social Justice and the City (n 17).
  • Ulrich Beck, Macht und Gegenmacht im Globalen Zeitalter: Neue Weltpolitische Ökonomie (Suhrkamp, 2002) ch II.
  • Gunther Teubner, ‘Fragmented Foundations: Social Constitutionalism beyond the Nation State' in Petra Dobner and Martin Loughlin (eds), The Twilight of Constitutionalism? (Oxford University Press, 2010) 328.
  • Agnew, ‘Know-Where' (n 16).
  • Ibid, 138.
  • Shah (n 16) 60.
  • Lefebvre (n 17).
  • See Ruggie (n 15).
  • Annelise Riles, ‘Anthropology, Human Rights, and Legal Knowledge: Culture in the Iron Cage' (2006) 108(1) American Anthropologist 52.
  • Ruggie (n 15); Boaventura de Sousa Santos, ‘Law: A Map of Misreading. Toward a Postmodern Conception of Law' (1987) 14(3) Journal of Law and Society 279.
  • Brenner and Elden, ‘Introduction' (n 16) 33; Henri Lefebvre, ‘Reflections on the Politics of Space (1970)' in Brenner and Elden (n 7) 180.
  • See Henri Lefebvre, 'The Worldwide and the Planetary (1973)' in Brenner and Elden (n 7) 204.
  • Henri Lefebvre, ‘Space and the State (1978)' in Brenner and Elden (n 7) 226.
  • Lefebvre (n 8) 278.
  • See Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)' in Sharma and Gupta (n 16).
  • Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2002) 13.
  • Karen Knop, ‘Statehood: Territory, People, Government' in James Crawford and Martti Koskenniemi (eds), The Cambridge Companion to International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
  • Ford (n 2).
  • Ibid, 851.
  • Ibid, 855.
  • Ibid, 856.
  • Ibid.
  • For a useful concept of signification, see Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (Verso, 2001). For a concept of the ‘everyday’, see Michel deCerteau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Steven F Rendall (trans) (University of California Press, 1988).
  • See Ford (n 2) 867.
  • Note that I use the term ‘universal jurisdiction’ in a rather wide sense and not limited to the particular meaning in criminal law. For the latter, see William J Aceves, ‘Liberalism and International Legal Scholar ship: The Pinochet Case and the Move towards a Universal System of Transnational Law Litigation' (2000) 41(1) Harvard International Law Journal 129; Wolfgang Kaleck, ‘From Pinochet to Rumsfeld: Universal Jurisdiction in Europe 1998–2008' (2009) 30 Michigan Journal of International Law 927.
  • Ford (n 2) 930.
  • Phillip Jessup, Transnational Law (Yale University Press, 1956) 2.
  • Ibid, 3.
  • Harold Hongju Koh, ‘Transnational Legal Process' (1996) 75 Nebraska Law Review 181, 183–4.
  • Ibid, 203–4.
  • Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton University Press, 2004).
  • Anne-Marie Slaughter, ‘International Law in a World of Liberal States' (1995) 6 European Journal of International Law 503, 505.
  • Benedict Kingsbury, Nico Krisch and Richard B Steward, ‘The Emergence of Global Administrative Law' (2005) Law and Contemporary Problems 15, 26 (emphasis added).
  • Nico Krisch, ‘Global Administrative Law and the Constitutional Ambition', LSE Legal Studies Working Paper No 10/2009, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1344788. For the debate on global constitutionalism, see Jan Klabbers, ‘Setting the Scene' in Jan Klabbers, Anne Peters and Geir Ulfstein (eds), The Constitutionalization of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2009); Antje Wiener, Anthony F Lang, Jr, James Tully, Miguel P Maduro and Mattias Kumm, ‘Why a New Journal on Global Constitutionalism? Editorial' (2012) 1 Global Constitutionalism 1.
  • Paul Schiff Berman, ‘The New Legal Pluralism' (2009) 5 Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences 225.
  • Peer Zumbansen, ‘Transnational Legal Pluralism' (2010) 10(2) Transnational Legal Theory 141.
  • T Alexander Aleinikoff, ‘Transnational Spaces: Norms and Legitimacy' (2008) 33 Yale Journal of International Law 479.
  • Paul Schiff Berman, ‘From International Law to Law and Globalization' (2005) 43 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 485, 514. See also Ford (n 2).
  • Benedict R Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 1999); see Berman (n 55) 55–516.
  • Berman (n 55) 518.
  • Harvey (n 10).
  • Peer Zumbansen, ‘Comparative, Global and Transnational Constitutionalism: The Emergence of a Trans national Legal-Pluralist Order' (2012) 1(1) Global Constitutionalism 16, 22; see also Zumbansen (n 53); Peer Zumbansen, ‘Transnational Law, Evolving', Osgoode Hall Law School Comparative Research in Law and Political Economy Research Paper No 27/2011.
  • Zumbansen, ‘Comparative, Global and Transnational Constitutionalism' (n 59) 22.
  • Ibid.
  • Michel Foucault, ‘The Subject and Power' (1982) 8(4) Critical Inquiry 777, 781.
  • Lefebvre (n 30) 226.
  • See Annelise Riles, Collateral Knowledge: Legal Reasoning in the Global Financial Markets (University of Chicago Press, 2011) 228–30.
  • For this inter-linkage, see Ulrich K Preuss, ‘Disconnecting Constitutions from Statehood: Is Constitution alism a Viable Concept?' in Petra Dobner and Martin Loughlin (eds), The Twilight of Constitutionalism? (Oxford University Press, 2010).
  • See A Claire Cutler, Virginia Haufer and Tony Porter (eds), Private Authority and International Affairs (State University of New York Press, 1999); Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas J Biersteker (eds), The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
  • For a similar argument with regard to global financial markets, see Riles (n 64).
  • Agnew, ‘The Territorial Trap' (n 16).
  • A similar argument against the dichotomist view is made strongly by Sassen (n 6).
  • Brad Weikel, Jen Nessel and Lisa Cohen, ‘Kiobel v Shell: Supreme Court Limits Courts' Ability to Hear Claims of Human Rights Abuses Committed Abroad', www.earthrights.org/media/kiobel-v-shell-supreme-court-limits-courts-ability-hear-claims-human-rights-abuses-committed; Katie Redford, ‘Commentary: Door Still Open for Human Rights Claims after Kiobel', www.scotusblog.com/2013/04/commentary-door-still-open-for-human-rights-claims-after-kiobel.
  • Walter Olson, ‘SCOTUS Gets it Right in Kiobel', www.cato.org/blog/scotus-gets-it-right-kiobel; ‘Business Hails Supreme Court Ruling on Alien Tort Statute’, www.uscib.org/index.asp?documentID=4486.
  • See only Ingrid B Wuerth, ‘The Supreme Court and the Alien Tort Statute: Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co' (2013) 107 American Journal of International Law 2013; Christopher A Whytock, Donald Earl Chil-dress III and Michael D Ramsey, ‘After Kiobel—International Human Rights Litigation in State Courts and under State Law' (2013) 3 (1) UC Irvine Law Review 1.
  • Agnew, ‘Know-Where' (n 16) 141.
  • Sassen (n 6) 74.
  • Huysmans (n 11) 377.
  • More recently, this focus has obviously been revisited in International Relations; see Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot, ‘International Practices' (2011) 3 International Theory 1. It must be noted, however, that in International Relations the concept of the ‘everyday’ is not as ‘new’ as it seems. see Cynthia Enloe, ‘The Mundane Matters' (2011) 5(4) International Political Sociology; de Certeau (n 40).
  • C Enloe, Bananas, Beaches & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (University of California Press, 2000) ch 9.
  • Ibid, 4.
  • See Riles (n 64) 45.
  • Order in Pending Case, Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, 10–1491, Order List: 565 US, 5 March 2012.
  • Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co, 621 F 3d 111 (2010).
  • Kiobel (n 1) 1.
  • Ibid, 4.
  • Ibid, 6–7, 13.
  • Ibid, 7.
  • Ibid, 4.
  • Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, No 10–1491, slip op (US Supreme Court, 17 April 2013) (Breyer concur ring) 3.
  • Sosa (n 13) 732.
  • Kiobel (n 87) 4.
  • Harold Hongju Koh, ‘Bringing International Law Home' (1998) 35 Houston Law Review 623.
  • Sosa (n 13) 732.
  • In fact, this hypothetical parallel finds its expression in Kiobel as ‘Pirates Inc’. In the first of two oral argument sessions when the focus of the case seemed to be on corporate liability, Justice Breyer confronted Kathleen M Sullivan—who was pleading in front of the court for the respondent side—like this: ‘Do you think in the 18th century if they brought Pirates, Incorporated, and we get all their gold, and Blackbeard gets up and he says, oh, it isn't me; it's the corporation—do you think that they would have then said: Oh, I see, it's a corporation. Good-bye. Go home.' Sullivan's answer was this: ‘Justice Breyer, yes, the corporation would not be liable.' The NGO Earth Rights International has posted a video of this somewhat bizarre conversation on its website in order to make a point about ‘abusive corporate power’. See www.toobigtopunish.org.
  • Kiobel (n 1) 1–10.
  • Kiobel (n 87) 4.
  • Ibid, 4–5.
  • Kiobel (n 1) 14.
  • For a disappointed but still optimistic position, see Redford (n 70).
  • But see Balintulo v Daimler AG, 09–2778-cv(L) (US Court of Appeal, 2d Cir 2013), 20 ('The Supreme Court expressly held that claims under the ATS cannot be brought for violations of the law of nations occur ring within the territory of a sovereign other than the United States …The majority framed the question presented in these terms no fewer than three times; it repeated the same language, focusing solely on the location of the relevant “conduct” or “violation”, at least eight more times in other parts of its eight-page opinion; and it affirmed our judgment dismissing the plaintiffs' claims because “all the relevant conduct took place outside the United States” …Lower courts are bound by that rule and they are without authority to “reinterpret” the Court's binding precedent in light of irrelevant factual distinctions, such as the citizenship of the defendants.'
  • Ford (n 2).
  • Lefebvre (n 8) 278.
  • Sassen (n 6); Sharma and Gupta (n 16).
  • See the Marxist criticism of international organisations as a ‘nascent world state’ serving a global capitalist class: BS Chimni, ‘International Institutions Today: An Imperial State in the Making' (2004) 15(1) Euro pean Journal of International Law 1.
  • Lefebvre (n 28) 174.
  • Franz Kafka, Before the Law, Ian Johnston (trans), www.kafka-online.info/before-the-law.html.

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