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The Transformation Of Human Rights Litigation: The Alien Tort Statute, The Anti-Terrorism Act, And Jasta, Stephen J. Schnably

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

A quarter century ago, the prospects for federal civil litigation of international human rights violations under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) seemed bright. With the statute’s modern revival, a decade earlier in Filártiga, foreign nationals, often with no recourse in their own countries, had a forum for judicial vindication of a broad range of wrongs by state officials, multinational corporations, and even, in limited circumstances, foreign states themselves. The Supreme Court’s Kiobel decision in 2013, however, may signal the end of the Filártiga revolution, with Congress’s seeming acquiescence: Congress, after all, could amend the ATS if it disagreed with …