المقال
[PDF] Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum - Supplement brief of Volker Beck and Christoph Strässer, Members of Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany, amici curiae in support of Petitioners
Given Germany’s history, it is particularly troubling that the Federal Government [of Germany] has chosen to intervene in support of cutting off an important avenue of accountability for human rights abuses involving corporate activity. In particular, the prospect of Alien Tort Statute (ATS) litigation was crucial in creating the conditions for a comprehensive framework for compensating victims of forced labor during the Nazi era. Despite the government’s claim that civil remedies exist in German law, the victims’ decades-long struggle for justice illustrates that even where remedies for corporate abuses formally exist, the barriers to accessing those remedies are often prohibitive…The Federal Government’s argument that extraterritorial application of the ATS may violate Germany’s sovereignty is groundless.