Justice is too deeply steeped in cultural values and judgement too strongly influenced by social perceptions to allow an exclusively American court to hear a suit involving so many international actors. The injustice faced here is one that individuals all over the world must confront: How do we hold large multinational corporations--some of them richer and more powerful than entire countries--accountable for their actions? This cannot be done on the basis of one legal system, because one legal system does not include the values and ideas of all who are involved. It's equivalent to saying that only white males can serve as jurors: It denies the variety of perspectives that are necessary for fairness. By not creating some sort of global forum for this debate, by not having an international court that guarantees the norms of behavior and basic human rights, the great danger is that justice will never be served
Rohan R. Gulrajani '02 is a engineering concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.