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[PDF] Esther Kiobel, et al. v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, et al. - Supplemental Brief for Respondents
Petitioners’ complaint alleges that the Nigerian government, aided and abetted by an Anglo-Dutch company, subjected Nigerian citizens to human-rights violations on Nigerian soil. Few cases could be more remote from the circumstances that prompted the First Congress to enact the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (“ATS”): namely, the prospect that international-law violations committed on U.S. soil might prompt international conflict and even war if left without a remedy in the nascent federal courts. Nothing in the ATS’s text, structure, or history contemplates extending it to a case like this one, and, to the contrary, two well-established canons of con-struction foreclose that extension.