Professor Dodge Cited by Second Circuit Judge Pooler

Judge Rosemary Pooler has cited Professor William S. Dodge's article "Corporate Liability Under Customary International Law" in her dissent from denial of rehearing en banc in the case In re Arab Bank, PLC Alien Tort Statute Litigation.

At issue was the Second Circuit's holding in an earlier case that corporations may never be held liable for violating customary international law, a holding that diverges from every other Circuit to have considered the question. Judge Pooler quoted Professor Dodge as explaining that "International law does not work that way"--that it does not contain general norms of liability or non-liability for particular actors. Judge Pooler also relied on an amicus brief filed by the U.S. Solicitor General that disagreeing with the Second Circuit's position and arguing that the proper approach was to look at whether the particular customary international law norm at issue excludes corporations from its scope. Professor Dodge also worked on the U.S. amicus brief in 2011 when he served as Counselor on International Law at the U.S. State Department.

Professor Dodge, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law, is an influential international law scholar. He serves as a Co-Reporter for the American Law Institute's Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law: Jurisdiction and as a member of the State Department's Advisory Committee on International Law. He is a co-author of the casebook Transnational Business Problems and a co-editor of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change, which won the American Society of International Law's 2012 certificate of merit. He has authored more than 40 other publications in books and law reviews.