On the off chance that business interests prevail in the U.S. Supreme Court reargument of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum , alien tort plaintiffs may wish to review the record of corporate human rights litigation in English courts. This author’s study, published in fuller form in the year-end issue of the UC Irvine Law Review , suggests that companies might find themselves missing alien tort law.
In the mid-1990s, activist lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic sought a way to hold companies liable for human rights and environmental abuse committed in other nations. U.S. lawyers primarily chose the Alien Tort Statute. U.K. lawyers began to file old-fashioned common law tort suits. Notwithstanding the rivers of ink devoted to alien tort, common law theory has been surprisingly effective.
