Supreme Court to Weigh if Firms Can Be Sued in Human Rights Cases
By ADAM LIPTAKAPRIL 3, 2017
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether corporations may be sued in American courts for complicity in human rights abuses abroad.
It is an appeal from a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York,
which ruled in favor of Arab Bank, saying that corporations may not be sued under the 1789 law.
After hearing arguments on the question in 2012, the Supreme Court asked the parties to brief
and argue a broader issue: whether American courts may ever hear disputes under the law for human rights abuses abroad, whether the defendant was a corporation or not.
A 2004 Supreme Court decision, Sosa v. Álvarez-Machain, left the door open to some claims under the law, as long as they involved violations of international norms with "definite content
and acceptance among civilized nations." The federal appeals courts are divided over whether corporations may be sued under the law.
The case turns on the meaning of the Alien Tort Statute, a cryptic 1789 law
that allows federal district courts to hear "any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." The law was largely ignored until the 1980s, when federal courts started to apply it in international human rights cases.
In 2013, the court said that there was a general presumption against the extraterritorial application of American law, ruling against Nigerian
plaintiffs who said foreign oil companies had aided in atrocities by Nigerian military and police forces against Ogoni villagers.
