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JESNER v. ARAB BANK, PLC 

Syllabus 

tion  of  the  law  of  nations  or  a  treaty  of  the  United  States.”    28 
U. S. C. §1350.  The ATS is “strictly jurisdictional” and does not by its
own terms provide or delineate the definition of a cause of action for 
international-law violations.  Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U. S. 692, 
713–714.  It was enacted against the backdrop of the general common
law, which in 1789 recognized a limited category of “torts in violation 
of  the  law  of  nations,”  id.,  at  714;  and  one  of  its  principal  objectives
was to avoid foreign entanglements by ensuring the availability of a
federal forum where the failure to have one might cause another na-
tion  to  hold  the  United  States  responsible  for  an  injury  to  a  foreign
citizen,  see  id.,  at  715–719.    The  ATS  was  invoked  but  a  few  times 
over its first 190 years, but with the evolving recognition—e.g., in the 
Nuremberg  trials—that  certain  crimes  against  humanity  violate 
basic precepts of international law, courts began to give some redress 
for  violations  of  clear  and  unambiguous  international  human-rights 
protections.    After  the  Second  Circuit  first  permitted  plaintiffs  to
bring ATS actions based on modern human-rights laws, Congress en-
acted the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA), creating an
express cause of action for victims of torture and extrajudicial killing
in  violation  of  international  law.  ATS  suits  became  more  frequent; 
and modern ATS litigation has the potential to involve groups of for-
eign plaintiffs suing foreign corporations in the United States for al-
leged  human-rights  violations  in  other  nations.   In  Sosa,  the  Court 
held  that  in  certain  narrow  circumstances  courts  may  recognize  a 
common-law cause of action for claims based on the present-day law
of nations, 542 U. S., at 732, but it explicitly held that ATS litigation
implicates  serious  separation-of-powers  and  foreign-relations  con-
cerns,  id.,  at  727–728.    The  Court  subsequently  held  in  Kiobel  that 
“the presumption against extraterritoriality applies to [ATS] claims,”
569  U. S.,  at  124,  and  that  even  claims  that  “touch  and  concern  the 
territory  of  the  United  States  . . .  must  do  so  with  sufficient  force  to 
displace” that presumption, id., at 124–125.  Pp. 6–11.

(b) Sosa is consistent with this Court’s general reluctance to extend
judicially  created  private  rights  of  action.    Recent  precedents  cast
doubt on courts’ authority to extend or create private causes of action,
even in the realm of domestic law, rather than leaving such decisions 
to the Legislature, which is better positioned “to consider if the public
interest would be served by  imposing a new substantive legal liabil-
ity,”  Ziglar  v.  Abbasi,  582  U. S.  ___,  ___  (internal  quotation  marks 
omitted).  This  caution  extends  to  the  question  whether  the  courts
should exercise the judicial authority to mandate a rule imposing lia-
bility upon artificial entities like corporations.  Thus, in Correctional 
Services Corp. v. Malesko, 534 U. S. 61, 72, the Court concluded that 
Congress, not the courts, should decide whether corporate defendants