Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-416_i4dj.pdf
Page Number: 18.0

Cite as:  593 U. S. ____ (2021) 

5 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

of action.  Of course, courts at common law may have en-
joyed the power to create (or “recognize”) causes of action.
But the power to create a cause of action is in every mean-
ingful sense the power to enact a new law that assigns new 
rights and new legally enforceable duties.  And our Consti-
tution generally assigns that power to Congress.  A self-gov-
erning  people  depends  on  elected  representatives—not
judges—to  make  its  laws.  So  what  may  have  been  a 
“ ‘proper function for common-law courts’ ” in England is no 
longer generally appropriate “ ‘for federal tribunals’ ” in this 
country.  Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U. S. 275, 287 (2001). 
And it’s not as if we have ever, in over two centuries, faced 
congressional  rebuke  for  being  asleep  at  the  ATS  switch. 
Just  the  opposite:    The  one  time  Congress  deemed  a  new 
ATS action worth having, it created that action itself in the 
Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991.  See 106 Stat. 73. 

To be sure, the Court recently complicated this picture in 
Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U. S. 692 (2004).  There, the 
Court  recognized  that  federal  judges  usually  may  not  in-
voke the ATS to create new causes of action.  The Court also 
refused to create the new cause of action the plaintiff pro-
posed.  Id.,  at  725.  But  Sosa  also  proceeded  to  speculate
that—in  some  future  case—this  Court  might  invoke  the 
ATS to create a new cause of action.  “The door,” Sosa said, 
is “ajar subject to vigilant doorkeeping.”  Id., at 729. 

To what end?  We have witnessed nearly two decades of 
ATS  litigation  since  Sosa.  During  that  period,  plaintiffs 
have presented for this Court’s consideration one new po-
tential cause of action after another.  Each time, the law-
yering has been thoughtful and able.  Always, too, the pro-
posed cause of action is potentially worthy.  Yet, in every 
case, we have turned up our noses.  I would stop feigning 
some  deficiency  in  these  offerings.    However  vigilant  the
doorkeeper, the truth is this is a door Sosa should not have 
cracked.  Whether and which international norms ought to 
be carried into domestic law—and how best to accomplish