Overview The Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) has been the subject of several US Supreme Court decisions over the past decade. To summarize its long and complicated past, the ATS is a statute that gives US federal courts jurisdiction to hear lawsuits filed by non-US citizens for torts committed in violation of international law. In recent years, plaintiffs have tried to use the ATS as a vehicle to hold multinational corporations liable for human rights violations…
More evidence that U.S. courts are continuing to shift towards greater accountability for corporations (and associated individuals) for social harm in their supply chains. Although it is too early to declare the ATS raised from the dead, a slew of other statutes on the books and in the legislative pipeline impose growing obligations on companies to both report and prevent forced labor, trafficking and other human rights abuses in supply chains. Bottom line: companies with…