Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-499_1a7d.pdf
Page Number: 87.0

30 

JESNER v. ARAB BANK, PLC 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

norms, and the former does not.12
for 
  Furthermore,  holding  corporations  accountable 
violating  the  human  rights  of  foreign  citizens  when  those
violations  touch  and  concern  the  United  States  may  well
be necessary to avoid the international tension with which
the  First  Congress  was  concerned.  Consider  again  the 
assault  on the  Secretary  of  the  French  Legation  in  Phila­
delphia by a French adventurer.  See supra, at 14; ante, at 
7  (majority  opinion).    Would  the  diplomatic  strife  that 
followed really have been any less charged if a corporation
had  sent  its  agent  to  accost  the  Secretary?  Or,  consider 
piracy.  If  a  corporation  owned  a  fleet  of  vessels  and  di­
rected  them  to  seize other  ships  in  U. S.  waters,  there  no
doubt  would  be  calls  to  hold  the  corporation  to  account.
See  Kiobel,  621  F. 3d,  at  156,  and  n. 10  (observing  that
“Somali  pirates  essentially  operate  as  limited  partner­
ships”).  Finally, take, for example, a corporation posing as 
a  job-placement  agency  that  actually  traffics  in  persons,
forcibly  transporting  foreign  nationals  to  the  United 
States for exploitation and profiting from their abuse.  Not 
only  are  the  individual  employees  of  that  business  less
likely to be able fully to compensate successful ATS plain­
tiffs, but holding only individual employees liable does not 
impose  accountability  for  the  institution-wide  disregard 
for human rights.  Absent a corporate sanction, that harm
will persist unremedied.  Immunizing the corporation from 
suit  under  the  ATS  merely  because  it  is  a  corporation,
even  though  the  violations  stemmed  directly  from  corpo­
rate  policy  and  practice,  might  cause  serious  diplomatic 

—————— 

12 Counsel  for  Arab  Bank  acknowledged  the  symbolic  force  of  ATS 
liability  at  oral  argument.    See  Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  60  (“[T]he  idea  of  the 
ATS  is  . . .  not  just  that  you  violated  a  statute,  but  that  you  have
violated some  specific universal obligatory norm so you are essentially
an enemy of mankind.  So, as much as my clients would not like to be
an  ATA  defendant,  they  would  really,  really,  really  not  like  to  be  . . .
labeled an enemy of mankind”).