Justice Kennedy’s One-Paragraph Concurrence

Would’ve been helpful if he’d said a wee bit more. For now, we’ll have to comb through the majority opinion in search of the questions he has in mind. In the meantime, worth noting the Court was 9-0 in affirming the Second Circuit’s decision to dismiss the ATS complaint in this case.

JUSTICE KENNEDY, concurring.
The opinion for the Court is careful to leave open a number of significant questions regarding the reach and interpretation of the Alien Tort Statute. In my view that is a proper disposition. Many serious concerns with respect to human rights abuses committed abroad have been addressed by Congress in statutes such as the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA), 106 Stat. 73, note following 28 U. S. C. §1350, and that class of cases will be determined in the future according to the detailed statutory scheme Congress has enacted. Other cases may arise with allegations of serious violations of international law principles protecting persons, cases covered neither by the TVPA nor by the reasoning and holding of today’s case; and in those disputes the proper implementation of the presumption against extraterritorial application may require some further elaboration and explanation.

UPDATE: In the annals of amusing moments in OJ history, looks like Julian and I had much the same thought at the same moment.