Rights of Aliens in U.S.

Rights of Aliens in U.S. Courts

Rights of Aliens in United States Courts

The Alien Tort Claims Act, ATCA, allows foreign nationals to seek relief in Federal court for actions that violate the "law of nations" or a United States treaty (International pp). American courts have interpreted these violations to include crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, torture, rape, and summary execution (International pp). The Torture Victim Protection Act, TVPA, permits U.S. Or foreign nationals to bring action against a person who, acting under "actual or apparent authority or color of law, of any foreign nation," subjects an individual to torture or extra-judicial killing (International pp).

The Alien Tort Claims Act was drafted in 1789 to deal with piracy and to allow sailors press-ganged into the British Navy to sue Britain in American courts, and gradually through the years, lawyers representing clients from the developing world began using the statute to sue foreign individuals in American courts for human rights abuses committed abroad (Kurlantzick pp). The Act reads: "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States" (Antoniolli pp). In many cases, allowing foreigners to access and use U.S. courts through the ATCA may have the effect of providing a sort of representation on the international plane that is not afforded to individual victims of human rights abuses, and is seen as a last-ditch effort at justice (Ochoa pp).