Supreme Court to Weigh if Firms Can Be Sued in Human Rights Cases<br />By ADAM LIPTAKAPRIL 3, 2017<br />The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether corporations may be sued in American courts for complicity in human rights abuses abroad.<br />It is an appeal from a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York,<br />which ruled in favor of Arab Bank, saying that corporations may not be sued under the 1789 law.<br />After hearing arguments on the question in 2012, the Supreme Court asked the parties to brief<br />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.<br />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<br />and acceptance among civilized nations." The federal appeals courts are divided over whether corporations may be sued under the law.<br />The case turns on the meaning of the Alien Tort Statute, a cryptic 1789 law<br />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.<br />In 2013, the court said that there was a general presumption against the extraterritorial application of American law, ruling against Nigerian<br />plaintiffs who said foreign oil companies had aided in atrocities by Nigerian military and police forces against Ogoni villagers.
