Gerald Neuman, Co-Director of HRP, Intervenes as Amicus in U.S. Supreme Court Cross-Border Shooting Case
Last week Professor Gerald Neuman, Co-Director of the Human Rights Program, filed an amicus curiae brief in the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution protected the right to life of a Mexican teenager killed by a Border Patrol agent firing across the border between El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez. Neuman was the principal author of the brief in Hernandez v Mesa, written on behalf of a dozen prominent scholars of constitutional law.
The brief explains how the Supreme Court’s “functional approach” to the extraterritoriality of constitutional rights, articulated in the Guantanamo detainee case Boumediene v. Bush (2008), should apply in these cross-border shooting situations. It also invokes international human rights principles restricting the use of lethal force. The brief reflects Neuman’s longstanding advocacy on the rights of foreign nationals in U.S. law.