When does a corporation stop being a person? When you want to sue it of course!
An argument before the Supreme Court on October 1 in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum will have enormous significance. The case concerns the torture of Ogoni leaders in Nigeria, but at stake is the future of the law under which this case was brought, the Alien Tort Statute.
Passed in 1789, the Alien Tort Statute was a prescient piece of legislation. It allows foreign victims of human rights abuses in foreign nations to seek civil remedies in U.S. courts, and its animating idea -- that people anywhere should have recourse for violations of the "law of nations" -- was the foundation of our modern understanding of human rights.
In the suit, the plaintiffs accuse Royal Dutch Shell of helping the former dictatorship in the arrests on false charges and torture of 12 members of the Ogoni tribe, who sought to peacefully disrupt Shell's operations because of the devastating health and environmental effects of unregulated drilling. All the plaintiffs were themselves tortured except Esther Kiobel, who brought her claims on behalf of her late husband, Barinem Kiobel. Kiobel was executed through a sham trial process in which the plaintiffs believe Shell played a central role.
The Supreme Court court accepted Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum last fall after a federal appeals court ruled that the statute could not be used to sue corporations. The justices indicated in February that they might question not just the application of the statute to corporations but whether and under what circumstances it applies to any human rights violations, even by individuals, that take place outside the United States. They ordered the case to be re-argued on exactly that question.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/27/opinion/warren-supreme-court-alien-tort-law/index.html
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