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Corporate Liability Under the US Alien Tort Statute: A Comment on Jesner v Arab Bank

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2018

William S. DODGE
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Keywords

Alien Tort Statutecorporate liabilitycustomary international lawJesner
Type
Developments in the Field
Information
Business and Human Rights Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Business, Human Rights and Security , January 2019 , pp. 131 - 137
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 

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Footnotes

*

Martin Luther King, Jr, Professor of Law, University of California, Davis, School of Law.

References

1 28 U.S.C. §1350.

2 Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum 569 US 108, 124–125 (2013).

3 Jesner v Arab Bank 138 S Ct 1386, 1407 (2018).

4 Victims and their families who were US citizens brought suit under the Antiterrorism Act (ATA), which allows US nationals to recover triple damages for injuries caused by international terrorism. See 18 USC §2333. In the ATA suit, the district court found that Arab Bank knowingly provided financial services to terrorists. Linde v Arab Bank 97 F Supp 3d 287, 331–335 (EDNY 2015), but on appeal the Second Circuit overturned the jury’s verdict, holding that financial services by themselves were not enough to constitute international terrorism under the Act. Linde v Arab Bank 882 F3d 314, 325–328 (2d Cir 2018).

5 Jesner v Arab Bank 808 F3d 144 (2d Cir 2015).

6 28 U.S.C. §1350.

7 Sosa v Alverez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692, 725, 732 (2004). The eighteenth century paradigms were offences against ambassadors, violations of safe-conducts, and piracy. Ibid 720, 724.

8 Ibid 732 (note 20).

9 Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum 621 F3d 111 (2d Cir 2010).

10 See ibid 132–137.

11 Ibid 149.

12 Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum 569 US 108, 124–125 (2013).

13 Jesner v Arab Bank 138 S Ct 1386, 1399 (2018).

14 Ibid 1400.

15 International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Statute, art 6, SC Res 827 (1993), reprinted in 32 ILM 1192.

16 Ibid art 1.

17 Jesner v Arab Bank 138 S Ct 1386, 1420 (2018) (J Sotomayor, dissenting). I disclose that I wrote the Brief of International Law Scholars as Amici Curiae on which Justice Sotomayor relied in her dissent.

18 Ibid 1423.

19 Ibid 1422 (note 2). See also Dodge, William S , ‘Corporate Liability Under Customary International Law’ (2012) 43 Georgetown Journal of International Law 1045, 1050 Google Scholar .

20 Jesner v Arab Bank 138 S Ct 1386, 1402 (opinion of J Kennedy).

21 William S Dodge, ‘Jesner v Arab Bank: The Supreme Court Preserves the Possibility of Human Rights Suits Against US Corporations’, Just Security Blog (26 April 2018), https://www.justsecurity.org/55404/jesner-v-arab-bank-supreme-court-preserves-possibility-human-rights-suits-u-s-corporations/ (accessed 18 August 2018).

22 In support of excluding corporations from the ATS cause of action, Justice Kennedy also invoked the fact that Congress had limited the express cause of action found in the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), 28 USC §1350 note, to natural persons. Jesner v Arab Bank 138 S Ct 1386, 1403–1405 (2018) (opinion of J Kennedy). This part of Kennedy’s opinion also received only three votes, with Justices Alito and Gorsuch declining to join it.

23 Jesner v Arab Bank 138 S Ct 1386, 1403 (2018).

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid (emphasis added).

26 Ibid 1406–1407.

27 Ibid 1407.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid 1408 (J Alito, concurring).

30 Ibid 1410 (note *) (‘Because this case involves a foreign corporation, we have no need to reach the question whether an alien may sue a United States corporation under the ATS.’).

31 Ibid 1414–1418 (J Gorsuch, concurring) (relying on J Bellia, Anthony Jr and R Clark, Bradford , ‘The Alien Tort Statute and the Law of Nations’ (2011) 78 University of Chicago Law Review 445)Google Scholar . Both the text and the history of the ATS refute this theory. See William S Dodge, ‘The Original Meaning of the Alien Tort Statute’, Just Security Blog (26 October 2017), https://www.justsecurity.org/46352/original-meaning-alien-tort-statute/ (accessed 18 August 2018).

32 Jesner v Arab Bank 138 S Ct 1386, 1419 (2018) (J Gorsuch, concurring).

33 Ibid 1412–1414.

34 Ibid 1409 (J Alito, concurring). It is worth noting that Judge Kavanaugh, the nominee to replace Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court, has taken the view that ‘the ATS does not apply to claims against corporations’. Doe v Exxon Mobil Corp., 654 F3d 11, 81 (DC Cir 2011) (J Kavanaugh, dissenting).

35 See S Dodge, William , ‘Business and Human Rights Litigation in US Courts Before and After Kiobel ’ in Dorothée Baumann-Pauly and Justine Nolan (eds.), Business and Human Rights: From Principles to Practice (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016) 244, 248–250 Google Scholar .

36 Although US courts have tended to conflate direct liability by the parent company with piercing the corporate veil, the two theories of liability are distinct, as courts in other countries have recognized. See Aristova, Ekaterina , ‘Tort Litigation Against Transnational Corporations in the English Courts: The Challenge of Jurisdiction’ (2018) 14 Utrecht Law Review 6 (discussing English cases)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

37 Balintulo v Ford Motor Co. 796 F3d 160, 168 (2d Cir 2015).

38 Ibid.

39 See Aziz v Alcolac 658 F.3d 388, 401 (4th Cir 2011); Presbyterian Church of Sudan v Talisman Energy 582 F.3d 244, 257-59 (2d Cir 2009).

40 See Doe v Drummond Co. 782 F3d 576, 609 (11th Cir 2015); Doe v Exxon Mobil Corp. 654 F.3d 11, 39 (DC Cir 2011). See also Doe v Nestle USA 766 F3d 1016, 1023–1024 (9th Cir 2015) (noting the question without resolving it).

41 Doe v Nestle USA 766 F3d 1016, 1024 (9th Cir 2015).

42 Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum 569 US 108, 124–125 (2013).

43 Doe v Drummond Co. 782 F3d 576, 596 (11th Cir 2015); Mujica v Airscan 771 F3d 580, 594 (9th Cir 2014); Al-Shimari v CACI Premier Technology 758 F3d 516, 527 (4th Cir 2014).

44 Adhikari v Kellogg Brown & Root 845 F3d 184, 197 (5th Cir 2017); Mastafa v Chevron Corp. 770 F3d 170, 188 (2d Cir 2014).

45 Al-Shimari v CACI Premier Technology 758 F3d 516, 530–531 (4th Cir 2014).

46 Licci by Licci v Lebanese Canadian Bank 834 F3d 201, 217 (2d Cir 2017); Mastafa v Chevron Corp. 770 F3d 170, 190 (2d Cir 2014).