THOMSON REUTERS
Alison Frankel
10/17/2011
Almost as soon as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit concluded last year in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum that corporations are not liable in U.S. courts under the Alien Tort Statute for abetting overseas atrocities, the ruling looked like U.S. Supreme Court bait. As I’ve reported, the D.C. Circuit, the Eleventh Circuit, and the Seventh Circuit have all come to the opposite conclusion about corporate liability under the ATS. The only question was which ATS case the high court would choose as the vehicle for deciding whether corporations can be sued for helping foreign governments violate international human-rights law.