by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois

“ Plaintiffs cannot establish a personal injury sufficient to confer standing by merely alleging some genealogical relationship to African-Americans held in slavery over one-hundred, two-hundred, or three-hundred years ago. In attempting to litigate the unopposed issue of slavery rather than their personal injuries, Plaintiffs also cannot satisfy the second requirement of constitutional standing—injury that is fairly traceable to the conduct of the defendants. ”

“ Statutes of limitations find their justification in necessity and convenience rather than in logic. They represent expedients, rather than principles. They are practical and pragmatic devices to spare the courts from litigation of stale claims, and the citizen from being put to his defense after memories have faded, witnesses have died or disappeared, and evidence has been lost. ”

“ As the Supreme Court recently reiterated: "We have consistently stressed that a plaintiff's complaint must establish that he has a 'personal stake' in the alleged dispute, and that the alleged injury suffered is particularized as to him." Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 819 (1997) .
a. Historical Overview of the Doctrine of Standing The requirement that a litigant demonstrate standing—a personal stake in an alleged dispute—to bring a matter before a court for adjudication has been a bedrock principle in our system of law, as well as the common law system from which our system of law developed. ”

“ Activists acknowledge that there are significant problems involved with bringing the issue of reparations for slavery before a court of law.
The specific problem with bringing this issue before a court is that courts are equipped for, and charged with the responsibility of, "dealing with claims by well-identified victims against well-identified wrongdoers . . . ." See Conceptual and Legal Problems, supra, at 502. Claims asserting harms against groups of long dead victims, perpetrated by groups of long dead wrongdoers, are particularly difficult to bring in modern American courts of law. ”

“ In other words, Plaintiffs argue that the legislation Congress has passed granting African-Americans full citizenship and equality under the law does not amount to, or serve as a substitute for, legitimate and meaningful reparations for slavery. Id. Plaintiffs therefore argue that the political question doctrine does not apply to the issue of slave reparations. Id. at 4–5. It is clear, however, that Congress has considered the issues of reparations for slavery numerous times, in contexts distinct from that of equal rights under the law. ”

“ It is true that because of the institution of slavery, the Jim Crow laws, and the lingering bigotries and separatist views following the Civil War, African-Americans were obstructed from obtaining necessary information on their claims and in some instances access to the legal system. Nevertheless, Plaintiffs' ancestors knew of their injury at the time that it occurred. They knew, or should have known, that they were wrongfully being forced to work without compensation, and that somebody was making a profit from their labor. ”

“ If trillion-dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) is not enough to achieve a "healing," what is?
Horowitz, supra, at 14; see also Chicago, Ill., Ordinance 2-92-420 et seq. (providing that "Minority-owned business [es] ," including those businesses owned by African-Americans, are to receive at least twenty-five percent of the dollar value of any contract, purchase order, or agreement awarded by the City of Chicago) . Some also argue that the Civil War itself was payment, in blood and human lives, for slavery. ”

“ While the concept of statutes of limitations has evolved over the centuries well beyond the realm of property law, the general principles behind this concept remain the same.
One principle behind statutes of limitations is the promotion of justice. In his work The Path of the Law, Oliver Wendell Holmes reflected on statutes of limitations, asking: "What is the justification for depriving a man of his rights, a pure evil as far as it goes, in consequence of the lapse of time?" ”

“ Slavery as an economic institution in North America, however, rapidly gained momentum over the next fifty years. By the 1730s, roughly 120,000 slaves had been brought to the colonies and forced to work in such industries as farming, tobacco production, and domestic service. Id. By the middle of the 1700s, the institution of slavery in the United States began to concentrate in the Southern colonies. It was in these colonies that plantations emerged, ready to take advantage [*728] of the inexpensive labor slaves provided in the production of such crops as tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton. ”

“ What are the arguments against reparations? Assuming reparations are justified, what form should these reparations take? Which specific individuals or groups will pay these reparations? To which specific individuals or groups will these reparations be paid?
In general, reparations advocates argue that reparations are justified because America itself owes a debt to the descendants of slaves. America owes this debt, advocates assert, simply because the slaves themselves were never paid for their labor. " [B] lack people worked long, hard, killing days, years, centuries—and they were never paid. ”

“ Death deprived the youthful warriors of the opportunities that survivors of the War would enjoy. The impact of this struggle on the Union as a whole was also significant. The enslavers in the United States who resisted or failed to end human chattel slavery sustained great personal and economic loss during and following the four years of the War. Generations of Americans were burdened with paying the social, political, and financial costs of this horrific War. ”

“ Finally, a common argument made against reparations is that reparations talk is divisive, and continues to enmesh African-Americans in a culture of victimhood. Cultural War, supra, at 1209–10 (" [talk of reparations] makes blacks think that whites as a group are their oppressors; it makes whites who have no responsibility for the sins of the past feel like oppressors and plays on feelings of guilt") .
Advocates of reparations differ in their assessments of exactly what form reparations ought to take. ”

“ Plaintiffs fail to allege that they have personally suffered a concrete and particularized injury as a result of Defendants' putatively illegal conduct; rather, Plaintiffs' alleged injury is derivative of the injury inflicted upon enslaved African-Americans over a century ago. See, e.g., id. ¶ 111 ("Each Plaintiff African-American slave descendant has suffered by the Defendants' failure to pay their ancestors for their labor as slaves or as sharecroppers, peons or even slaves") . ”

“ Plaintiffs offer unsupported conclusions wrapped in legally significant terms, such as "intentional misrepresentation" and "unjust enrichment," which are insufficient to establish standing. "The requirements of Article III are not satisfied merely because a party requests a court of the United States to declare its legal rights, and has couched that request for forms of relief historically associated with courts of law in terms that have a familiar ring to those trained in the legal process." ”

“ Plaintiffs' Complaint is a pastiche of the generally acknowledged horrors of slavery, totally devoid of allegations of concrete, specific, ascertainable injury to the Plaintiffs or corresponding conduct committed by Defendants. "This glaring gap in the complaint [*770] leaves total speculation as the only alternative for the court to come up with any set of facts justifying relief." Id. at 454. Defendants cannot be deemed to have fair notice of Plaintiffs' claims when they are based solely on speculation. ”

“ A Textually Demonstrable Constitutional Commitment of the Issue to a Coordinate Political Department The Constitution commits to the Representative Branches of the United States Government the authority to resolve the issue of reparations to former slaves resulting from the Nation's role in the institution of slavery. As stated above, historians have long debated whether the issue of slavery was the actual cause of the Civil War. ”

“ Two important concepts frequently addressed by litigants when dealing with statutes of limitations are accrual and tolling. Accrual denotes the point in time when an action can be maintained. "A cause of action 'accrues' when a suit may be maintained thereon, and the law in this regard differs from state-to-state and by nature of action." ”

“ For example, a defendant can prevent a plaintiff from filing his or her claim on time either by informing the plaintiff that the defendant will not assert the statute of limitations as a defense, or by fraudulently concealing the injury after the fact. ”

“ Efficiency and Legitimacy Principles of efficiency and legitimacy also play an important role in the political question doctrine. Prudential limits on the exercise of power protect the separate branches of government from the potential embarrassment of being unnecessarily overruled by one another, and from the inherent waste that would result from one branch conducting the business of another. ”

“ The Fifteenth Amendment provides, in part: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." U.S. Const. amend XV, § 1. Concerned with the possibility that individual states may attempt to circumvent the purpose behind the Civil War Amendments, Congress included an enabling clause in all three of the Civil War Amendments—giving it the exclusive power to enforce the Amendments with appropriate legislation. ”

“ In Kelberine, while discussing whether a private corporation should be liable for its involvement in the Nazi conspiracy of 1933–45, the Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit stated:
We are of the opinion the thesis is not presently susceptible of judicial implementation. It may be that the Congress might enact a program and a procedure by which the objectives prayed for could be achieved. But we think the courts alone cannot do it. As presently framed, the problem is not within the established scope of judicial authority. . . . ”

“ These remedies collectively provide the basis for calculating and distributing the amount of restitution sought; that is the amount in which Plaintiffs claim that Defendants wrongfully benefitted from Plaintiffs' ancestors' unpaid slave labor. See United States v. Shepard, 269 F.3d 884, 885 (7th Cir. 2001) (defining restitution as usually meaning the return of ill-gotten gains to which the holder is not legally entitled) . Courts have consistently held that claims seeking restitution for forced labor are claims for reparations. ”

“ The following general definition of slave "reparations" thus emerges. " [R] eparations mean truth commissions that document the history of racial crimes and the current liability for those crimes, apologies that acknowledge liability, and payments to settle the account." Cultural War, supra, at 1190. These payments may be made in the form of a trust, with the descendants of slaves named as trust beneficiaries, or other forms of subsidies given to the descendants, and could be made by private entities who have allegedly profited from slavery (as the plaintiffs in the instant suit urge) . ”

“ The reparations movement has thus moved towards the notion that reparations should be directed towards certain groups of people, rather than specific individuals. "Pro-reparation positions more readily see harm to entire groups and want to repair that economic and psychological harm." ”

“ Legislatures, both federal and state, are thus sometimes inclined to award compensation to victims of historical injustices. See Pub. L. No. 100-383, 102 Stat. 903 (1988) (awarding compensation to Japanese individuals interred during World War II) ; see also Bassett, supra, (describing how the Florida legislature awarded compensation to victims and descendants of victims of the 1923 Rosewood, Florida massacre) . Courts of law, however, are constrained by judicial doctrine and precedent, including concepts of standing, statutes of limitations, and the political question doctrine. ”

“ Plaintiffs' Complaint asks the courts to reexamine a tragic period in our Nation's history and to hold various corporate defendants liable for the commercial activities of their alleged predecessors before, during, and after the Civil War in America. Defendants acknowledge that slavery marked a deplorable period in our Nation's history. However, they assert that Plaintiffs' claims, which arise from that period, cannot be heard in 2005 in a court of law. ”

“ Plaintiffs have not asserted any facts alleging that any Defendant concealed information in a way that would have prevented Plaintiffs' ancestors from asserting their claims within the proscribed statutes of limitations periods. Plaintiffs do not allege that Defendants concealed the injury. In fact, the injury was not concealed, but rather quite obvious when inflicted. Plaintiffs merely make vague generalizations about Defendants and their perceived practices. Plaintiffs' vague assertions are not enough to satisfy the requirements for equitable estoppel. ”

“ The fact of having an enslaved ancestor, even one transported, insured, or put to work by the defendants, does not seem sufficient injury without something more." Miller, supra, at 97 (commenting specifically on the instant case) . " [D] escent from slaves is not of itself an injury, rather the sorts of legally relevant injuries are harms suffered by individuals that are attributable to the ongoing effects of slavery." Id. The type of injuries Plaintiffs are alleging in this case therefore cannot be understood as run-of-the-mill, traditional injuries as are commonly found in most tort claims. ”