First enacted as part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Alien
Tort Statute (ATS) authorizes U.S. federal courts to hear civil
lawsuits by “aliens” for acts that violate the “law of nations.”
The law was apparently intended by its 18th-century drafters to
allow ambassadors and other foreign nationals to sue in federal
courts for assaults or other offenses committed in violation of
international law — acts that might cause diplomatic friction
for the new American republic if left unaddressed by state
courts. The law was virtually forgotten for its first 200 years
— until 1980, when human rights lawyers used it to sue a
Paraguayan official over the torture of a Paraguayan citizen. As
reinvented, the ATS has become the fountainhead for human rights
lawsuits against foreign government officials for actions in
their own countries. In the 1990s, plaintiffs’ lawyers began to
use the ATS to sue multinational corporations for violations of
international law. More than 120 lawsuits have been filed in
federal courts agai