In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum,1 the U.S. Supreme Court further limited the reach of the 1789 Alien Tort Statute (ATS), precluding its application in so-called "foreign-cubed" cases—where neither plaintiffs, defendants nor any of the events giving rise to the claim have any connection with the United States. Since the Second Circuit’s 1980 decision in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala,2 the ATS has served as a vehicle for litigation in federal courts brought by litigants from many countries claiming injury as a result of violations of well-established international human rights law norms at the hand of foreign officials and their aiders and abetters. The April 17, 2013, Kiobel decision places in question the ATS’ continued utility as a vehicle for challenging human rights abuses occurring in other countries. After Kiobel, the courts will require, at the least, that "the claims touch and concern the territory of the United States."3

The ATS grants federal courts jurisdiction over "any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violations of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."4 In Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain,5 the Supreme Court, per Justice David Souter, held that, while the ATS was a jurisdictional measure, "[t]he jurisdictional grant is best read as having been enacted on the understanding that the common law would provide a cause of action for [a] modest number of international law violations."

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