US 2018 SMUG v. Lively: A Law and Political Economy Perspective
(2019) SPLS 2019 Intensive Doctoral Week – TAU (Tel Aviv University) Workshop on ‘Law and Political Economy’ — Location: Sciences Po Law School
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- Authors
Brachotte, Sandrine 
- Abstract
- This paper studies the US 2018 case SMUG v. Lively from the perspective of the ‘law and political economy’ movement. Grounded on the famous Alien Tort Claim Act, SMUG concerns an allegation of a serious violation of human rights committed by American Evangelist politician Scott Lively as, it was claimed, he aided and abetted to the drafting of the so-called “anti-homosexuality bill” that was discussed by the Ugandan Parliament between 2009 and 2014. The case was dismissed for the reason that the claim did not “touch and concern” the US territory “with sufficient force”, as per the Kiobel-based interpretation of the ATS. Through a critical, interdisciplinary approach, the paper shows that the legal reasoning, including the hence-considered relevant facts, miss the conflict at stake in the dispute, between the Evangelical politicization of homosexuality and US homostransnationalism, and thereby reinforces the power of the rationality of the global market. The consideration of such conflict is allowed by one main theorization that is at odds with law, especially with conflicts of law (which the ATS is part of), i.e. the inevitable intertwinement between power and culture in both so-considered by law universal and cultural narratives.
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Citations
Brachotte, S. (2019). US 2018 SMUG v. Lively: A Law and Political Economy Perspective. SPLS 2019 Intensive Doctoral Week – TAU (Tel Aviv University) Workshop on ‘Law and Political Economy’, Sciences Po Law School. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/238906