Filartiga v Pena-Irala

Filartiga v Pena-Irala is a 1980 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that founded modern human rights litigation in United States federal courts. The family of a young Paraguayan man who had been tortured to death sued the Paraguayan police official responsible, Americo Norberto Pena-Irala, after discovering he was living in the United States, invoking the centuries old Alien Tort Statute. The court held that the statute grants federal courts jurisdiction to hear civil claims brought by foreign nationals for violations of the law of nations, including official torture, wherever in the world the conduct occurred, because torture by a state official violates a universally recognized norm of international law. The decision opened United States courts to civil suits against individual perpetrators of serious human rights abuses committed abroad and remains the foundational case for Alien Tort Statute litigation.