International law today is a discipline rife with dissensions. This is largely because international law has meant different things to different generations of scholars and nation-states. In 1996 a United States circuit court in Atlanta affirmed a civil judgment against an Ethiopian defendant in an action initiated by Ethiopian citizens for violations of that country’s law and international law. But about a decade earlier in 1984 another appeal court denied to enforce claims against Libyan and Palestinian defendants under international law because according to the court, international law is dedicated exclusively to the relationship between independent states and not their citizens. Although such different interpretations may appear startling, over the previous centuries, courts have eschewed one view while embracing the other. It is thus imperative to examine what constitutes international law or under what authority a U.S. court could challenge another state’s treatment of its own citizens, in its own land, under its own laws. The Judiciary Act of 1789 which created the Alien Tort Statute, a relatively obscure piece of legislation is at the center of these actions. But what was the original intent of the Alien Tort Statute? Is it possible to reconstruct the meaning of that statute? To answer these questions, this dissertation critically interrogated the meaning of international law and the law of nations as it existed at the time of the founding of the United States. What was called the law of nations and subsequently international law revealed multiple meanings. In unpacking the history of the Alien Tort Statute, this dissonance was reflected in the conflicts which assailed the discipline. This dissertation therefore reproduces the dissensions as it analyzes and reconstructs a hitherto unexplored front in this debacle: lawsuits filed by some Africans in the United States under the Alien Tort Statute against their leaders and corporations for egregious human rights violations in Africa. In the end therefore, the issue becomes, can justice and reparations be achieved in United States courts for human rights violations committed in Africa?

Lo studio si inserisce nel dibattito sul potere delle multinazionali e il rispetto dei diritti umani fondamentali e approfondisce i concetti di responsabilità sociale delle imprese (CSR) e della loro "accountability", inquadrando l'analisi nel contesto più ampio degli investimenti esteri diretti (FDI), con i relativi aspetti economici, tecnologici e sociali, nonché ambientali e politici. Si analizzano le norme internazionali in tema di rispetto dei diritti umani da parte delle aziende, ed i meccanismi legali per rendere le società "accountable", soprattutto in caso di complicità aziendali negli abusi perpetrati dagli Stati, anche attraverso la giurisprudenza dei tribunali penali internazionali e dei tribunali statunitensi. Viene data attenzione al settore della sicurezza, i.e. "Private Military and Security Companies" (PMSCs, interessato da notevole crescita negli ultimi decenni. Le PMSCs, impiegate da parte dei governi che esternalizzano una funzione tipicamente dello stato e da imprese e ONG attive in contesti difficili, hanno operato senza adeguato controllo. Le loro attività sollevano questioni su potenziali abusi dei diritti umani commessi dai propri dipendenti oltre che su violazioni dei diritti del lavoro subite dagli stessi. Le azioni ONU per portare le PMSCs fuori dalla 'zona legale grigia' in cui hanno operato vengono trattate insieme alle iniziative di autoregolamentazione. / The study, given the debate about the increasing power of corporations and the attempts to ensure their respect of fundamental human rights, deepens the concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate accountability, framing the analysis within the broader discourse of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), with its economic, technological and social aspects as well as environmental and political issues. International standards in the area of corporations’ human rights obligations are analyzed in addition to legal mechanisms to hold corporations accountable, particularly for corporate complicity in human rights abuses by States, through the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals and U.S. Courts. Special attention is given to the security sector, i.e. Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), interested in the last decades by a steady growth. PMSCs, increasingly contracted by governments willing to outsource a typical state function and by companies and NGOs active in difficult contexts, have been operating without proper supervision and accountability. PMSCs activities raise issues concerning potential human rights violations committed by their employees and labour rights abuses their employees might suffer themselves. UN actions aimed at bringing PMSCs out of the legal ‘grey zone’ where they have been operating are tackled alongside with self-regulatory initiatives.