Law Commons^™

Extraterritoriality And Comparative Institutional Analysis: A Response To Professor Meyer, Zachary D. Clopton, P. Bartholomew Quintans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In the last few years, the Supreme Court has applied the presumption against extraterritoriality to narrow the reach of U.S. securities law in Morrison v. National Australia Bank and international-law tort claims in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. By their terms, these decisions are limited to the interpretation of ambiguous federal statutes and claims under the Alien Tort Statute. A potential unintended consequence of these decisions, therefore, is that future plaintiffs will turn to common-law causes of action derived from state and foreign law, potentially filing such suits in state courts. These causes of action may include “human rights claims …

Kiobel And The Law Of Nations, Zachary D. Clopton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Since 1789, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) has provided federal court jurisdiction for tort suits by aliens for violations of the law of nations. Though debate certainly exists about the method by which ATS-appropriate torts are identified, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the substantive content of ATS causes of action is derived from the law of nations. In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., the Supreme Court justices addressed not the substance of ATS cases but the reach of that statute.

At least at the time of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the law of nations included not only …