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Page Number: 71

14 

JESNER v. ARAB BANK, PLC 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

over “all suits against consuls or vice-consuls.”  §9, 1 Stat.
76–77.  Where  Congress  wanted  to  limit  the  range  of 
permissible defendants, then, it clearly knew how to do so. 
Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 23 (1983) (“[W]here
Congress  includes  particular  language  in  one  section  of  a 
statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it 
is  generally  presumed  that  Congress  acts  intentionally 
and  purposely  in  the  disparate  inclusion  or  exclusion” 
(internal quotation marks omitted)).

Nothing  about  the  historical  background  against  which
the  ATS  was  enacted  rebuts  the  presumption  that  the 
statute  incorporated  the  accepted  principle  of  corporate
liability  for  tortious  conduct.  Under  the  Articles  of  Con­
federation,  the  Continental  Congress  was  unable  to  pro­
vide redress to foreign citizens for violations of treaties or 
the  law  of  nations,  which  threatened  to  undermine  the 
United  States’  relationships  with  other  nations.    See 
Kiobel,  569  U. S.,  at  123.    The  First  Congress  responded 
with, inter alia, the ATS.  Although the two incidents that
highlighted  the  need  to  provide  foreign  citizens  with  a
federal forum in which to pursue their grievances involved
conflicts between natural persons, see ante, at 7 (majority
opinion) (describing the assault by a French adventurer on
the Secretary of the French Legation and the arrest of one 
of  the  Dutch  Ambassador’s  servants  by  a  New  York  con­
stable),  there  is  “no  reason  to  conclude  that  the  First
Congress  was  supremely  concerned  with  the  risk  that
natural  persons  would  cause  the  United  States  to  be 
drawn  into  foreign  entanglements,  but  was  content  to
allow formal legal associations of individuals, i.e., corpora­
tions, to do so,” Doe v. Exxon Mobil Corp., 654 F. 3d 11, 47 
(CADC 2011), vacated on other grounds, 527 Fed. Appx. 7
(CADC  2013);  see  also  Brief  for  United  States  as  Amicus 
Curiae 6 (“The ATS was enacted to ensure a private dam­
ages  remedy  for  incidents  with  the  potential  for  serious 
diplomatic  consequences,  and  Congress  had  no  good  rea­