Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-499_1a7d.pdf
Page Number: 70

Cite as:  584 U. S. ____ (2018) 

13 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

241 (1989), two aspects of the text of the ATS make clear
that  the  statute  allows  corporate  liability.    First,  the  text 
confers jurisdiction on federal district courts to hear “civil 
action[s]” for “tort[s].”  28 U. S. C. §1350.  Where Congress
uses  a  term  of  art  like  tort,  “it  presumably  knows  and
adopts  the  cluster  of  ideas  that  were  attached  to  [the] 
borrowed  word  in  the  body  of  learning  from  which  it  was
taken  and  the  meaning  its  use  will  convey  to  the  judicial 
mind  unless  otherwise  instructed.”    Morissette  v.  United 
States, 342 U. S. 246, 263 (1952). 

Corporations  have  long  been  held  liable  in  tort  under
the  federal  common  law.  See  Philadelphia,  W.,  &  B. R. 
Co.  v.  Quigley,  21  How.  202,  210  (1859)  (“At  a  very  early 
period,  it  was  decided  in  Great  Britain,  as  well  as  in  the
United  States,  that  actions  might  be  maintained  against 
corporations for torts; and instances may be found, in the
judicial  annals  of  both  countries,  of  suits  for  torts  arising
from  the  acts  of  their  agents,  of  nearly  every  variety”); 
Chestnut  Hill  &  Spring  House  Turnpike  Co.  v.  Rutter,  4 
Serg. & Rawle 6, 17 (Pa. 1818) (“[F]rom the earliest times
to  the  present,  corporations  have  been  held  liable  for
torts”).  This  Court  “has  assumed  that,  when  Congress
creates  a  tort  action,  it  legislates  against  a  legal  back­
ground of ordinary tort-related . . . rules and consequently 
intends its legislation to incorporate those rules.”  Meyer v. 
Holley, 537 U. S. 280, 285 (2003).  The presumption, then,
is  that,  in  providing  for  “tort”  liability,  the  ATS  provides 
for corporate liability. 

Second,  whereas  the  ATS  expressly  limits  the  class  of
permissible  plaintiffs  to  “alien[s],”  §1350,  it  “does  not 
distinguish  among  classes  of  defendants,”  Argentine  Re-
public v. Amerada Hess Shipping Corp., 488 U. S. 428, 438 
(1989).  That silence as to defendants cannot be presumed 
to be inadvertent.  That is because in the same section of 
the  Judiciary  Act  of  1789  as  what  is  now  the  ATS,  Con­
gress provided the federal district courts with jurisdiction