WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled unanimously yesterday that U.S law does not authorize a damages suit by a Mexican physician who was abducted in his own country and brought to the United States to stand trial in the murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. The ruling came in a case that was closely watched even before the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

		On the Net Decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain

The decision makes it extremely difficult -- though not impossible -- for foreigners to seek monetary compensation in federal court for violations of international law by agents of the U.S. government. Justice David H. Souter, speaking for himself and five colleagues, said "the door is still ajar" for future claims by aliens under a 18th century law known as the Alien Tort Statute.

Because it turned, in part, on a statute that is almost as old as the United States, yesterday's decision provided the opportunity for Souter and his colleagues to delve into arcane legal history, resulting in a collection of opinions that totaled 79 pages. But the narrative at the heart of the case -- the abduction of a foreigner on foreign soil at the behest of U.S. agents -- was stark and dramatic.

In 1990, Dr. Humberto Alvarez-Machain was kidnapped from his office in Guadalajara by Mexicans working for the DEA and spirited to El Paso, Texas, where he was put on trial for the torture and murder of DEA agent Enrqiue Camarena-Salazar.

U.S. authorities alleged that Alvarez-Machain was present in a house where the agent was tortured and used his medical skills to prolong the agent's life so he could be interrogated. But a federal judge acquitted Alvarez-Machain, who then filed damage suits against the U.S. government and Jose Francisco Sosa, one of the men who abducted him at the DEA's behest.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that Alvarez-Machain could sue the U.S. government under a law known as the Federal Tort Claims Act and could sue Sosa under the Alien Tort Statute.

The Tort Claims Act suspends sovereign immunity in certain cases so the federal government can be sued for negligent conduct. The Alien Tort Act, enacted in 1789 and little used since, gave federal courts jurisdiction over lawsuits "for a tort [civil wrong] only committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."

Yesterday, the Supreme Court reversed the 9th Circuit, ruling that neither federal law authorized lawsuits by Alvarez-Machain and setting aside a $25,000 judgment he received for emotional distress.

Alvarez-Machain couldn't sue the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, Souter wrote, because that law contains an exception for claims "arising in a foreign country."

As for the Alien Tort Statute, Souter said the law was meant to provide a cause of action for a modest number of international law violations, such as piracy and offenses against ambassadors. While leaving the door "ajar" to other claims based on the "law of nations," Souter said Alvarez-Machain's contention that he was subjected to "arbitrary arrest" didn't qualify because it wasn't grounded in a "binding customary norm" of international law.

Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas, would have had the court go further than Souter by declaring that the 1789 law authorizes no lawsuits that aren't specifically provided for in an act of Congress.

"American law -- the law made by the people's democratically elected representatives -- does not recognize a category of activity that is so universally disapproved by other nations that is automatically unlawful here, and automatically gives rise to a private action for money damages in federal court," Scalia wrote. "That simple principle is what today's decision should have announced."