ordinary rules of statutory construction and applying those tools here yields a straightforward result the traditional presumption that corporations can be held liable in civil actions for torts controls here now the bank's principal response is say that the a t f sometimes can create formulations issues when cases are brought against corporations but for two reasons that objection does not overcome the strong presumption of tort liability here first so cases do not involve four relation relations at all take piracy for example so the formulations argument cannot justify the categorical rule the second circuit has laid down in this area and indeed a categorical bar against corporate liability would itself create foreign relations problems along the lines the e t s was designed to put to solve and second even when there are foreign relations issues and perhaps this is even more important point there are many other doctrines readily available to courts to directly and effectively deal with those issues there's no need to use the mismatch theory of no corporate liability when you have tools available under the common law to address the i can swim they arise take the extra territoriality holding of first and foremost as the court stressed in that case the theory of the exit territoriality present anti tax extraterritoriality presumption is to keep the u s out of foreign relations friction by applying its law overly aggressively to incidents elsewhere in the world now after kiel bull i would suggest that that exit territoriality holding has had its attendant effect there are many statistics cited on the other side about the number of eighty yes suits that have been brought over the past couple of decades but the relevant question for this court is what does the landscape look like now in the post cuba world and the chamber of commerce actually done a study on this and that study noted that at the time of there were forty cases pending against corporations in the two years after keogh ball over seventy percent of those cases were dismissed on exit territoriality grounds and another ten percent were dismissed for other reasons so now then there  where our personal jurisdiction case about corporation yes three hundred to them at their corporate headquarters or principal place of business back take care of most of the next thirty percent that would take care of general jurisdiction claims of course here we have a specific tourist action claim in the bank because of its presence in new york has never even made a personal jurisdiction argument but yes just a sort of my or that would be another tool available to district courts and so now what you have is a very very small universe of cases manage boy universe of cases one that makes the us position in this respect very much like other courts in the world particularly our close allies in europe and otherwise in north america as a comparative last caller's brief points out and there is no reason whatsoever to have this anyone i'm concerned about the foreign entanglement issue i mean we passed this statute to avoid foreign entanglements because we wanted to provide a forum for someone like the french ambassador in the long shown here but i'm wondering if extending it to corporate liability is in fact going to have the same problematic result of increasing our entanglements as it obviously has here with respect to the government of jordan i think you asked that the first question is where else could lawsuits like this be brought if they just forty three and forty four of our blue brief and pages fifteen through i believe that about nineteen of the comparative law scholar is brief there's a survey of other jurisdictions in the world i'm not talking a lot of jurisdictions that allow suit against corporate defendants i'm talking about a case like this one for an activity for a defendant brought in a jurisdiction against a corporation seeking monetary relief and that not understanding that the availability of this sort of relief is pretty unique here yes and no mr chief justice i want to be clear the more refined question you just asked me was the one i was answering so those examples i gave you are examples like this with corporate defendants for international law violations conducted in other parts of comparative last dollars brief this is this is a case where a bank itself had a branch in the united states and so it's sort of an i'm at this sort of in between a totally foreign defendant and something inside the country but to turn exists so what you have in other parts of the world is you have just regular tort claims that can be brought or in the netherlands you can bring a claim directly under us under a treaty and other case in other countries in europe you can bring an attendant civil claim attached to criminal prosecutions for violations of the law nations and it brings me back to what is the unusual about the a t s and it ties into our history with the first congress member of the spring to get back to the purpose of the yes congress did not want these cases to be brought in state court and they do want more precisely didn't want to leave it up to the states as to whether to allow these claims in the first place so it's a feature of our unique federalism that we have this statute in a statutory way that allows these claims to be well off we look at that purpose when we are dealing with when i'll call step two of sosa so the question of whether we should recognize a federal common law claim under particular circumstances should we in a fact balance the international repercussions of deciding the issue one way or the other so if we hold that corporations can be sued under the under the alley and toward statute we have a fair idea that there are going to they're going to be cases like this one and like e o ball they do raise foreign relations concerns now there are some that you can hypothesize on the other side but are they at all comparable  forum in the united states for a case against a corporation is what will have equally serious foreign policy consequences well let me start by agreeing with you that yes as a matter of your step tussaud's authority you can and should look in part to international implications of having a cause of action like this but my first answer to your question is that insofar as you have those concerns you should deal with it with other documents like extraterritor said justice ginsburg so so holds that you do not look to international or you do look to international law for defining the norm under which the course of action is proceeding but i think just as a leader was also right that once you've gotten past that which is not in front of a court here as a matter of the common law making authority to manage the civil action that is the cause of action under the a t s one of the touchstones could be international law but if i could return to justice alito those questions so first of all there's a mismatch between their theory and the solution there are other doctrines more available and just imagine other situations remember their theory would be exactly the same if it were a u s corporation that was a defendant in this case and indeed if the terror attacks that occurred in the us you're talking about very serious foreign policy implications at that point take also as i said piracy slave trading child labor practices that might occur in this country who have to ask yourself if it's a u s corporation won't there be other grounds on which hundred nine and think of concrete examples so we know the example of the french a french citizen assaults a french diplomat in philadelphia there were there could be foreign policy repercussions for the united states if the federal courts didn't provide a forum for that suit that's sent to be the thinking behind the a t f so suppose the french diplomat is assaulted by a british subject on the ship coming to the united states but still in international waters at the time of the of the assault now would that with the first congress have wanted that to be heard in federal court where you happened put us in exactly the situation between these two superpowers that we want to avoid what i think just as alito answer that question would be an application of extraterritoriality doctrine it would not be an application of a no corporate liability rule just a return to seven hundred eighty nine imagine the process server which was one of the other examples that gave rise to the act working for a corporation and as the united states points out in its brief it would make no sense to have think congress would have thought the corporation for which the process server was working shouldn't be subject to suit and i know you talk to the first curable argument about the example of piracy and unfortunately today that's an example that resound that that is important not just then but today and piracy operations can be in a corporate form is mr you have to looking back to s american citizen that might be tagged to the united states itself and because for just war by a foreign power and that that was the purpose of the a t s would he say about that and relatedly if international law was not part of the federal law itself in seven hundred eighty nine and i think there's an argument that that's what the congress understood to then don't you need an american defendant in order to have diversity jurisdiction so it's that i take your first question  remember the day long champed example involved two french women so that's i think a direct rule you get the ambassador provision as well which is separate part of the constitution and d t s was arguably meant to do more than well i think it just shows you that a foreign defendant could be a problem but if you could i think we have a separate statute in seventy nine to deal with that issue too so that's that doesn't answer my question well i think that you know there are there have been many many examples another example the attorney general's example of the irrigation company that he did in one thousand and seven that you said could be subject to the a t f nobody thought that was incorrect and have been numerable other cases with foreign defendants and foreign plaintiffs and as long as it touches and concerns this country and this is the holding of kyogle then we think it's a probability answer my question about what the expectation was in seventy nine i think you said tells us should govern are our review the understanding i my understanding of have been a proper use of congress those powers under the defined and punish clause i don't doubt that's what we've some some suggested since then but do we know that was the understanding that congress and seventy nine seems like professor believe clarke authors of  have suggested maybe otherwise i think there was been a row both i'm sorry a robust set of arguments made about the history of the a t s and how it should be interpreted just as a course that i think those were hashed out in sosa and so i think that that position in sosa didn't carry the day and what carried the day and so was the notion that international law was received into this country as part of the federal common law and therefore when the eighty says that cause of action can be brought for places and to and to make stat to make it absolutely clear as a statutory matter that the federal courts had jurisdiction as part of as you know part of the first judiciary act the same way that merited your team thirty one right so the same way that maritime law maritime jurisdiction is more specifically set out in the in the first edition area congress wanted to make absolutely clear because of the history that the court has canvassed in that we dorothy discussed today the unit will to be brought in federal you've referred to the extra territoriality doctrine as one that would limit the application of the a t s in cases that have foreign relations but i don't know how much limitation that's going to impose if if  it is if the presumption against extraterritoriality is satisfied whenever a foreign financial transaction is cleared through new york justice league of course that issue isn't front of you and nobody's and so we're not asking you to resolve it in either of the united states but i'd say two things in respect to that if you want to think about that issue for purposes of this case the amicus brief on our side by four former financial regulators and financial regulation scholars explain that dollar clearing as the as the function is called is actually a core function of finance and it's so important at the federal government itself exercises jurisdiction over any bank that does it and hold it liable under the bank secrecy act the foreign corrupt practices act in this very case are and the facts giving rise to this very case we know the federal government imposed a very heavy sanction on air bank for using its new york branch in the way it did so i would i would i would push back a little bit i take your point that that's not in this case but if it were in this case that what you just said does raise mr clements argument that there are many better ways perhaps dealing with you know financial regulation generally then allowing private suits to deal with those sorts turn to your question we just don't think is it is just a red herring to point to all of the various banking regulations that exist in the world we're not proceeding under any banking regulations you know the bank would like to tell a story to this court about it being a negligent an innocent actor in this in this scenario but that's not what the factual allegations are and it's not even what the district court has found that we proved in the eighty eight part of this case what we allege is knowing in purposeful financing of terrorism with the expectation that it will make those terrorism attacks more successful and more lucrative for the perpetrators and that is a violation of the law of nations the court does not need to worry that there's going to be a flood of lawsuits against banks or any other financial actors  are you asking me whether that's acceptable doctrine yes yes i think in footnote twenty one and so so the court suggested that that may well be a requirement for a cause of action like this it doesn't apply in this case justice ginsburg because the bank argued in the district court only that we should have brought this case in jordan and we responded to that argument with many many problems with that suggestion the district court rejected it and the bank did not appeal that finding so there was no adequate forum available to us and secondly justice ginsburg it's worth remembering that this case began as a combined cause of action for the alien plaintiffs and of the eighty s and for the u s national plaintiffs under the eighty eight so it made every bit of sense for efficiency concerns to bring in a single forum with a single judge these joint claims that deal with the same core factual allegations your theory of your teeth is the socialist step one where we see that there is a specific universal mor superior on their own this does impose a norm in the sense that those corporations what they must do how they must run their business that seems to me and more now i think justice sense because the us rule here is responding it's a period or and that's the rule shared by the vast majority of civilized legal systems and then all that rule then tells you to ask is conform their behavior that seems to me to be a norm justice kennedy i think there are other things that might influence the way a corporation acts limitations periods rules of evidence that will apply in any course of action so just the mere fact that it's going to influence corporate behavior does not make it a norm question under step one of sosa and let me say one other thing which i think also response of justice alito is question another place the court has looked to understand how to apply international laws to what the government says in the last two administrations the last two state departments have agreed that this is not a sosa step one question this is a question simply of remedies that international law leads to local jurisdictions and we think that deserves some weight and indeed it's clear that if i do understand what you're saying and you're saying that a norm is just a standard of conduct and doesn't have anything to do with the enforcement of that standard that's right at the basic point yes justice kagan so i'll reserve the rest of my time thank you counsel mr fletcher thank you mr chief justice and may please the court in the government's view for some of the reasons that justice alito alluded to earlier there's a serious question of whether the claims in this case have a sufficient connection in the united states to proceed in u s court under wrong result because it looked to the wrong source of law mr fletcher could you answer the beginning question the implications of holding in this case in the petitioners favor why are you less worried about the international the impact on international relations because our adversaries are telling us that we should be worried that they're right and i think they're absolutely correct that e t s litigation in recent decades has raised international friction indeed as this case has raised international friction but in our view the way to deal with that friction is with the doctrine that speaks directly to the international entanglement extraterritoriality as this court did in kiel eble and as it can further do as those those questions arise but i think one way to illustrate that point is to ask whether this case would produce less international friction if it had been brought against the high ranking officers and employees of the bank robber than against the bank itself and i think the answer is you would still have some degree of international friction if you had suits against corporate officers and employees and what that tells you is that the way to deal with international friction is by carefully defining as this court has begun to do already in killable the types of violations that are remediable but i think once you have a remedial i a lesion that's really the way we  the question here that however i'm sorry i was going to say we didn't answer the question here by saying once you carefully defined those violations the law of nations that ought to give rise to a remedy in u s courts what should the scope of that remedy be and when you view it in that when we don't see a reason to categorically exclude corporate life i think this might be a question along the same lines on page seven of your brief if i could just read one sentence you say that the function of the a t s is to ensure private damages remedies in circumstances where other nations might hold the united states accountable if you did not provide a remedy who's going to hold us accountable what other nations in this case if we didn't provide a remedy well i think there's  we don't see a reason i think to me the other nations are holding us accountable for providing a remedy and that's why we say at the tail end of our brief that we have serious questions about whether or not this case belongs in u s court precisely because it is extraterritorial potentially again we haven't expressed a definitive view on that because parts of the record are sealed but we understand the principle connection to the u s to be the clearing of dollar denominated transactions through new york and we've taken the view that that's not sufficient to displace the presumption against extraterritoriality if we follow your recommendation we remain in this to the second circuit then the second circuit holds as it may very well light of its precedence that there is no extraterritoriality problem here then what happens then there has to be a trial before the issue can be brought here again see two things about that i think the first one of the b if the second circuit did that there'd be another opportunity for a review in this court and also to your point about at what point i would think you have on remand the second circuit issues another decision deciding extraterritoriality issue mr client would be back here with another short petition asking for a review of that question once you have been decided by the second circuit but i also i think your point about the second circuit precedent speaks to the case that mr clement cites at the end of his brief the ichi decision but the observation i make about that is that that also involved allegations about clearing transactions to new york and the second circuit a panel of it stated that that was sufficient to overcome the presumption against extraterritoriality i think everyone though agrees that that was dicta because the case was ultimately dismissed on corporate liability grounds and i think also it's important to member that there's a petition  corporate defendant would another country hold us accountable if we didn't provide a remedy i think the classic ones are the ones that this court suggested in kiel eble which of the heartland of what congress had in mind when it enact the statute which was foreign officials injured in the united states we know from the history that led up to the enactment of a statute my boss in one thousand nine hundred eighty seven incident involving the dutch ambassador at those sorts of violations could give rise to international friction and that the purposes of this court said was to provide an adequate remedy a federal forum and an adequate remedy for those individuals to avoid the possibility of friction what you're saying is that in those sorts of classic cases why would the foreign government care that the perpetrator was a corporation rather than an individual and if anything i think it cuts the other way because i think because as we point out tort remedies always in virtually all circumstances include the possibility of recovering from the corporate employer when a corporation commits the tort we think actually there's the possibility of friction or at least defeating the purpose of providing an adequate remedy if you say in this class of tort cases you do not get that normal tournament we think in fact to be very odd to say that when the whole point the statute and says we understand it and that is the court has understood it is to provide an additional form and counsel it might not be because it's be an american defendant against whom the united states might be chargeable for a just war wasn't what he said that scholarship that suggests that that's the key to the idea of what causes friction and alien versus alien causes of action are within the statute i a separate statute to deal with that exact problem and seventy nine this was to deal with something else an additional beyond the ambassador real problem i'm not sure that the court has suggested that that actually got you've got professor blee a professor clarke a whole bunch of really interesting scholarship on this point i'm just wondering what the government's point of view is on i think the government's point of view is that that is not the understanding of the statute that we understand this court to have taken and so so he'll bowl in part because in both of those cases you had aliens on both sides that was she does so so what while i think this court i certainly understand the more blind side and as a key to interpret what congress was trying to accomplish in the alien tort statute i think it illustrates even if that particular assault on ambassadors might have been remedied able under another statute it illustrates the point that foreign nations didn't observe the limitation that you are suggesting they didn't only hold us accountable when bad things were done to their nationals or their officials might explain why this statute exists in addition to that other one well i guess the other one involves all i think is i don't remember exactly how please just a different kind of question which is you're here saying there shouldn't be an automatic bar against corporate liability but i wonder if you have any view and if not just say no as to what the scope of corporate liability might be in other words some folks have said well in this context corporate liability might be only available for actions that were directed at high levels of the corporation as opposed to anything that any old employee of a corporation did and i'm wondering whether you've thought through that question we haven't taken a view on it i think the probably the most prominent advocate of that view that i'm aware of this judge posner's opinion from the seventh circuit in florida where he made that suggestion the one thing i would say about that actually is that i understand his opinion to be suggesting that that more limited version of corporate liability would be appropriate in large part because he assumed that this statute applied extraterritoriality and he was concerned about holding corporation liable for something that happened in some far flung office resolved quickly there may be more actual friction from a trial thank you counsel mr quinn mr chief justice in may it please the court this case arises out of a suit by israeli nationals against a corporation chartered in jordan for injuries suffered in israel and the adjoining territories the defendant is not just chartered by the kingdom of jordan but it's closely regulated by jordan and its central bank now there are a host of problems with this lawsuit not the least of which is there is nothing approaching a specific universal obligatory norm under international law that imposes obligations directly on corporations and try as they might the other side really can't deny or snoozing reality or national that makes people civilly liable for international torts there's never been an international court that has held an individual responsible for the norm is the conduct should you be financing terrorist or not should you commit piracy or not should you commit slavery genocide any of the other prohibited international acts against humanity but so it's ok if there's no civil liability international civil liability for an individual was the a t s a violation of that norm of the norm you're trying to create that doesn't exist no but just to sort of i think it's critical that in your various formulations international law does speak to who is the you who is the actor that can violate international law you or new the state or you as an individual but more is you the artificial juridical entity and there is a body of international law that speaks specifically to that both in the criminal context and the civil liability context and in neither context is there anything approaching a universal  disc race and knocked away his cane that the statute was passed to give the french ambassador a cause of action against that private person so we know that sometimes the norm even though it addresses what state supposed to do directly is also telling the private actor not to do it it's close enough now when you look at this case what they've cited is for example the international convention for the  financing of terrorism which we've ratified but which says that states must take necessary measures to enable a legal entity located in its territory or organized under its laws to be held liable it sounds like a corporation and it sounds like the relation is the same as the international norm to the individual who struck the french ambassador in the street and then similarly the un security council has required states to prohibit persons and entities within their territory from financing terrorism then we've implemented those through the antiterrorism act and there are other states that  incorporated it and there are other examples so when you say there is no such example it seemed to me that the briefs are full of examples that are designed to make the point that the relationship between the corporation and the international norm is the same as the relationship between the private individual who struck the french ambassador and the international law at that time now what is your response well i have multiple responses your honor just as prior starting with the concerning seven hundred eighty nine was that some individual might strike the french ambassador there wasn't a concern that some artificial derivable entity would rise up and strike the ambassador and then the question would well really but why would it have mattered suppose that there was a corporation that had a beef about the ambassador and sent one of its employees to go strike the ambassador and send a judgment for the employee to go strike the ambassador why would france have cared well i think france would care that there would be some and some individual probably the actual tortfeasor which in that case would be the individual who could be held responsible and of course congress says person or entity and the norms that i read to you say person or entity and if it were an american corporation i can't imagine why if it fell within the international norm you would free it of liability so so how does it answer the question i raised to say corporations are never liable given that given that i don't i just want to be sure i get it i am part and what i would tell you is there is nothing approaching that and i would start with though i would like to if i could go through the criminal provisions and the civil liability efforts under other tre but i'd start with the financing convention and i would tell you it's very important to read article two in article five in contradistinction with each other and you will see that they are very different section two article two makes it unlawful as a matter of international law imposes a duty on a person it doesn't define person but then if you look at article five it's crystal clear that the persons in article two do not include legal entities that are addressed separately in article five and article five is different can make it individual cooperation whatever it like but in elsewhere in the world is there a distinction made between individuals in cooperation when the international norm applies to private persons yes absolutely and i mean you know you can start with nuremberg and then you could go to all the international criminal tribunals that have been set up whether for yugoslavia rwanda or the rome statute all of them have made in such a limited interest dollars here who pointed out the criminal law is different than civil and the brief that was cited by mr fisher points out that there are many many nations that hold individuals and corporations civilly liable for violations of the international norms so where do we find international arms if not in the behavior of international company of international countries i don't think show us with enormous i don't think there is a norm to hold corporations liable for violations of international law especially under jurisdictional circumstances like this where the united states is a stranger to the dispute but i do want to make clear and i want to come back if i get a chance to say why the criminal provisions are highly relevant but it's not like international law hasn't thought about the idea of imposing civil liability directly on corporations as a matter of international law there are six treaties that purport to do that they're collected in footnote forty of judge promises opinion at one sixteen a of the petition appendix all six of those treaties impose corporate liability directly civil corporate liability directly under international law what is so telling about those six treaties is that the united states has signed exactly none of them and so i think when you are looking under sosa for a universal obligatory and specific norm one of the first things you look to is whether this is so well established that the united states has signed some of the treaties and the idea in six treaties  think the reason i said i don't agree before is because when you're talking about a standard of conduct under so it's clear that you have to find this universal body of law but that's different from enforcement mechanisms it's different you know we have s other countries have different things nobody requires an e t s like provision nobody so as to enforcement i mean where where do you get the understanding that that's a question where all countries have to agree to the same thing you know is as far as i understood your brief you're only getting it from that sosa footnote twenty which really does not make that point at all no but just as you yourself pointed out in the first argument and key a bell if the footnote does specifically look to international law to figure out whether non state actors are covered it's a little odd that it wouldn't also look to international law to address the question of whether artificial to ridicule individuals or entities are covered by the norm so i do think the logic of what got the court to where it did extends here but i have other answers too which is i think that i agree that there should be of you know what do other countries do when is this likely to get us into trouble with other countries or not i mean that should come into play at some point when we're trying to figure out what kind of claims to accept and i think even mr fisher agrees with that i don't think we have to ask about you know is it a uniform norm that every country except but rather we have a set of rules under our domestic system which does hold corporations accountable and if we use that as the typical enforcement mechanism is that going to get us into trouble with other foreign countries is it going to create international friction and it seems to me that that's the level at which all these international slash foreign relations concerns come into play and i would disagree with you there and i don't want to sound sort of chevron ask here but i think the question is do you look at that at step one or do you look at its up to yes and i think it's important because i think it's pretty clear and this is presumably why you disagreed with me but i think it's pretty clear that at step one the burden is on my friends to show that it's a universal specific obligatory norma's international law i would suggest an all in force meant mechanisms have to be the same worldwide and they just don't see i would take issue with the premise of your question that the extent of corporate liability is just an enforcement question i don't think that's actually right if you look at what they cite in their brief they don't cite the restatement of remedies they state the restatement of ality required by associate do you think they have joined in so i mean that's also an american concept would that have to be accepted by every country in the world i don't know that it would because i think the concept of joint and several liability might get you closer to a remedial question i do think whether or not a corporation is directly liable under international law is a question that should be answered at step one and i think it's important to recognize that if you say corporations are liable then you sort of have to answer the question of well how and on that it's not just judge posner if you look at the financing convention this is the other thing that's very interesting about article five of the financing convention and the relevant part is on page thirty one of the read brief but it actually addresses the circumstances in which a corporation could be liable under domestic law for a terrorist finance violation and it does not apply the american concept of respondeat superior or such that the master is responsible for every act of the agent within the scope of agency instead it specifies that it is only their own that other countries are only supposed to impose liability when someone in a control or management position commits one of the primary violations under article two the convention so that's not an american conception of corporate liability it does show that international obligations speak to these questions they just don't speak to them with anything like the kind of universal ality and specificity that i thought ruling well i quite agree with you i looked at the footnote and you can't get very far by pointing to six treaties that we didn't or others didn't sign but let's look we did some time and what we did sign were the two i mentioned and not only three things one we signed those two we've implemented those we've implemented those by saying that it is unlawful for corporations to finance terrorism and three if you had a rule of international law that said you cannot finance terrorists who do you think it would apply to i mean maybe it applies to a few billionaires but i mean other than that if it doesn't apply to corporations who does  apply to so i mean you have those three things that i think argue that in this case this provision of international law does seem when you want to say no that's wrong because because you start with the fact that the convention itself doesn't impose the international law obligation itself it leaves it to domestic law now you're right we passed a statute that provides a remedy the eighty eight we went out of our way to limit the scope of plaintiffs under the eighty a to us nationals and that helps eliminate friction with other countries because it's an understandable norm of international law that we have a special relationship with our own nationals so of course we want to provide a remedy to them when they're victims of terrorism even if they're injured abroad we want to do that so all of those are reasons that i think very much cut against doing this under the a t s and let me tell y you violated a statute but that you would have violated some specific universal obligatory norms so you are essentially an enemy of mankind so as much as my clients would not like to be an e t a defendant they would really really really not like to be labeled an enemy of mankind and let's talk about it but the sad thing about a crime like that mr clement you know there's a lot in this lawsuit which i think you have plenty of things to gripe about in this lawsuit is the question is do you have something to gripe about as to this particular point which is corporate versus individual liability and so just just assume a different lawsuit so there is an american corporation so the defendant is an american corporation and it uses slave labor and it uses slave labor of people in the united states or the work is done in the united states the activity is and then ited states of a particular nationality and in the country from which these people come thinks that this is a pretty awful thing and and you're saying that there shouldn't be a t s liability against the corporation in that circumstance even though they are using slave labor clearly violate in an international norm even though in our domestic system the manner of the method of enforcement we usually use is corporate liability and even though this is a case in which the other country thinks who cares if it's a corporation we want our people to be able to recover justice kagan of course that's a tough hypo but the answer to the tough hypo is there's absolutely no obstacle to use the a t s to sue all of the individuals that took the action and if you sue the individuals you are certainly going to make us accountable to the thing you have and not to have very much money but well actually people who work especially in management positions in corporations tend to have a fair amount of money and so i think you are in that scenario in your hypothetical you're going to find plenty of deep pocketed defendants you're not going to have the mens rea a requirement problems which is why all of these corporate entities have been left out of the international criminal tribunals and those same mens rea of problems apply absolutely the same in an intentional tort like this so you're going to my humble point to you is yeah at first blush it might seem a little weird that the u s corporations not to defend it but there are plenty of other potential u s defendants that all of void the diplomatic friction and then the costs on the other side of allowing the foreign corporations to be sued if you applied the same logic here this  wouldn't happen if you actually limit this to the people who are actually liable under under a recall five of the financing convention people in management control positions all of those people are in jordan so the corporate form here  a little bit of compensated exactly and that's why i did want to answer justice kagan even on the terms of the yes there would still be defendants here in america that could bring could be proper defendants in those actions they would be u s citizens are not don't think i'm going to chance to say but there is a lot to the already make us want to do in that i'm suggesting desist mr clement and this is reflected in your brief you spend a lot of time essentially saying this is one of those foreign q tip cases that we dealt with in bill and that might be right but the question of corporate versus individual liability is a question that's entirely orthogonal to that i mean that you can come up with a very very domestic looking suit that raises the question of corporate versus individual liability and that that suit when you focus on it leads you to say why on earth would you draw a distinction of this kind just skating that's a great word but i don't think it describes the relationship between corporate liability and these extraterritorial suits i don't think it's an accident that each time you get one of these foreign cubed cases that it's a foreign corporation i don't think it's an accident that each time it comes up it's really attractive to maybe duck the corporate liability question and decide the extraterritoriality question first of all thank goodness we don't really have a lot of us corporations that are violating international law right here in america but if they did there be plenty of defendants under the s and under other provisions so the real incidence of this the real impact of corporate liability is the ability to get a company a corporation like era bank that's a cornerstone of the jordanian economy and you get i mean here you cause all sorts of diplomatic friction and then as a bonus you don't have to worry about whether the mens rea of somebody in jordan and the mens rea of somebody who process the transaction in the united states whether any of those actually satisfy the requirements  there was which just shows that there's only a toehold of us concern here which is the dollar clearing transactions in the united states and there is a far far better way for the law to address that concern than with a thirty three w jurisdictional statute passed in seven hundred eighty nine and that's really what this comes down to at the end of the day i mean obviously sosa left the door ajar for some kinds of a t s cases but with respect i do not think so so left the door ajar for cases like this thank you thank you counsel for minutes mr fisher thank you i'd like to turn to questions three justices have asked starting with justice kennedy your question towards the end of my time about of the extra two or two without any concerns and everything else just this court straightforwardly said that citing the provision there that said who could be sued that that was part of the remedial structure of the little tucker act and we think that makes sense because that is at the heart of the notion of corporate personhood where the court has said time and again is a part of the corporate bargain is that you get privileges and opportunities but you also have burdens of being held liable in tort actions one additional thing on that i think it's important to point you to the a indeed congress made clear in the eighty that it was exercising its power under the defined and punish clause and so the congress understood to be codified a cause of action for a violation international law and as my opponent even  in corporations mr chief justice you asked about accountability of the united states in the history of the alien tort statute i just want to make sure the court remembers that piracy is one of the quintessential concerns congress had in mind and that's a little bit different than simply another country taking us to war that was the notion that certain conduct makes somebody an enemy of all mankind and if you take that concern of piracy historically and compare it to terrorism today we think the parallels are quite obvious and even if we had to prove that this is a situation where some other country would be mad imagine israel's view if our financing of our entire finance system could be used in access to to com do commit terrorist attacks make them easier make them more deadly make the funding more effective israel if this if suits like this were taken away is and countries like it might well have a complaint to the united states and finally just as course i want to turn back to your question about the history and make two additional points one is piracy is just sort of sort of more pointed out i think also is a very difficult thing to account for into the theory you've described secondly i would just bring you back to the ordinary why is that because pirates wouldn't be they wouldn't be citizens of the united states right but if we're not responsible for it he wouldn't be the cause of a just war against us and therefore not a cause of concern under the yes no but bill that brings me back to my other point oh good i'm so first one we can put aside no no it was piracy is something that doesn't exactly fall into the same rubric but the second point is i would just point to the plain text of the act and as we've pointed out quite clearly in our brief congress went out of its way to specify aliens  as plaintiffs yes yes but if congress was so careful to do that if it had wanted only u s nationals to be defendants you have to ask the question why congress would have been specific on the argument that i've been developing it isn't mine i can't take credit for it but it i very careful argument that has been developed and that is exactly what those words meant to the first congress no but i think that as the court said in amerada hess congress did not limit the scope of defendants and again if you look at the rest of the judiciary act other provisions we point out  our brief did limit the scope of proper defendants so who was a proper a plaintiff and who was a proper defendant in the jurisdictional provisions congress was creating was very much at the center of congress's mind and so we think the plaintext if nothing else and the plain text is the law of nations and the argument to be i'm not doing it justice but is is briefly that that a law of nations would have meant something that would be a truly denied states and the only thing that would have been attributable indicted states an act by u s citizens well on that level we simply disagree with the concept of law of nations as as as has been pointed out law of nations deals with the conduct not the enforcement thank you counsel cases submitted