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16 Berkeley J. Int'l L. 71 (1998)
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and Human Rights Violations: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

handle is hein.journals/berkjintlw16 and id is 77 raw text is: The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and Human Rights Violations: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? By Naomi Roht-Arriazat On December 17, 1997, a federal judge in Miami ordered the Cuban gov- ernment to pay $187.6 million in damages to the families of pilots whose plane was shot down over international airspace by the Cuban military.' Four months later, a D.C. District Court awarded nearly $250 million in a case brought against Iran for financing terrorist attacks which killed an American student.2 Although neither government is likely to satisfy the judgments, the cases marked the first published applications of the recently-enacted provisions of the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA).3 That Act amends the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA)4 to allow suits by U.S. nationals for certain international crimes and human rights violations against states desig- nated as terrorist by the U.S. State Department. Human rights advocates have attempted to overcome the bar to suit for state-sponsored human rights violations posed by the FSIA in a number of dif- ferent ways-both judicial and legislative--over the last two decades. While the courts have been almost universally reluctant to allow jurisdiction over these cases, Congress has recently proven more responsive. This responsiveness has been fueled in part by a small number of high-profile terrorist acts involving U.S. citizens and in part by a more general heightened awareness of the dangers of terrorist states. In addition to the expanded jurisdiction provided by the AEDPA, a number of proposals are now before Congress to further erode for- eign sovereign immunity in response to specific terrorism or human rights-re- lated cases. While these developments open the door to further potential shrinkage of the zone of sovereign immunity, either through further legislation or judicial interpretation, they also reintroduce a political element and a depen- t Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of Law. 1. Alejandre v. Republic of Cuba, 996 F. Supp. 1239 (S.D. Fla. 1997). 2. Flatow v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 999 F. Supp. 1 (D.D.C. 1998). 3. Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214(1996). 4. Pub. L. No. 94-583, 90 Stat. 2891 (1976), codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1330, 1332, 1391(f), 1441(d), 1602-1611 (1990).

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