Natalie Davidson offers an alternative account of Alien Tort Statute litigation by revisiting the field's two seminal cases, Filártiga (filed 1979) and Marcos (filed 1986), lawsuits ostensibly concerned with torture in Paraguay and the Philippines, respectively. Combining legal analysis, archival research and ethnographic methods, this book reveals how these cases operated as transitional justice mechanisms, performing the transition of the United States and its allies out of the Cold War order. It shows that US courts produced a whitewashed history of US involvement in repression in the Western bloc, while in Paraguay and the Philippines the distance from US courts allowed for a more critical narration of the lawsuits and their underlying violence as symptomatic of structural injustice. By exposing the political meanings of these legal landmarks for three societies, Davidson sheds light on the blend of hegemonic and emancipatory implications of international human rights litigation in US courts.

‘In this excellent and timely book, Davidson pushes the study of transitional justice away from its familiar focus on criminal proceedings and truth commissions towards a richer reckoning with the full range of legal mechanisms through which a politics of emancipation can be pursued. No less distinctively and originally, Davidson brings into sharp relief how legal actors pursuing rather local goals can nevertheless powerfully advance the larger interests of justice.'

Lawrence Douglas - Amherst College, Massachusetts

‘Davidson's extensive on-the-ground research sheds new light on the achievements, limitations and perverse ways in which human rights litigation in the U.S. plays out. She brings a critical perspective that is nuanced and sophisticated, drawing from current work in human rights, anthropology, discourse studies as well as law.'

Naomi Roht-Arriaza - University of California, Hastings Law

‘To what extent has America been held accountable for its conduct abroad during the Cold War? Read this book for an insightful interdisciplinary inquiry into the pursuit of justice through human rights litigation.'

Ruti Teitel - Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School