motivation

I’ve been tossing this idea around for a while, but school has kept me pretty busy for the last month or so. Yesterday my intent was crystallized into action by an article I saw linked from fark.

NEW YORK – A group of Jewish Iranians who say their missing relatives were kidnapped and tortured by the Iranian government have sued the country’s former president, delivering the summons to him directly while he was visiting the United States.

I had a number of immediate sarcastic reactions, like “good luck collecting on that.” But then I later had some additional questions. And we just got through talking about personal jurisdiction in CivPro. I’m sure that in the next few years I’ll read about something in class and then notice some new aspect of a news story like this one. Anticipating that I’ll have this same motivation over and over, I thought it might be worthwhile to collect thought-provoking current events like this together in one place.

So, question number 1: does New York federal court have personal jurisdiction over Mr. Khameni?

As the article describes it, a group of Iranian citizens is suing a former Iranian government officer in a New York federal court over acts that they claim may have happened IN IRAN some 10 years ago. They served him with notice in person at an event in Virginia. Apparently there is a US federal statute that allows non-citizens to sue other non-citizens for specific acts, including those acts which Khatami is accuesd of here. Can the New York court claim personal jurisdiction? Virginia ain’t New York.  And New York is a long way from Tehran.
Is this idea of global jurisdiction something we, as a country, even want to be doing? Doesn’t The Hague already have an international human rights court? I understand the appeal of allowing someone who can’t get justice in their own country to try to get it here. But at some level, isn’t this a frivolous claim? US law is not the law of Iran. As a hypothetical- say Khatami PERSONALLY kidnapped and tortured the family members as the lawsuit accuses. I think it’s safe to say that most* Americans agree that torturing people is bad, and that we should do what we can to stop it. This would include passing laws to make it a crime, and enforcing those laws when they are broken.

But Khatami is not an American. Of course he is subject to American law when he is on American soil (Well, sort of- I imagine he is protected by some form of limited diplomatic immunity while he is here). I don’t know nearly enough about Con Law to say whether our congress has the Constitutional authority to extend jurisdiction of our laws to cover acts perpetrated in another country by someone who makes no claim to American citizenship. My intuition is to say, no- that’s the whole point of having political borders in the first place. If you know I’m wrong, please spend 2 sentences to tell me why.

So the suit has been filed, Khatami was served.  Let’s say for the sake of argument that the court finds grouds for asserting personal jurisdiction, and does so. He has 20 days to respond to the complaint. What happens if he just defaults? 10 days from now, he flies back to Iran… and then what happens? The US courts find him liable, and tell him to pay, and then he gives our court system the Arabic equivalent of the finger. Is there any realistic scenario where these families actually recover redress for their grievances, even if a US court says they should? Maybe Israeli paratroopers stage a daring pinpoint commando raid and… force Khatami to get out his checkbook to pay liquidated damages?

Or is this really just a publicity stunt, designed to call attention to Khatami’s presence in the US at a time when our diplomatic relations with Iran are icy but seem as though they might be thawing? Or an even deeper question- is this intentional satire? Is it nothing but foreshadowing of some American family bringing exactly the same suit for kidnapping and torture in Iranian court against one of the current officers of our very own executive branch?

I guess the last few questions are deeper than first-year legal theory, so go ahead and ignore them if you prefer.

*most Americans oppose torture, that is, except for the ones who are driving the out-of-control schoolbus that is current US foreign policy. Just becuase Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales are all counterexamples does not make “most” the wrong word to use.