Why does the guy who writes the Alien Tort Claims Act Blog decide to go silent just as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum?
Well, I have a job that doesn’t usually concern itself with Kiobel, and I’ve been on the road quite a bit of late. With my sincere apologies, here is a little of what I’ve missed:
– Steve Nickelsburg of Clifford Chance has a year-end summary of Alien Tort Claims Act and Torture Victims Protection Act developments, with an eye toward due diligence and corporate liability.
– Illustrations from the oral argument.
– SCOTUSblog has its own Kiobel/Mohamad round-up.
– The WSJ Law Blog summary.
– Justice Breyer has the best quip of the Kiobel oral argument:
“Do you think in the 18th century, if they’d brought Pirates Inc., and we get all their gold, and Blackbeard gets up, and he says, ‘Oh, it isn’t me; it’s the corporation,’ – do you think that they would have then said: ‘Oh, I see, it’s a corporation. Good-bye. Go home,'” Breyer asked, prompting laughter in the courtroom, according to the transcript.
– Comments from Prof. Alberto Bernabe of The John Marshall Law School. He says it doesn’t look good for the future of the ATS.
– Do spy technology companies have any risk under ATS/ATCA?
– Elsewhere, General Motors settles its South African apartheid case after a decade.
– I get endless entertainment from the hilariously ignorant and belligerent comments on WSJ articles.
Alien Tort Claims Act Blog 