Evening round-up: Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum
on Apr 17, 2013 at 4:01 pm
This morning the Court issued its decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. The Court had originally granted cert. and heard oral argument in the case on the question whether corporations can be sued under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that allows foreigners to sue in U.S. courts for torts committed “in violation of the law of nations.” After the oral argument in February 2012, the Court ordered new briefing and argument on the question whether the ATS applies to conduct that occurs outside the United States. Today the Court held that, as a general rule, the law does not apply extraterritorially. Early coverage of the decision comes from Lyle Denniston of this blog, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, the Associated Press (via the Seattle Post Intelligencer), and The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
Reactions from the blogosphere come from Cato@Liberty and the Volokh Conspiracy; posts at Opinio Juris come from Julian Ko (here, here, and here), Peter Spiro, and Deborah Pearlstein. This blog also expects to post reactions to the decision soon from Kristin Linsley Myles of Munger, Tolles & Olson, Meir Feder of Jones Day, Oona Hathaway of Yale Law School, Donald Childress of Pepperdine Law School, Katie Redford of EarthRights International, and Anton Metlitsky of O’Melveny & Myers.
