Title: The rise and fall of the Alien Tort Statute
Abstract: Beginning in 1980, survivors of human rights abuses have used an eighteenth-century US statute, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), to seek civil remedies in US courts. While the early cases were filed against individual defendants, lawsuits in the 1990s began to target corporate defendants. Although the US Supreme Court affirmed the application of the ATS to human rights claims in a 2004 decision, decisions issued in 2013 and 2018 sharply restricted the scope of the ATS. Under the new interpretation of the statute, only a handful of cases are likely to survive. This history reflects a path common to the struggle for human rights accountability. Survivors of abuses and human rights advocates seek means to hold perpetrators accountable and to deter further abuses. Efforts that have even limited impact are quickly duplicated by others. As the initiatives multiply, they provoke a backlash that limits their reach. Despite the setbacks, these efforts to hold perpetrators accountable inspire new, creative responses. True to this model, ATS litigation played an important role in the movement towards corporate human rights accountability. The cases contributed to rapid growth in the use of litigation to challenge corporate abuses. And fear of litigation provided an incentive for corporations to participate constructively in multiple business and human rights initiatives. This chapter traces the rise and fall of the ATS as a mechanism to hold corporations accountable for human rights abuses, from its enactment in the eighteenth century to the Supreme Court decisions that limited the modern application of the ATS.
Publication Year: 2020
Publication Date: 2020-07-08
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 3
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