Impact

CJA has developed key legal doctrine that sets standards for international human rights prosecutions.

CJA has been central to efforts to develop and expand key legal doctrines and concepts in the prosecution of human rights abuses, like the command responsibility doctrine (Chavez v. Carranza, Romagoza Arce v. Garcia, Yousuf v. Samantar); foreign sovereign immunity (Yousuf v. Samantar); aiding and abetting liability (Cabello v. Fernandez Larios); arbitrary detention and cruel and inhumane treatment (Doe v. Liu Qi; Ahmed v. Magan); the systematic use of rape as a form of torture (Doe v. Constant); and indiscriminate attacks against civilians as a defined war crime (Yousuf v. Samantar).

CJA’s cases have also delivered crucial precedents in the areas of accomplice liability, statute of limitations, exhaustion of remedies, state action and whether crimes against humanity are actionable under the Alien Tort Statute.

CJA’s cases are also important because they domesticate international conventions and mechanisms in U.S. courts.  CJA’s cases are primary vehicles for bringing international law concepts, including rulings from the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, into U.S. courts.  CJA’s cases play a critical role in developing U.S. human rights law in a manner that is consistent with international law.

“Survivors of torture around the world will not be silenced. With the help of CJA we are rising up to hold our abusers accountable.” – Nobel Prize winner and CJA client Rigoberta Menchú Tum.

CJA’s cases help survivors experience a sense of justice, a sense of meaning in their survival, and a tremendous satisfaction in knowing that they have brought dignity to themselves and the memories of those who were killed or tortured. Revealing the truth about periods of human rights abuse is an essential part of transitional justice.

CJA has won favorable verdicts in every case that has gone to trial.

CJA has won judgments in high profile cases against perpetrators of human rights abuses from Bosnia (2002), Cambodia (2014), Chile (2003, 2016), China (2004), El Salvador (2002, 2004, 2005), Haiti (2006, 2007), Honduras (2006), Peru (2007), Somalia (2012, 2012, 2014), and Timor-Leste (2001).