Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC, 584 U.S. ___, 138 S. Ct. 1386, 200 L. Ed. 2d 612 (2018) (U.S. Supreme Court)
Jesner v. Arab Bank is a landmark U.S.
Does the Alien Tort Statute permit suits against foreign corporations for alleged violations of international law?
The ATS is a jurisdictional statute that allows federal courts to hear a narrow class of claims for violations of specific, universal, and obligatory international norms, but courts must exercise great caution before recognizing new private causes of action or categories of defendants, particularly where foreign-relations and separation-of-powers concerns are implicated. Absent clear authorization from Congress, courts should not expand ATS liability to foreign corporate defendants; any decision to impose such liability is for Congress, not the judiciary.
No. The ATS does not permit suits against foreign corporations. The Court declined to extend ATS liability to foreign corporate defendants in light of separation-of-powers principles, foreign-policy considerations, and the absence of a clearly established international-law norm of corporate liability. The judgment of the Second Circuit was affirmed.
Jesner substantially limits ATS litigation by erecting a categorical bar against suits targeting foreign corporations, even when some conduct touches the United States (e.g., dollar-clearing through New York). Together with Sosa and Kiobel, Jesner narrows the ATS from a once-expansive vehicle for transnational human-rights claims into a tightly confined doctrine that courts will not expand absent explicit congressional action. For students of federal courts and international law, Jesner illustrates the modern Court's restrained approach to judicially created causes of action, the influence of foreign-relations considerations on justiciability and remedies, and the strategic redirection of human-rights and anti-terrorism plaintiffs toward congressionally authorized avenues such as the ATA/JASTA and the TVPA (the latter limited to natural-person defendants).