The Alien Tort Statute's Translation Problem
The Alien Tort Statute (ATS) was enacted by the first Congress as part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 and, with the exception of references to particular federal courts that changed over time, has not been amended since. In current form , it provides: "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." In the last decades of the twentieth century, human rights lawyers discovered that they could use the ATS as a means for non-citizens to sue in U.S. courts for human rights violations. The first major case to vindicate this strategy was the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala , which involved a Paraguayan citizen suing another Paraguayan citizen for the torture and murder of the plaintiff's son in Paraguay, where the defendant was Inspector General of Police in Asuncion. The circumstances of the ...