The Oral Argument in Cisco

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe, a case testing whether claims for aiding and abetting human rights violations may be brought in federal court under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA). The defendant Cisco, a U.S. company, allegedly designed and built a surveillance system for the Chinese government knowing that it would be used to persecute practitioners of Falun Gong, a religion banned in China. Practitioners sued Cisco under the ATS, and its former CEO under the TVPA, for aiding and abetting the Chinese government in acts of torture, extrajudicial killing, and other serious human rights violations. (Disclosure: I wrote an amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs in Cisco, though the oral argument did not touch on the issues addressed in that brief.)

The ATS gives federal courts subject matter jurisdiction over “any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of…