Law Commons^™

The Three Lives Of The Alien Tort Statute: The Evolving Role Of The Judiciary In U.S. Foreign Relations, Thomas H. Lee

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explains how the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) began in the late eighteenth century as a national security statute that the First Congress and early federal district judges saw as a way to afford damages remedies to British merchants, creditors, and other subjects whose persons or property were injured under circumstances in which treaties or the law of nations assigned responsibility to the United States. Torts committed within the United States by private American citizens were the most likely such circumstances. The ultimate aims of the statute were to avoid renewed war with Great Britain and the other European …