On the Frontier of Alien Tort Claims

Since the 1980s, civil plaintiffs have attempted to use the Alien Tort Claims Act (act) to hold private corporations responsible in U.S. courts for alleged human rights violations committed abroad. Although courts generally have accepted the theoretical possibility of such corporate liability and sometimes have permitted claims to proceed under an aiding and abetting or conspiracy theory, no corporate defendant to date has been found liable for any international law violations alleged by plaintiffs.

In fact, courts have restricted the use of the act, and numerous cases have been dismissed, often on forum non conveniens or other jurisdictional grounds. However, several cases have gone to trial or resulted in settlement, and eager plaintiffs continue to file new cases under the act, which usually take years to work their way through the courts and impose significant litigation costs on defendant corporations, leading some commentators to refer to this as “the Wild West of transnational tort cases.”¹