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Page Number: 26.0

6 

NESTLE USA, INC. v. DOE 

SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring
Opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J. 

legislation”).  In other words, from the moment the ATS be-
came law, Congress expected federal courts to identify ac-
tionable  torts  under  international  law  and  to  provide  in-
jured plaintiffs with a forum to seek redress. 

That historical fact must guide jurists when determining 
“whether  allowing  [a]  case  to  proceed  under  the  ATS  is  a 
proper exercise of judicial discretion.”  Id., at ___ (plurality 
opinion)  (slip  op.,  at  12).  JUSTICE  THOMAS  suggests  that 
courts may recognize a cause of action under the ATS only 
“in very limited circumstances,” if at all.  Ante,  at 5.  But 
the ATS calls for much more.  The First Congress made the 
legislative determination that a remedy should be available 
under the ATS to foreign citizens who suffer “tort[s] . . . in 
violation of the law of nations.”  28 U. S. C. §1350.  Barring 
some  extraordinary  collateral  consequence  that  could  not 
have been foreseen by Congress, federal courts should not, 
under the guise of judicial discretion, second-guess that leg-
islative decision. 

JUSTICE THOMAS therefore  errs  in asserting that  courts 
“plac[e] great stress on the separation of powers” when they 
recognize causes of action under the ATS.  Ante, at 7.  That 
would be news to the First Congress, which from the begin-
ning counted on federal courts to “recognize enforceable in-
ternational  norms”  in order  to  give  the  ATS  “practical  ef-
fect.”    Sosa,  542  U. S.,  at  719,  730.  To  now  suggest  that 
identifying  actionable  torts  “risks  ‘upset[ting]  the  careful 
balance of interests struck by the lawmakers’ ” is ahistorical 
at best.  Ante, at 8 (quoting Hernández v. Mesa, 589 U. S. 
___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 5); brackets in original). 

Indeed, one need look no further than the text of the ATS 
to understand the task that the First Congress assigned to 
the Federal Judiciary.  As originally enacted, the ATS gave 
federal courts “cognizance . . . of all causes where an alien 
sues for  a tort  only in violation  of  the  law  of nations  or  a 
treaty of the United States.”  §9, 1 Stat. 77.  Congress did 
not need to legislate those “causes” into existence because