February 20, 2014
Suing Americans under International Law - in American Courts
By Selwyn Duke

Imagine you go overseas and give a speech advocating a cause, only to come home and find you're being sued for "crimes against humanity." No, what you did wasn't illegal under American law or under the laws of the nation in which you expressed your words.

You're being sued under international law.

And here's the kicker: Your case will be adjudicated by an American court.

Foreign law in a U.S. court?

This is precisely what befell Massachusetts native Pastor Scott Lively after he gave some speeches critical of homosexuality in Uganda and elsewhere. The suit was filed on behalf of activist group Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMU) by an organization with the temerity to call itself the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) (emphasis added). The legal action is based on, wrote The New York Times in 2012, "the alien tort statute, which allows foreigners to sue in American courts in situations asserting the violation of international law." SMU claims that Lively incited "the persecution of gay men and lesbians in Uganda," wrote the Times.

Lively's speechmaking hit the radar screen because the Ugandan parliament recently passed a law broadening the criminalization of homosexual activity; moreover, the pastor has also spoken in Russia, whose new law against homosexual activism has figured prominently in the reportage on the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Yet this isn't -- or shouldn't be -- about what Lively did or didn't say; it's not about the particular. It's about the principle:

American courts can adjudicate cases of American citizens sued under law (international law) that the people's representatives did not in any way enact. Thus, Americans can conceivably be punished under legislation that they had not even an indirect hand in creating.

This is adjudication without representation.

This is an issue because last August federal judge Michael A. Ponsor rejected a motion to dismiss the Lively case filed by the pastor's lawyers, instead allowing it to proceed to the discovery phase. This is despite the fact that, as activist group Mass Resistance reported, the judge "told the CCR lawyer that he is 'struggling to see actionable behavior' in anything Lively did or said, and that he can't see that any of Lively's conduct that [sic] amounts to 'persecution' or 'conspiracy.'" Nonetheless, upon issuing his 79-page ruling, writes Mass Resistance, the judge accepted "allbacked plaintiffs" and denied "all of the points raised by Lively's lawyers."

Again, though, this isn't about the facts of any particular case. It's about using extra-constitutional means to trump Americans' constitutional rights; it's about seeking to use international laws and philosophy regarding "hate speech" to circumvent Americans' First Amendment right to free speech.

Read more:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/02/s...l#ixzz2tu0y0Bwc