Alien Tort Statute

In an earlier post, I considered the US Supreme Court’s re-argument order in the case of Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum (“Kiobel”). The order concerned whether US federal courts may rely on the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) to exercise jurisdiction over human rights abuses which have no connection to the US, i.e. abuses committed by non-US entities against non-US victims on non-US territory.  In short, is universal civil jurisdiction permissible under the ATS? Earlier this month, the petitioners, a group of 12 Nigerian victims of crimes against humanity, filed their supplemental opening brief on this issue. Nine amicus briefs in support of the petitioners and four amicus briefs in support of neither party were also filed with the US Supreme Court. In this post, I discuss the amicus brief filed by the US government. The US brief raises a number of interesting issues, in particular the extent to which theUS government has changed its position in respect of the permissibility and limits of universal civil jurisdiction under the ATS,…