Major defeat for transnationalists at the Supreme Court

Those who would like to see US courts import so-called international law norms suffered a major defeat at the Supreme Court today. In the Kiobel case, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 5 justice majority (the Court’s liberals concurred in the judgment, but did not sign on to the Chief’s opinion), held that the Alien Tort Statute does not apply extraterritorially. Ed Whelan at Bench Memos pretty well sums up the significance of the ruling:

The ruling is a significant defeat for American transnationalists (like former State Department legal adviser Harold Koh) who aim to use American courts to import actual or supposed norms of international law to override the policies that American citizens adopt through the processes of representative government. Over the last three decades, the ATS has been a favorite tool of transnationalists. Through litigation alleging human rights abuses abroad by foreign governments, transnationalists have sought to have federal judges act in a way that intrudes on and interferes with the authority of the executive branch and Congress to manage our nation’s foreign affairs. Today’s ruling should put an end to much of that ATS litigation.

Read Ed’s full post here, and the Supreme Court opinions here.