542 U.S. 692 (2004)
In 1985, DEA agent Enrique Camarena-Salazar was captured on assignment in Mexico, taken to a house in Guadalajara, tortured over the course of a two-day interrogation, and murdered.1 Based in part on eyewitness testimony, DEA officials in the United States came to believe that respondent Humberto Alvarez-Machain, a Mexican physician, was present at the house and acted to prolong the agent's life, thereby extending the interrogation and torture.2
In 1990, a federal grand jury in the Central District of California indicted Alvarez for the torture and murder of Camarena-Salazar, and the district court issued a warrant for his arrest.3 The DEA asked the Mexican government for help in getting Alvarez into the United States, but when requests and negotiations proved fruitless, the DEA approved a plan to hire Mexican nationals to seize Alvarez and bring him to the United States for trial.4 Petitioner Jose Francisco Sosa participated in the group that abducted Alvarez from his house, held him overnight in a motel, and brought him by private plane to El Paso, Texas, where he was arrested by federal officers.5
Once in American custody, Alvarez moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that his seizure was outrageous governmental conduct and violated the extradition treaty between the United States and Mexico.6 The district court agreed, the Ninth Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court reversed, holding that the fact of Alvarez's forcible seizure did not affect the jurisdiction of a federal court.7 The case was tried in 1992 and ended at the close of the government's case when the district court granted Alvarez's motion for a judgment of acquittal.8
In 1993, after returning to Mexico, Alvarez began the civil action at issue here.9 He sued Sosa, Mexican citizen and DEA operative Antonio Garate-Bustamante, five unnamed Mexican civilians, the United States, and four DEA agents.10 Alvarez sought damages from the United States under the FTCA alleging false arrest and from Sosa under the ATS for a violation of the law of nations.11 The district court granted the government's motion to dismiss the FTCA claim but awarded summary judgment and $25,000 in damages to Alvarez on the ATS claim.12
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the ATS judgment but reversed the dismissal of the FTCA claim.13 A divided en banc court reached the same conclusion.14 The Supreme Court granted certiorari in the companion cases to clarify the scope of both the FTCA and the ATS.15
Whether Alvarez-Machain's claim against the United States under the FTCA for false arrest based on his abduction in Mexico is barred by the foreign country exception in 28 U.S.C. § 2680(k)?16
The FTCA's foreign country exception, 28 U.S.C. § 2680(k), bars any claim arising in a foreign country.17 Congress used the phrase to refer to claims for injury or harm occurring abroad so that federal courts would not apply foreign substantive law under then-prevailing choice-of-law rules.18 The headquarters doctrine, under which domestic planning or supervision is treated as the operative cause, does not override the exception because it would nullify the statutory limitation and produce inconsistent jurisdictional results across states.19
Yes. The false-arrest claim rested entirely on conduct that occurred and produced harm in Mexico.20 Although DEA officials in California planned the operation and supervised the return flight, the abduction itself, the overnight detention in a Mexican motel, and the resulting injury all took place south of the border.21 The actions of the Mexican nationals who seized Alvarez were independent proximate causes, so the claim cannot be recast as arising solely from domestic headquarters activity.22
The Court rejected the headquarters doctrine because it would allow virtually every foreign-injury case to be reframed as a domestic claim.23 This would undermine the exception's purpose of avoiding foreign-law determinations and create a patchwork of federal jurisdiction that varies from state to state.24
Alvarez-Machain's FTCA claim is barred by the foreign country exception.25
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Joined by Justice Breyer
Justice Ginsburg concurred in the judgment on the FTCA claim but took a different path.26 She would construe the foreign-country exception in harmony with the FTCA's jurisdictional grant by focusing on the place where the act or omission occurred rather than the place of injury.27 Applying a last-significant-act rule, she concluded that the claim arose in Mexico because the arrest and detention that rendered the seizure tortious under California law took place there, and Mexican law could equally have authorized or prohibited the citizen's arrest.28
This approach, she reasoned, preserves the exception as Congress intended without relying on post-enactment changes in choice-of-law methodology.29
Whether the ATS, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, creates a private cause of action for torts in violation of the law of nations or merely confers jurisdiction over a limited set of such claims?30
The ATS is a jurisdictional statute that does not create new causes of action.31 At the time of enactment the First Congress understood the provision to furnish jurisdiction for a modest set of common-law claims derived from the law of nations, principally the three offenses Blackstone identified: violation of safe conducts, infringement of the rights of ambassadors, and piracy.32 No further congressional authorization is required for those historical claims, but the statute supplies no license to recognize additional private rights of action.33
No. The text, placement within the Judiciary Act, and historical context demonstrate that the ATS addresses only the power of federal courts to entertain cases involving violations of the law of nations.34 Contemporary materials, including Attorney General Bradford's 1795 opinion and the sparse early cases, confirm that the statute was expected to have immediate practical effect by providing a forum for the limited category of torts then recognized under the law of nations.35 Nothing in the statute or its history suggests that Congress authorized federal courts to create new substantive causes of action for later-emerging international norms.36
The ATS confers jurisdiction but does not create a private cause of action for modern international-law violations outside the historical paradigm.37
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by Rehnquist, C. J., And Thomas, J.
Justice Scalia joined the Court's disposition but wrote separately to reject any reservation of judicial discretion to recognize new international-law-based causes of action.38 He argued that Erie extinguished the general common law on which the ATS originally operated, leaving federal courts without authority to craft federal common law outside narrow enclaves authorized by Congress.39 Post-Erie federal common law is made, not discovered, and the ATS's bare grant of jurisdiction supplies no such authorization.40
Allowing judges to convert contemporary international norms into privately enforceable federal law, he concluded, usurps the legislative function and risks repeated confrontations with the political branches.41
Whether a single illegal detention of less than one day in Mexico, followed by transfer to lawful U.S. authorities and prompt arraignment, violates a norm of customary international law sufficiently specific to support an ATS claim?42
A federal court may recognize a private federal-common-law claim under the ATS only for violations of international-law norms that are accepted by the civilized world and defined with specificity comparable to the 18th-century paradigms of safe-conduct violations, ambassadorial infringements, and piracy.43 Norms lacking that definite content and widespread acceptance cannot support a cause of action.44
No. Alvarez's proposed norm prohibiting any arrest not authorized by the positive law of the place where it occurred is far too broad and lacks the requisite specificity.45 Customary international law may condemn prolonged arbitrary detention as state policy, but a single, brief detention followed by prompt transfer to lawful authorities and arraignment does not cross the threshold of a well-defined, universally obligatory norm.46 Recognizing a cause of action on these facts would extend the ATS well beyond the limited historical category the First Congress contemplated.47
No ATS claim lies for this brief detention.48
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Breyer joined the Court's disposition of the ATS claim and added a further consideration drawn from principles of comity.49 He observed that enforcement of an international norm by one nation's courts presupposes that other nations' courts may do the same.50 For universal jurisdiction to be consistent with comity, there must be not only substantive agreement on the wrongfulness of the conduct but also procedural agreement that every nation's courts may adjudicate it.51
While such consensus exists for a limited set of norms such as torture and genocide, no comparable procedural consensus supports universal tort jurisdiction over claims of arbitrary arrest committed abroad by one foreign national against another.52 That absence of consensus reinforces the conclusion that the ATS does not authorize the claim presented here.53