Episode 50: Supreme Court Protects Corporate Impunity — Gutting the Alien Tort Statute
For much of U.S. history, people harmed abroad by American corporations have had few meaningful pathways into U.S. courts. Wage theft, child labor, trafficking, land grabbing, union busting – corporate impunity has long been insulated by the complexity of global supply chains. Even when the company was headquartered in the U.S., profited in the U.S., or made decisions in the U.S., the law often treated the harm as too distant, too foreign, or too complicated.
In this episode of Art of Citizenry, host Manpreet Kaur Kalra speaks with Charity Ryerson, Executive Director and Founder of Corporate Accountability Lab. Together, they examine the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a single sentence passed in 1789 that became one of the few legal pathways for people harmed by corporate impunity abroad to seek accountability in U.S. courts.
Over the past two decades, the Supreme Court has narrowed the ATS case by case. Then, in June 2026, the Court closed the door even further in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe I, a case alleging that the U.S. tech giant helped build a surveillance system used to identify, track, detain, and torture Falun Gong practitioners in China.
This episode traces the history of the ATS and examines what its further narrowing means for corporate accountability in an era of globalization and outsourced harm. We look at how corporations use subsidiaries, suppliers, contractors, and jurisdictional complexity to deflect responsibility, and we ask what pathways remain when one of the few tools for transnational accountability is closed even further.
We explore:
The origins of the Alien Tort Statute and why a single sentence from 1789 became so important to modern human rights litigation.
The Supreme Court’s gradual narrowing of the ATS (and why we shouldn’t be calling this an originalist interpretation)
What Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe I means for aiding-and-abetting liability and claims against U.S. corporations accused of enabling human rights abuses abroad.
Why aiding-and-abetting liability matters in cases where corporations may not directly commit abuses but allegedly provide the money, technology, logistics, security, or market pressure that makes those abuses possible.
The limits of the Torture Victim Protection Act, especially after Cisco, and what possibilities remain for holding individual corporate actors accountable.
Where advocates, lawmakers, communities, and movements can go from here.
At its core, this is a conversation about power: who gets access to justice, whose suffering is recognized by the courts, and what happens when corporations can profit across borders while accountability stops at the border.
“If we allow U.S. companies to substantially contribute to or assist foreign governments in torturing their own citizens, and we don’t want to hold them accountable in any way, we are setting ourselves up for a very problematic, concerning, and potentially scary future.”
—Charity Ryerson
Meet Our Guest
Charity Ryerson is an attorney, legal designer, activist and strategist with two decades of experience fighting corporate abuse around the globe. She is the Executive Director and Founder of Corporate Accountability Lab, where she leads a team of committed advocates who design, prototype and test new strategies to protect the world and her inhabitants from corporate misconduct. Before CAL, Charity litigated complex international human rights cases under the Alien Tort Statute, Torture Victim Protection Act and state tort law.
Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) was founded in 2017 in response to widespread corporate abuse of human rights and the environment, and the shrinking legal tools available to hold corporations accountable. CAL researches and maps human rights violations to develop creative legal strategies that can respond to corporate harm and support communities when existing legal pathways are not working.
Alien Tort Statute: A short history
The Alien Tort Statute (ATS), also referred to as the Alien Tort Claims Act, is only one sentence long. It reads: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”
A tort is a wrongdoing that causes another person to suffer harm or loss and creates legal liability for the party responsible. The goal is to address and provide relief to the victim. Essentially, tort law’s purpose is to give people a path to seek relief, to hold the responsible parties legally accountable, and to discourage similar harmful conduct in the future.
The ATS was passed by the very first Congress, as part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, and then it essentially sat dormant for almost two centuries until a single case in 1980 gave it new life. Filártiga v. Peña-Irala was a landmark case that allowed foreign citizens to sue individuals in U.S. federal courts for international human rights violations. However, since then, SCOTUS has narrowed the scope of the ATS through a series of decisions. There was Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., in which the Supreme Court limited the ATS's jurisdiction to violations occurring within the United States. In Jesner, it restricted the ability to sue foreign corporations. Not much later, in Nestlé, the Court further limited its applicability by ruling that the ATS cannot be used to sue corporations for overseas conduct unless there is a strong link to domestic conduct in the United States. Read about these cases below!
“If corporations can operate, move capital, and cause harm across borders, but accountability stops at the border, then the law is not neutral. It is helping build the architecture of impunity.”
—Manpreet Kaur Kalra
Concept: The Blackstone Three
The “Blackstone Three” refers to three founding-era examples of violations of the law of nations: piracy, crimes against ambassadors, and violations of safe conduct. The Court used the Blackstone Three not just as historical context, but as a limiting device, turning the ATS away from an evolving human rights statute and back toward a narrow set of founding-era concerns.
About the Case: Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe I
Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe I ultimately asked whether U.S. courts can hear claims against an American corporation accused of helping enable human rights abuses abroad. Brought before the U.S. Supreme Court, Falun Gong practitioners alleged that Cisco Systems helped design and customize surveillance infrastructure used by the Chinese government to identify, track, detain, and persecute members of their religious movement.
The plaintiffs argued that Cisco knowingly provided substantial assistance to the Chinese government and should be held liable under the Alien Tort Statute for aiding and abetting violations of international law. The Court rejected that path, holding that federal courts cannot create new causes of action under the ATS unless Congress clearly authorizes them. It also held that the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA) does not allow aiding-and-abetting claims. The decision further narrows one of the few legal tools available for transnational human rights accountability and makes it harder for people harmed abroad to bring claims in U.S. courts against American corporations accused of enabling abuse.
The Torture Victim Protection Act
The Torture Victim Protection Act, or TVPA, is a federal law passed in 1991 that gives victims a civil cause of action in U.S. courts for torture and extrajudicial killing. Unlike the Alien Tort Statute, it applies to individual defendants, not corporations, and it is limited to torture and extrajudicial killing. After Cisco, that pathway is even more constrained because the Supreme Court held that the TVPA does not allow aiding-and-abetting liability. In other words, plaintiffs cannot use the TVPA to sue someone merely for helping enable torture unless their conduct fits within a narrower language of directly “subjecting” someone to torture.
Why Does Aiding-and-Abetting Liability Matter?
Aiding-and-abetting liability matters because corporations often do not directly carry out the final act of harm. Instead, they may provide the money, technology, logistics, security support, market pressure, or infrastructure that makes abuse possible. In the context of global supply chains, this distinction is critical. A parent company may rely on subsidiaries, suppliers, subcontractors, etc., creating layers of legal distance between corporate decision-makers and the people harmed. Aiding-and-abetting liability offered one way to cut through that distance and ask whether a company knowingly helped enable human rights abuses, even if it did not directly commit them.
“Corporations don’t have hands and feet. They’re probably not going to be the ones holding the gun. Without aiding-and-abetting liability, it is very difficult to hold them accountable.”
—Charity Ryerson
Corporations or Pirates?
Are corporations simply modern-day pirates? Piracy was one of the original examples of conduct that crossed borders and threatened the international order. Pirates operated in the gaps between jurisdictions, and the law treated them as a concern for all nations. Today, multinational corporations also operate across borders, often using the complexity of global supply chains, subsidiaries, contractors, and legal jurisdictions to distance themselves from harm. The only difference is that corporations are often treated as engines of economic growth, even when their business models depend on exploitation or violence. And the legal system protects them, because the legal system wasn’t designed to account for the multinational corporations of today.
“In a globalized economy, accountability cannot depend only on who committed the final act of harm. It has to reach those who enabled it or created the conditions that facilitated it.”
—Manpreet Kaur Kalra
Cases Mentioned in this Episode
Doe v. Chiquita Brands International
Family members of Colombian victims sued Chiquita, alleging that the company financed the AUC, a paramilitary organization known for murders, massacres, torture, disappearances, and forced displacement. A federal jury later found Chiquita liable for financing the AUC and awarded damages to victims’ families.
Chiquita Litigation: Although the ATS claims were dismissed earlier in the litigation, a U.S. federal jury later found Chiquita liable under Columbian law, making the case a landmark example of corporate accountability for violence abroad.
📌 Related Read: The Landmark Ruling Against Chiquita Exposes the Failure of Voluntary “Corporate Social Responsibility” Chiquita’s financing of a Colombian paramilitary group while claiming a reputation as a “responsible corporate citizen” shows the need for robust civil society institutions. Read the In These Times Article!
Filártiga v. Peña-Irala
This 1980 Second Circuit case involved a Paraguayan woman who had fled to the United States and later encountered the man accused of torturing her brother to death. With support from the Center for Constitutional Rights, she brought a claim under the Alien Tort Statute, and the case helped revive the ATS as a modern human rights tool for abuses committed outside the United States.
Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain
This case arose after the DEA approved the forcible abduction of Humberto Alvarez-Machain from Mexico to the United States. The underlying claim focused on a short arbitrary detention. The Supreme Court held that this kind of brief detention did not rise to the level of a “law of nations” violation under the ATS, while also establishing a framework that left the door only slightly open for future claims.
Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.
This case involved claims brought on behalf of the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta, who alleged that Shell conspired with the Nigerian government in the repression and execution of leaders opposing oil extraction on Ogoni land. The case became a major turning point because the Supreme Court applied the presumption against extraterritoriality to the ATS, making it much harder for claims based on abuses abroad to proceed in U.S. courts.
Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC
Survivors and family members of victims of terrorist attacks abroad sued Arab Bank, a Jordanian financial institution, alleging that the bank helped finance and facilitate terrorist organizations through conduct that took place in the United States.
Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe
Six individuals from Mali alleged that they had been trafficked into Côte d’Ivoire as children and forced to work on cocoa farms. They sued Nestlé USA and Cargill under the ATS, arguing that the companies aided and abetted child slavery by buying cocoa from those farms and providing technical and financial support.
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